Colorista!

I'll blather more later, but here it is:

Magic Bullet Colorista

You know you've always wanted to have a three-way.

Comments

[Bruce Findleton]

Damn, dude! Very sweet.

I downloaded and played with the demo. Other than the myriad multi-colored demo-dots, this thing looks great. Haven't tried it with OpenGL yet but, still, response is mucho snappy. Looks like a keeper.

[Allan W.]

Looks awesome!

[Sean Safreed]

Cool thing is that it if you tried it that means that you are already using OpenGL. Colorista ONLY uses the GPU and autodetects on install if you have a card that will run it--there is no CPU fallback. On my high-end Windows machine I can do nearly real time 720p playback in Premiere Pro and 14-15 fps RAM rendering in AE.

[Anonymous]

fusion?

[melorama]

holyfuckingcrap, Stu...you guys rule!

This post absolutely floors me, because I was literally about to make a post to the FCP-L list, asking if it were possible (via fxscript) to hack the existing FCP 3-way Color Corrector so that it could regionalize corrections using DaVinci-esque "Power Windows". I do a lot of client-supervised finishing sessions in FCP (generally with directors and DPs who've spent many hours in Da Vinci sessions), and the biggest slowdown is when the client asks for me to put a window around something and color-correct it independently. Up until now, I've only been able to do this quickly for brightness & blur (using the wonderful, yet simple "Face Light" and Vignette plugins from http://www.haiku.com.au/">Haiku Productions), but making windows for color has been a major pain in the ass. Juggling multiple layers of travel-matted clips, with clumsy Shape generators just plain sucks.

In this respect, Colorista does what even Color Finesse can't! If you guys added the following features, you'd have a pretty solid "Color Finesse killer":

• RGBA Curves

• Larger (or proportionally resizing) color wheels. In FCP, the wheels are a bit too tiny for my taste.

• A way to redefine luminance ranges, so you can really control the behavior of the color wheels.

• Built-in defocus/blur

• Concatenation of stacked instances of Colorista. I guess I'm spoiled by Shake's ability to concatenate consecutive color/luminance operations :P But a lot of times, a client will ask me to crunch the blacks of a shot, only to ask later if I can pull back some of the detail in the blacks. Given the way FCP works (IOW, a filter organization nightmare), it's a lot easier to just add another instance of a filter to the end of a colorcorrection stack instead of drilling back to earlier in the stack to refine a grade (which also can adversely affect the qualification of any secondaries you might have downstream)

• A "comments" box, where you can type in a freeform annotation of what the selected instance of Colorista is actually there for. This would be more useful to FCP users, since there's no way--unlike in AE--to rename filters once you've applied them, so it's really easy to lose track what a certain filter in a long, convoluted stack is really doing.

In just the 15 minutes I've been playing with Colorista, it's strikingly clear how superior it is to FCP's 3way CC. It preserves an amazing amount of detail and color that the FCP 3way-CC unapologetically crunches away. Try cranking up the Gain and Gamma luma in Colorista, and then doing the same with the FCP 3-way CC...then A/B the two versions. Colorista seems to preserve the color, whereas the 3way-cc noticeably desaturates. And the blacks transition MUCH more organically in Colorista. And the Exposure slider just rocks.

So far the only bug I've run into is that the plugin does not reset itself when you click on the red "x" button in the FCP filters tab.

In my never ending quest to find the ultimate colorcorrection/finishing solution for FCP, Colorista seems to be the closest yet. Steal some of the better ideas in Color Finesse, and I'm certain that you'll own the ass of the finishing market (well, at least in FCP-land, that is) :)

Great work!

[Anonymous]

How does this compare to synthetic aperture's color finess?
Why does the RGS site say it is a good complement to MB Editors - if I have the full MB suite is this included?
The RGS site says that it will play 720p back in realtime (Quote: "Playback SD and HD (720p) projects in real-time ")so 14-15 frames is disappointing if you are running a highend system (I would be on a medium laptop so it is probably going to be much slower.)

[Anonymous]

Pity the luminance controls for each picker aren't flipped horizontally - with a tablet, it feels much more natural to draw a convex curve, clockwise, to turn things up than the other way around...

[Stu]

Wow, what an awesome bunch of comments this morning!

I expect to post some more thoughts soon on our reasons for creating Colorista, but I'll address a couple of points quickly.

Melorama—Thanks! Your need is exactly what we had hoped to fill. But we aren't trying to be a Color Finesse killer. Color Finesse is a very cool tool, but many color correction tasks are walnuts for which CF's jackhammer may be overkill.

On the subject of "face lights" and vignettes, the After Effects version of Colorista ships with presets for both.

Which leads me to the question about concatenation. Colorista operates internally in floating point color (of course!), but when you stack multiple instances, we are at the mercy of the host application regarding color fidelity.

BUT, in After Effects, you can switch your project into 16 or 32-bit mode and your corrections will stack up with no degradation. So the workflow we're looking to help support in the future is for Colorista to come along with video sequences that you import from your NLE into After Effects.

Stacking multiple instances of Colorista is something I highly recommend. A common layer for me might have a relighting/white balancing Colorista, a Vignette, and then some last color tweaks followed by Look Suite.

[Stu]

Anonymous, this is a seperate product from Magic Bullet Suite.

Try the demo and see how the render times are for you. Most of our bottleneck comes from the host application, so for example we're realtime in SD in Motion, but not FCP. The realtime performance in Premeire is great even on my laptop.

[Stu]

Anonymous #2, have you tried the luminance slider with your tablet? There's no need to scribe an arc at all, as they respond well to pure horizontal and vertical mouse movement. So try some swiping motions with your tablet and definitely let us know how you like the feel!

[Dale McCready]

Wow, just had a play with the demo.

responsive and spunky!

Dale
director/dp
www.dalemccready.com

[melorama]

That's too bad about the concatenation in FCP...although I figured as much, considering FCPs history of lackluster plugin support.

I'd also like to throw in a (forgotten) feature request for secondaries in Colorista. It would be nice to not have to use the 3way-CC ever again, if I had my druthers.

Also, I just purchased Colorista, and noticed that the product page said that it included a 15 minute tutorial...the download file didn't seem to include this, however. Where can I download this tutorial?

Thanks and Aloha!
mel matsuoka

[melorama]

oh yeah...and also, independent saturation sliders for each luminance range :)

(I know you said you're not looking to be a colorfinesse killer, but that is one of the features that I use most often in grading sessions)

[Anonymous]

Hi Stu,

A quick question for you about Colorista. If I wanted to have more than one mask with a different color correction in each....is that possible?

I know you can stack instances, but I was just curious.

Thanks
Ray

[Stu]

Hi Ray, yes, you'd do this by stacking multiple Coloristas.

[Anonymous]

Anyone notice a GUI problem with the latest FCP update? (5.1.3).

I've lost the interface...

[Anonymous]

I lost the interface as well. The sliders version works, but the 3 color wheels are gone in FCP 5.1.3...

[Stu]

This is a known bug with Apple's 5.1.3 updater. It breaks other plug-ins as well, such as Conduit. Hopefully Apple will let us all know soon whether they will release a fix—please don't hesitate to bug them about it!

[Anonymous]

Hi Stu,

How can I contact you via email to discuss a plugin idea?

Thanks
Ray

[Stu]

Ray, there's an "email Stu" link on rebelsguide.com (at the bottom).

[Anonymous]

Hi Stu,

What is the possibility of being able to add more points to the Colorista mask? Similar to After Effects masks? I realize Premiere Pro does not support bezier masks yet, but I was hoping through some Colorista magic, we could get around this?
We need more irregular shapes that an elipse or rectangle.

Thanks
Ray