Colorista II Tutorials
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 11:24AM Red Giant just pushed out the last of my first series of Colorista II tutorials, so I thought I’d collect them all in one handy place for you. Probably best to watch them full-screen. Click through the text links to get iPad/iPhone-friendly versions.
01 - Getting Started with Magic Bullet Colorista II from Red Giant Software on Vimeo.
02 - Multishot Workflow With Magic Bullet Colorista II from Red Giant Software on Vimeo.
03 - Working with The Keyer in Magic Bullet Colorista II from Red Giant Software on Vimeo.
04 - Working with Power Masks in Colorista II from Red Giant Software on Vimeo.
05 - Cosmetics: Skin Retouching with Magic Bullet Colorista II from Red Giant Software on Vimeo.
06 - Highlight Recovery With Magic Bullet Colorista from Red Giant Software on Vimeo.
Reader Comments (25)
Great tutorials, but I am missing something. When does someone use colorista vs looks vs mojo. I think I saw one of your earlier posts that mojo is a simpler tool for a quicker result but fewer options. So what about colorista vs looks? I see they are both in the suite, so do you typically use both in your complete workflow?
These look great - but as we discussed before can you label somewhere - this is a AE based demo or a FCP based demo so we focus on the one that works in the particular way to our platform? It looks to me like only 2 and 3 are available this way in FCP.
I know you love AE Stu - but its not in our facility.
Thanks,
Walker.
Walker, all the tutorials are in AE except the 2nd one, which is in FCP. Colorista II has identical functionality in all three host applications with the exception of the Mask Outlines, which only work in AE.
Matt, your question is a good one, might be worth a whole post.
Stu,
Colorista 2 is extremely useful - I wish I did not have to jump apps to use it!
CII and Pro Lens Flares may be the apps that make me jump out of Nuke and Combustion... but man.... I wish the plugins would work across apps....
Nuke has 3D-stereo pipelines nailed, Combustion is just an old dog I beat around, although I have finaled shots in 15 min with it... And AE seems stringy and noodly to me.... but these apps/plugins are so damn cool!
I've used Colorista since it first came out and like it a lot, but Colorista II, WOW! How much power can you pack into a straightforward easy to use plugin. Apparently a lot. I just finished CCing an interview show with lots of black and light only on the host and guests. In one of the segments in order to get the required black background the DP put almost no light on the subject. Using pretty much everything in Colorista II, power masks, key mode, HSL and density, I was able to relight two shots with only one instance of Colorista II. . I also do an outdoors show where there are lots of shots with overexposed backgrounds and faces in shadow, fixing these are a breeze now.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Stu, any thought of an OFX/nuke native version?
Great stuff.
All it needs now is:
1. From FCP - Send To: AE/Colorista
2. An Ipad control surface app.
I couldn't agree more. In the past we've been able to work out the former with Automatic Duck.
Stu, I love the products...seriously amazing. I know you may have heard this before but why not just make Looks and colorista one app...and add tracking with bezier masking...even if you don't I will still use the software. It's just AWESOME!
Hi Stu,
Correct me if I am wrong, but it appears to me that you are correcting on a computer screen (perhaps for the sake of the tutorial). As that would not be YUV video, the corrections would be a shot in the dark. So what kind of grading monitor are you actually using?
Hey Stu,
Great product! Just wondering what you use as an RGB parade/scopes when using colorista II in AE? I'm really paranoid about clipping precious information, which is why I'm a big fan of "Auto Shoulder" in Looks - do you have a tip/something equivalent for colorista?
Thanks for your time!
-Jake
Stu,
I've been using your product with AE for quite some time now and have recently put together a system based on FCP. I started a thread over at the Creative Cow asking people to compare the pros and cons of staying in FCP and using Colorista and Looks compared with round-tripping to Color. Here's the link.
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1108696
I'm curious if you have any thoughts one way or another.
I like Walter and respect his opinions, but it seems like he's describing Colorista 1.0, not Colorista II, when he measures relative grading power against Color.
There's no question that Color is a dedicated, single purpose environment for color correction, and that it is very powerful. But personally, I often like to do my color work in a more integrated environment. It's very hard to measure these thngs numerically. There's no wrong answer, just some great options for you to experiment with and decide what's right for you.
Thanks Stu,
I look for the most bang for the buck in terms of my time. I've done a few projects with Color vs hundreds of commercials with Colorista via AE. In my day job, I offline in a Windows based NLE, export the tracks to AE. Composite, title, grade, etc and export a sequence back to the NLE for finishing touches. Not unlike the Color round-trip. The thought of staying within FCP appeals to me more if I can obtain similar grading results to what I have been doing in AE. I've yet to upgrade to Colorista II but I think that I will find that staying in FCP will be a better workflow for me in the long run. I am very happy with the results that Colorista/Looks has given me so far.
Lee, your workflow sounds a lot like mine. I think you'll find the upgrade to CII a no-brainer. It's immensely more powerful than than version 1. And remember that your upgrade gives you CII in Final Cut, After Effects, and even Premiere if you ever decide to give that a try,
Just a quick one Stu. Both Colorista II and MB Looks look impressive but can you confirm whether indeed they are both 64bit on the Mac OSX platform? I am using Premiere CS5 and the trials seem to suggest they are still 32bit.
Hi George. Yes, both are 64bit and CS5 compatible. There should be separate installers within the trial download.
Firstly, so why is using the colour wheels on Colorista II almost impossible in PPro for Mac?
And secondly, has MB Looks got the same set of colour manipulation parameters as Colorista II? If so then if I didn't mind working in a module outside of the linear editing process it would make Looks a much better proposition given I have to choose between the two? What are your thoughts?
Hi George, the answer to your Premiere Pro question is in the update to this post:
http://prolost.com/cii/
(Scroll down to the Update.)
Colorista II is much newer than Looks, so it has many capabilities that Looks does not have.
Stu, in the final cut version, I like to have the option to save my grades from Colorista. It's this posible???
Yes, just drag the effect from the clip to the Favorites Bin.
I am doing a color grading in After effects CS5.5, with multiple Colorista ii plugins stacked plus adjustment layers with masks etc
i want to work in linear space, 32 bits (universal print space), it seems to be working but i have read in a couple of places things like this
"The advantages and techniques of working linear are well-covered on my blog and in Mark's book. Linear isn't better for everything, and Colorista is an example of an effect that works better in gamma-encoded space (or log) than in linear. "
so some people are saying that colorista doesnt work well in linear space,
so i need to find out if the latest version, Colorista ii, is or is not really ready for linear space,
thank you for your help
Jav
so if a few people are advising not to use linear with colorista ii, then i may have to change, and at the same time if i take linear out, the Universal Print working space i wanted to use seems to behave weirdly in non-linear way,
so i may have to go back to REC709 in non linear as long as use Colorista ii for the grading,
im still trying to find out though for sure that the latest version colorista ii is ok or not to work with linear, or to understand what those changes in gamma people talk about mean
thanks :)
so if a few people are advising not to use linear with colorista ii, then i may have to change, and at the same time if i take linear out, the Universal Print working space i wanted to use seems to behave weirdly in non-linear way,
so i may have to go back to REC709 in non linear as long as use Colorista ii for the grading,
im still trying to find out though for sure that the latest version colorista ii is ok or not to work with linear, or to understand what those changes in gamma people talk about mean
thanks :)
Hi Javier, the quote you posted:
...is by me, and you can find the original here. If you follow the link you should see some interesting reading on the subject.
Colorista, like most color correction tools, is designed to work in gamma- or log-encoded space, not linear. This is good. It's not a compromise or a failing. It's a carefully-considered feature. Do your VFX compositing in linear, but do your grading in vid or log.
If you want to use Colorista II in a linear project, just wrap it with lin2vid and vid2lin color space conversions. I'd recommend using the sRGB curve for this.
I love questions like this and at some point I'll do a new post about it—and I'll explain why some Tools in Magic Bullet Looks work in linear-light, and others work in video.