Great tutorial on keeping good skin tones in a CC

[lordtangent]

This is a short article on color correction and preserving "natural" skin tones. It's a good read. If I've noticed anything about my own color grades, it's the skin tones are the first to suffer when going for extreme "looks" In a lot of ways the skin tones seem to be what limiting factor on what you can "get away with". This post gives tips on secondary color correction to help save the skin tones from going wacky. I'd probably let the environment effect the skin tones a little more than the examples myself. But it's good to know the technique so you have better control!

http://prolost.blogspot.com/2008/03/save-our-skins.html

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

I just wrote http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2008/03/27/skin-color-in-a-blue-world/ a tutorial on how to do a similar thing to what Stu suggests, but by using Sony Vegas instead.

[Duke]

I just wrote http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2008/03/27/skin-color-in-a-blue-world/ a tutorial on how to do a similar thing to what Stu suggests, but by using Sony Vegas instead.

Nice tutorial (as always). Thanks. Since there's been a run on Vegas 8 Pro through B&H's upgrade special, can you tell us how the secondary plugin would affect the workflow or settings? Frankly I didn't understand that part of Stu's tutorial and might save me from buying Colorista.

Thanks again,
Duke

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

You just use the secondary plugin as many times as you need to invert a color range to another. So in effect, it's not much different than using Aav6cc as I used in my tutorial, it's just that Aav6cc is more convenient as it does everything in a single plugin entry.

[Yojimbo]

Thanks for the links lordtangent and Eugenia, both made for really interesting reading.

I wanted to ask whether anyone could give me any pointers to achieving a comparable effect in Final Cut **Express** (rather than Pro).

FCE doesn't seem to have a secondary CC. I've been using the color key to isolate the skin tones, then compositing the clip (with everything except the skin keyed out) on top of another copy of the clip, and then grading the two clips separately with the color corrector.

It's quite an involved process, and the results look pretty garish. To be honest, I struggle to even get the blue right, let alone the skin tones! Please don't all laugh at once...

Is there an easier way to do this? I'm totally new to FCE so it's highly possible I'm missing something really obvious.

Any pointers or advice would be massively appreciated.

cheers

[lordtangent]

The only tip I can give is "Practice, Practice, Practice" There are no short cuts. You always end up using your eyes and skill to dial in the final look. I've been doing computer graphics for 15 years and that is still the case.

As for the specific tool, it's the same thing. Practice will help you learn want you can get away with and help speed you up in a particular tool.

[Ian-T]

I have been using the secondary color tool for some time...but what I find equally as powerful is Sony Vegas' "graidient map" tool.

[RobPhoboS]

This is something that has bypassed me in the last year or so, partly because I've been heavily working with 3d work.

So is anyone else here using Fusion ?
I quite like the colour tools in fusion, and got pretty good results in the past but I haven't tried doing this secondary type of colouring before.

[lordtangent]

I'll bet you could use something like a chroma key in Fusion to pull a matte that you pipe into your CC node. I used to do that sort of trick in Shake all the time. And really that's exactly how the secondary color corrector works conceptually. You simply have even MORE control over it in a proper compositing package!

[RobPhoboS]

I shall have a fiddle about tomorrow if I get time !
:)

[Yojimbo]

Who makes Fusion by the way? It's not an easy product name to google...

[tcindie]

Who makes Fusion by the way? It's not an easy product name to google...

Eyeon.... here's a direct link: http://www.eyeonline.com/Web/EyeonWeb/Products/fusion5/fusion5.aspx

[RobPhoboS]

Its a very serious piece of software, usually used for single shots.
Its pretty much Shake but for the PC.
:)

[lordtangent]

Shake runs on the PC also. (Though Apple froze development on the Windoze port at version 2.5 shortly after they bought Nothing Real)

Fusion is an OK package but it has some very strange particulars. I've always preferred Shake myself. I'm in the process of learning Nuke, which IMHO is the heir apparent to Shake, especially now that they've improve the interface and dropped the price! (No one seems sure why Apple killed Shake. It had a lot of life left. It STILL has a lot of life left. It's like they made it too good or something. Couldn't sell enough upgrades.)

[RobPhoboS]

Yeah I started out with Shake, very good app !
Didn't really get into Nuke as Fusion seemed to cover what I needed.

[destruct007]

(No one seems sure why Apple killed Shake. It had a lot of life left. It STILL has a lot of life left. It's like they made it too good or something. Couldn't sell enough upgrades.)

I worked at a company for a long time while they were beta tester for shake on the apple we even had developers come over and work with us on it's... ah development. Anyway the word is they are going to rebuild/re-write shake from the ground up, but to get to that expected level of improvement they needed a full rewrite. And told us at the time that would be a year or two... it's been about 2 years. Since they said that. Anyway that's just the word I heard at the time.