Three Way Color Corrector in After Effects
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 at 6:52PM After Effects has been dinged over the years for lacking a classic “three-way” color correction tool, like the one found in Discreet products and just about every Non Linear Editor out there. But could it be that AE has actually had one for years, sans the sexy color-wheel UI?
In the Adjust category, there’s an oft-neglected effect called Color Balance. You’ve probably neglected it because its UI is just an unfriendly pile of sliders.
But if you tie those sliders to some Color Control effects using expressions, you can create a visual way to drive Color Balance’s quite decent color correction engine.
Download 3WayCB_01.ffx (4kb .zip file, requires After Effects 6.5)
You create your correction by dialing colors into the Master, Shadow, Midtone and Highlight swatches. If you select the “B” (of HSB) mode in the Adobe Color Picker, you are presented with a sort of “unwrapped” color wheel. If you’re on a Mac, you can elect to use the Apple color picker, which actually sports a color wheel. Either way, you can ignore the brightness of your color selection. The strength of your tinting will come from the saturation of the color.
If you want a solution that doesn't involve a modal dialog, use PowerPicker instead of the Color Control effects. Then you can pick colors right in the Effects Control Window, and get realtime feedback as you scrub your selection.
It ain’t the Discreet Color Corrector, but it ain’t half bad either. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think!
Comparotron2000™:
Before
After
Reader Comments (11)
The Comparotron2000™ looks kinda odd (and doesn't work) in your RSS, as seen on NetNewsWire. But, great hint! Great ffx! Great to be able to exchange ffx in this way!
Yeah, Comparotron2000™ doesn't work for me in NetNewsWire either. I'm not a web dude, so all I can say is sorry and click on through to the other side man!
Thanks Stu
Great preset. I linked to it from aenhancers.com
So do you think there could be a way to cook up some kind of "average" color picker, like Shake has?
I think it's fab, and quite simple to use (i.e. - not confusing).
Maybe if some of us start using this a lot and come up with certain looks/presets, we could share them?
thanks stu!
Cool.
If you don't mind spending a few bucks, look at Color Finesse:
http://tinyurl.com/b6mn6" REL="nofollow">3-way
What few bucks? CF is free with AE these days, just in a seperate installer. Try its 3-way compared to this one and see which you like better.
A great tip from Chris Meyer posted to the Media Motion AE list:
"UI tip: If you expose those color swatches in the Timeline window, you can click and drag the colors without going into a modal dialog: left/right for hue, up/down for saturation."
Nice to see you sharing .ffx files, I'd love to see more of that!
Maybe kinda obvious, but that Meyer click and drag technique is a lot easier when you hold down Apple/Command for tighter control.
Stu - do you have to add the expressoin controls manually or should the preset do that for you? I can't get this to work even with naming four new colour control sliders like your image.. Any ideas or am I missing something (it is kind of late here)..? AE 7.0.1 OSX 10.4.8...
stevenkirby, everything should be set up for you when you apply the preset to a layer. No typing required! Is this not what happens for you?
Hey fast response Stu! I figured it out now.. I was adding the preset to an instance of the color balance effect rather than just to the layer. Actually I'm new to presets so forgive the dumbo post.