Grade School: Make your grades pop (Pro Colorist Q&A)
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- Опубліковано 27 сер 2024
- This week we're answering your questions and going more in-depth to the key foundations for making a grade pop.
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0:11 Introduction
4:28 Colorist Career Accelerator course announcement
6:24 Texture pop OFX breakdown
9:15 Since ARRI LogC3 has a wider gamut than ACES AP1, shouldn’t ARRI LogC3
be a better intermediate color space than ACES AP1? What’s the difference between
ACES AP1 and AP0?
16:43 What are your thoughts regarding the order of operations in Resolve? And
what about texture specifically?
24:36 Texture pop sometimes creates weird artifacts when smoothing things out. Any
idea on why that happens and how can we avoid it?
28:41 Is it a good idea to set the strength/opacity of a node that contains a curve
manipulation lower than 100% to get more control over it instead of modifying the
curve itself?
31:06 What would you do to make your image pop more if the original color palette
was a very muted one?
36:36 Most of the essence we try to reproduce in digital color grading comes from
the print side of film. Can you explain what the negative side is and how reproducing
it can help us achieve better grades?
43:35 How do you go about grading a shot with VFX like a real person with a matte
painting?
47:16 Where should we place noise reduction in the node tree? I’ve seen people
putting it even before the initial CST so what’s the logic of using it at the end of the
tree?
49:53 Why don't you use the Contrast Pop OFX as much to manipulate texture?
51:39 What is your take on the new AI regarding color?
57:41 How do you go about finding inspiration for a grade for a client that does not
offer feedback? And for personal projects?
1:01:12 Conclusion
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Hey good morning
Morning(afternoon for me :P)
Would love to see your color space/gamut transformation from the brand new GoPro Wide Gamut (GWG) to DWD with a raised log base like 250.
On the part about ACES and color spaces I think I should correct you that virtual colors (outside the horseshoe) aren't colors humans can't see. Rather colors that don't exist. As to ACES 2.0 it will have a gamut compressor built in to the DRT, but having a working gamut that covers all camera primaries doesn't really make sense. You still have the desire to not deal with virtual colors or design a DRT specifically to deal with those, and you still need to map to your display gamut which is smaller regardless. So there's not a huge reason to change the AP1 gamut yet I guess.
In Aces the out off gamut is happen when transforming from camera space to working space
Great tutorial as usual mate. Would you make a tutorial on braw workflow? Thx
On the noise reduction ordering discussion - Cullen I think you're spot on when it comes to Resolve's built-in NR. My guess is the ordering thing comes from more analytical plugins like Neat Video, which I believe prefers to work as close to the direct output from the camera as possible. In my totally non-expert concept of its noise profiling, I think it's more like noise reducing headphones (analyzing noise patterns and countering them). Then I think people have reasoned that because plugins like Neat Video NR should go first then any kind of NR should go first. Anyone know what I'm talking about and can confirm or deny?
great
Hi Cullen
Can i hijack this Grade School to ask a question about DCTL's please.
Is there a protocol about where in the Node chain to put them.
I've been advised that the place to put them is 1st in the Node tree, just after the CST (when using Node base Colour Management).
However, it seems to me that the best place would be at the end (but before the ODT). It seems to me that this is where it would have the greatest use.
Or does it even matter?
If you have any thoughts on this i'd be grateful. Or if any other viewers have a view i'd be grateful to hear it too.
Thanks again for everything Cullen.
Hey Cullen, I am never catching these live. So in case you see this - do you normalize each clip before your overall grade? Or with your node tree that you start with is it kind of a hybrid process where you normalize towards your creative look of the environment/key shot you use to start the scene?
According to popular wisdom, noise redux should be placed at the head of the node tree because it effects Resolve's ability to generate cache or proxy files. When the noise redux node comes first, once the cache is built the first time, changes to downstream nodes get re-cached much more quickly without having to go thru the noise redux recalc. nez pas?
The most compelling argument to have it up front is that noise is a capture problem and part of the camera footage - we then have no problems correcting exposure or white balance or many other issues to get the footage to be how we would want it to be. So if the noise is caused by lack of light in shadows or ISO - it is still a camera correction.
And for the same reason that we don't put textures before smoothing or blurs, we don't want any smoothing that is not targeted to affect any textures of the grade.
My general statement that if you are blurring and smoothing the information, it is not removing noise. it's hiding the noise in blur and is probably being used too strongly.
But in the video near the end - every argument that Cullen used to do noise reduction at the end, I could easily say the same for exposure. Cullen likes to fix that so he builds from that, and I like to fix the noise issue and build from a clean image.
What I'll do is turn off NR and many heavy loading effects when not needed. The other thing I do is to upgrade my computer so that I can enjoy working more like an artist than an engineer.
@@JimRobinson-colors I find it difficult to define a “clean” image before applying all other adjustments. New noises would appear as new adjustments are applied. Although I’d rather decide whether the noise level is pleasant or not by the end result, I don’t find using NR first an inferior method since the NR could be fine-tuned until the end result is acceptable.
And it does help us to decide other adjustments more easily to begin with a "clean" image, particularly with those very noisy images.
@@joyKafka talking about order of nodes is different than actual order of use or setting the nodes.
It seems in a video talking about texture and how important it is - that NR needs to be way before applying texture.
Cullen often refers to photometric applications when regarding light, but then doesn't consider sensor noise as something that should be dealt with at the color correction level. I tend to work from the camera capture out and deal with anything on set that could have been better ( i.e. lighting, focus, make-up etc. That is my opinion.