Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

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Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby Shin-AMV » Mon Apr 16, 2012 1:29 pm

I'm pretty terrible when it comes to color grading/color correction/etc and I've been looking into it more and more, trying to get a better grasp on it. I've been messing around with color correction tools, adjusting levels and saturation, and playing around with Color Gradient overlays and other composite modes, but regardless of what I do it comes out looking terrible. So I wanted to make a discussion thread on the different methods behind it and maybe have a conversation on the different kinds of theories on the whys and hows it can look good and things to keep in mind.

So anyone and everyone who is far more competant and knowledgeable about this than I am, please feel free to really kick off this discussion in any way by giving a detailed overview about what to look for when adding/changing colors or just a quick rundown of a few tips and tricks. :bear:
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby Koopiskeva » Mon Apr 16, 2012 1:50 pm

Make everything black and white |:
Hi.
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby JudgeHolden » Mon Apr 16, 2012 2:19 pm

Koopiskeva wrote:Make everything black and white |:


With grain and twitch.
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby macchinainterna » Mon Apr 16, 2012 2:59 pm

JudgeHolden wrote:
Koopiskeva wrote:Make everything black and white |:


With grain and twitch.


And don't forget to lens flare the shit out of that! Put J.J. Abrams to shame, son! :awesome:
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby Castor Troy » Mon Apr 16, 2012 5:20 pm

What do you exactly want to do with color correction? You can't really get good with it unless you know what you want beforehand.
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby gotegenks » Mon Apr 16, 2012 6:48 pm

Castor Troy wrote:What do you exactly want to do with color correction? You can't really get good with it unless you know what you want beforehand.

i can't speak for shin, but i would be wanting to fuck bitches. how does one accomplish this with color correction?
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby JudgeHolden » Mon Apr 16, 2012 7:04 pm

Poor Shin, he must have known he was walking into a trap. :ying:
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby irriadin » Mon Apr 16, 2012 8:44 pm

I'm far from an expert on the subject, but the way I do it is to just keep tweaking the colors until I get the look I want (I know, really helpful). I find that duplicating a layer and applying a mask to the one allows you to get a more subtle effect than applying a single color alteration to the entire composition.

Anyway, I'm just gonna post two videos that I think use color really well:



I really enjoy the way color is used here; it really enhances the mood and there's some incredible imagery that is accentuated by the color alterations. Note 1:56-1:59 with the hand falling in front of the stained glass... The colors used are predominantly dark red, purple, and dark blue; analogous colors, which means less variety, but also a more natural and organic feeling that I think helps this scene stand out from the other clips.



On the opposite side of the spectrum (see what I did there?) from Trial by Drowning is P.Y.A. which I think uses the lack of color and color isolation to help bring out the helplessness and fatalism that the editor was trying to convey.

So that's this amateur's interpretation. Where are the people who REALLY know this stuff? :sweat:
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby DriftRoot » Mon Apr 16, 2012 9:17 pm

I can't say that I've done a ton of color correcting in videos, but as Castor said, it can depend on what you're trying do to do. Different methods will yield different results, and sometimes multiple methods are required to achieve the results you want. One tip I can offer is the importance of matching up blacks, whites and neutrals. Maybe you match the blacks in one anime to the blacks in another, maybe you take both and match them to some mutually compatible happy medium, but it's a good place to start.

You also can color correct "by the numbers," but this is getting really technical, I don't know if it works for anime and I have no idea how to do that in a video editing program. Might be worth experimenting with, though, if you like numbers. It's something I've done only in Photoshop, but the principles are sound and might carry over to other programs. I can dig up details, if you want them.

What are you trying to do that is coming out looking terrible? Maybe you've just picked a really horrible batch of video to color correct!
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby Shin-AMV » Mon Apr 23, 2012 1:42 am

JudgeHolden wrote:Poor Shin, he must have known he was walking into a trap. :ying:

I really should have seen it coming D:

>.>

But anyways, to those that contributed, thanks. I'm not looking for any specific thing just general tips on aesthetics. So tips regarding on how much saturation is too much saturation, or a warning on how purple to yellow gradient overlays don't generally mesh well in maintaining most atmospheres or moods, or generally things of that nature is what I was hoping to dig up.
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby Nya-chan Production » Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:33 am

Shin-AMV wrote:
JudgeHolden wrote:Poor Shin, he must have known he was walking into a trap. :ying:

I really should have seen it coming D:

>.>

But anyways, to those that contributed, thanks. I'm not looking for any specific thing just general tips on aesthetics. So tips regarding on how much saturation is too much saturation, or a warning on how purple to yellow gradient overlays don't generally mesh well in maintaining most atmospheres or moods, or generally things of that nature is what I was hoping to dig up.

Use purple to yellow gradient EVERYWHERE!
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby zibbazabba905 » Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:03 pm

actually it should be teal and orange but whatever...

I've been trying to figure out what they did to make the wizard of oz look like it does with the colors... It was one of the earliest (or biggest i dunnknow) technicolor films, but I've tried a few pre-made filters, and I've tried recreating the 2 strip/3 strip concept, but I just can't get it to look right
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby shati » Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:02 pm

When color correcting, keep an eye on skin tone. Most people don't have a particularly strong sense of what shade of green a hand-drawn tree should be, but if skin looks too orange, too red, too blue, too green, etc., we'll recognize that something is off. This isn't necessarily a problem if the entire frame is tinted blue, since we're all used to adjusting for lighting, but when you crank up saturation (for example), you're usually bringing what was a dull shade of brown to a much less human looking shade of (whatever is the dominant hue). If you really need to drastically raise the saturation for shitty quality footage, sometimes the easiest way to make it not look like you did is to take a quick look the most prominent character's skin, see what unholy color is blazing out of it, and use a correction tool that lets you push that hue (and only that hue) toward its opposite. You can also try selectively lowering saturation on just that hue, but that's letting the saturation tool win.

If you're masking two shots, pick something that should be consistent between them (I'm going to sound creepy if I say skin again) and check whether it's actually the same hue. Or if you feel confident that you will notice the difference, just adjust it by instinct, but I see a lot of masks where one shot is very visibly separated from the other by hue (or different contrast level) and it's distracting. Especially if both shots have something that is supposed to be white, comparing can tell you a lot.

I just have a lot of feelings about color correction. :uhoh: Of course, shitty monitors throw everything into question.
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby zibbazabba905 » Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:41 pm

shati wrote:When color correcting, keep an eye on skin tone. Most people don't have a particularly strong sense of what shade of green a hand-drawn tree should be, but if skin looks too orange, too red, too blue, too green, etc., we'll recognize that something is off.


Sorry if this is a trivial thing or what not but you just blew my mind. http://i42.tinypic.com/xng3sw.jpg
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Re: Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

Postby Taite » Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:11 pm

I hate gradients and discourage anyone I possibly can from using them. This is a person preference of mine, but when I see gradients on amvs, I'm automatically turned off :| I know there have been a few good cases for this, but I can't remember any of them off the top of my head.

If you're creative enough, gradients can be used well. I discourage adding the same gradient over an entire amv and calling it color correcting though, because it's so obvious it's painful. And you're very limited with a flat gradient.

I use Color Curves in Vegas for everything (not Color Corrector) but I know you can also buy/download things that are specifically made for that as well. Personally, I don't see the point. Every color correction that I've ever wanted to make I can easily do with Black and White and Color Curves in Vegas (b&w not always necessary either.) :)

shati makes an amazing point that I think people literally forget when color correcting. Skin tone is the most important thing to pay attention to. Always try to preserve the fleshy tones of skin. Even if you're using a blue color for correcting, you can get away with having a very light blue tone to the skin, and really, you can experiment with this and create different moods, there's no right and wrong. You can achieve a "dreamy" affect with some glow and blue, etc. It's all open for interpretation. But cranking up the saturation, using gradients, or adding a very saturated color at all, I advise being careful because it erases the fleshy tones and then it's so obviously color corrected, but in a bad way. Obviously there's exceptions to this-- it all depends on what effect you want. But this is just something to take special note of.

Color Corrector is not the right way to go if you want a very rich and natural color correction, imo. I never use it, I think it looks shitty and flat. :? Adding levels seems like an easy fix, to get rid of the dusty, dry effect, sure. But you're limiting yourself using color corrector. Depends on the effect you want, maybe you want something verrrrrry subtle, but man, you're crazy limited. I don't even bother, even if I want something incredibly subtle. You can achieve the same thing with color curves, but you'll have more depth and control.




Here is an example. Top img: original. Second: Very basic color curves. Third: Adding Black and White before the color curves. I wanted a flat brown/sepia color, so I made this with the black and white on there.
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**so even though there are sepia presets on vegas, I create my own in Color curves. You have sooo much more control.**

Example 2: Top is original. Everything below are just different color curves I saved. All but the bottom one are just 1 color curves. The bottom is 2, with a 75% b&w. Mixing in b&w is a great way to discover different colors as well.
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Example 3: When masking and overlaying scenes that take place during different times of the day, color curves is useful as well. If you don't have color curves on the rest of the video, I can see color corrector being used here, or just smart scene selection and not having to use much. For my recent video, I did have color curves on other scenes, and so using it on the masked scene made it look more natural. If I were to just have color curves on that one scene, it would look odd compared to the others.

Here I masked two scenes, one taking place at sunset, the other at dawn. So one had bluish tints, the other orange. They look alright together, but not completely blended (top scene.) However, I had to make this masked scene fit with the previous scenes, which take place at night. So, I then added a multitude of color curves to each. (second.) Then, I placed the background on a layer that had color curves applied to that entire layer, which gave it a reddy warm tint. The top layer remained unaffected. (third.) Lastly, I rendered all of that, and placed the flattened clip on the layer with the curves that applied to the entire video. (as well as soft contrast for the blurred border, four.) You can see how this blends with the previous scenes before it in Please Don't Go.

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I've also used Color Curves to make night images look like day, and vice versa. (Not like the above-- I mean, dark clips, to daylight scenes.)


There's a plethora of different combinations. For that last slide, I used about 5 different color curves on each clip, plus some levels and black and white, and so on. It depends on the effect you want to create. All of my needs are met by using those few effects, and it's so much fun making different colors as well. I've about 30 different curves saved, which I can mix, use alone, adjust how I want. It's really quite simple, and it's frankly the most fun I have making an amv :P Even though when you look at mine, I really don't use them that often. However, even if I'm not doing intense color correcting, I always use color curves on my videos to add more depth and vibrancy. I never saturate anything, just add color curves.


****As far as how you get to creating the colors: open up color curves, add the Warm Colors preset to a clip, and you get the blue, green, and red line. Take the squares that you see and drag them up, down, left, right, whatever, and just see what it does. Each of these can be bended and stretched for different results, and each line controls certain colors in the image. There's an unlimited amount of combinations-- you have complete control. And it's really quite easy. You can add different presets and play around with the lines on them as well to get whatever effect you want. When all the lines are in a straight diagonal line, that's when you have the original image colors. Then just move the lines, save what you made, and blah blah so on.
By adding the Reset to None preset, you control the blacks and whites and brightness and such, which is a better alternative to using Levels imo.

^^^^You may already know how it works, but that's just a basic how-to, just in case.

And I don't claim that my method is the best. I'm just sharing how I do things. You can use a gradient if you like, or color correction. It depends on what you're trying to create.

But really, gradients cause me great pain to see. So ugly. :cry:
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