Rebel Epic

Stu Maschwitz’s Rebel Epic for Looks from Red Giant Software on Vimeo.

Rebel Epic is a set of presets that work with Magic Bullet Looks and PhotoLooks. This collection is pulled from my personal bag of Looks tricks that I reach for when grading. They range from subtle to very much not, and they all share a common goal: to lend your footage a high production value look. Like all presets, they are best used as a launching pad for your own tweaks and mods. Check out the detailed tutorial to see the Looks in action and learn a bit about what they’re for and how they’re made.

Getting Started with Rebel Epic from Red Giant Software on Vimeo.

Colorista II Tutorials

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.

Getting Started with Colorista II

Getting Started with Magic Bullet Colorista II from Red Giant Software.

Colorista II is available now from Red Giant Software for Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro (see update below), and Adobe After Effects. It’s what I used to grade these before and after examples. It’s my new favorite thing, and i really hope you enjoy it.

Update on Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 12:37PM by Stu

If you’re considering Colorista II for use in Premiere Pro CS5, please download the demo first and try before you buy. Depending on your project resolution and graphics hardware, you may see some pretty amazing performance, thanks to Adobe’s realtime Mercury Engine. However, you may also find that mouse interaction with the “Custom UIs” (the 3-Way and HSL color wheel controls) is sluggish.

Both Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro bypass their own plug-in SDKs for their native 3-way color correctors. They use window configurations and graphics drawing routines that third-party developers don’t have access to. On some systems this can make UI interaction for third-party effects with Custom UIs slow. In the case of Premiere Pro, the slowness can be bad. Real bad.

Have you noticed that Premiere’s own 3-way color corrector has never been ported to After Effects? This is one consequence of the Premiere team’s choice not to use their own plug-in SDK. Another is that third parties cannot provide a fluid custom UI experience within Premiere Pro.

After Effects, on the other hand, “eats its own dog food,” and has no effects that don’t use the public SDK. This means that third parties can create excellent user experiences within After Effects. The benefits to us users are obvious — just look at all the amazing plug-ins available for After Effects.

Premiere Pro and After Effects actually share the same plug-in SDK. This is amazingly cool, because it means that, for example, you can start a project in Premiere, use Colorista II all you want, and then move the project to After Effects, keeping all your settings. But despite this shared architecture, plug-ins like Colorista II sing in After Effects and bog down in Premiere.

Red Giant has is committed to working with Adobe to resolve this situation. We love Premiere Pro and feel that it and Colorista were born for each other. The playback performance is amazing. We’ve done the best we can with what we have. If you try Colorista II in Premiere and find the performance lacking, please consider contacting Adobe and asking them to improve the performance of Custom UI plug-ins written to their own SDK.

Update on Monday, July 26, 2010 at 9:26AM by Stu

There’s a new video tutorial up today on Red Giant’s site: Multi-shot Workflow in Final Cut Pro.

Countdown to Colorista II

Watch Red Giant’s front page today for exclusive info on Colorista II!