Shop Talk: Pretty Shiny Colors

[Taite]

Oh, forgot to add: There is no formula, you'd have to do it by eye, just like Color Correction as well. Color Curves is quite a "free" tool, but very easily manipulated. Just a slight tweak of one of the lines can give skin a more bluish/reddish/whatever appearance. You'd think this would be overwhelming and complicated, and it might be at first when you're not used to how moving one line affects another, but you realize just how useful it is later on. And seriously, it's really fun.

[xDreww]

Yes...color correcting is fun. I do it a lot. AND NO TAITE! I TAUGHT MYSELF ALL THE COLORSSS. Nah just kidding Alex. Okay you did teach me about yellow tint and more stuff, so yeah, I love you for that.
Maybe I should post up some of my color correction snapshots here like you did. I'm lazy though.

[zibbazabba905]

wow, that's a lot of curves! I'm actually trying to "cartoonify" my colors (even though I made that up, I don't know what that means) but time for another dumb question! Do you use most of these over the full video, or per scene... as in, do you tweak every clip, or the whole amv at the end?

[Taite]

It is, but that's just my personal preference, and you really only need one to just make the slightest and best difference.

Typically, I use it over the entire amv, so I actually apply all of the color curves to the layer rather than each clip. However, these color curves would look more like the second image on the Tomoya picture I posted. It seriously depends on the amv, but I always have at least a "brightening and richening" color curve on the entire amv. More pigmented colors I reserve for the typical "memory" scenes, or when I'm just going for a different mood. But as a fairly raw editor, I tend to stay with a more neutral color curve on the entire amv.

However, sometimes I want to adjust some of the color curves on an individual clip. This mainly happens when a clip is very dark, and depending on the color curves I'm using, it sometimes is too much 'pigment.' An example of this is the sepia I created, which I gave an example of on the first page. It looks alright on that scene, but when I used that color curve in my latest video (not uploaded,) I felt like the brown almost washed out the clip because the original clip was so one-toned (it was a scene after sunset that was primarily purple and red). So I would put that clip on a new layer, add all of the color curves, and adjust them individually til it felt right for that clip.

One thing to be aware of with applying color curves to the layer rather than the clip, is when you fade out. Now, I have my own philosophy on this, which I'll explain, but I've seen a lot of amvs where people don't care to do it, so I guess it really depends. To me, it's very important, but not a big deal for now if you're just messing with color curves.

Spoiler :

When you use the "opacity" type fade (ie: dragging in the end of a clip/beginning in vegas to make a fade that goes from 0 percent opacity to 100), on a clip with color curves, as it fades to black, it won't fade to black. At 0% opacity it will. However, as it's fading, the color of the curves becomes more prevalent on the clip, and so you can see these colors during the fading process, when really it should be fading the entire clip (highs, lows, mids) to black, not the colors.

I literally almost never fade using the "opacity" thing, on every amv of mine, color curves or not (this is a personal preference: I believe it gives a cleaner fade and transition to the next clip.) My method of fading is using the Levels tool and using keyframes to start at normal color, then adding a keyframe to the end of a clip and dragging the Output end to 0. This ensures that the clip is fading to black. However, the levels effect must come after all of the color curves, because vegas renders the effects in order. So If I had a color curves, it would apply that, then I added the fade, so it would fade to black, but then I add another color curves, which will color the fade.

If you have the color curves on the layer, then you can't fade out each individual clip by adding Levels to that clip. You need to add the Levels tool/effect to the entire layer, and keyframe it that way. That's because it's rendering all of the effects on a individual clip, and then applying the effects that are on the layer, therefore creating that "color during the fade to black effect" again.

And as for "cartoonifying," I have an image in my mind of what that means and would look like, though it may not be entirely right. But on that note I'd like to mention that you can also do some other crazy effects with color curves, rather than just "tinting" the image.
ie:




Seriously have no idea what you'd use them for, and I certainly will not ever probably, but if you're on the more creative side, there are definitely some funky things you can manage with color curves.

[zibbazabba905]

this is kinda what I'm looking at right now... (original) (channel blend: oversaturation) (color curves:high contrast)


I'm gonna have to go with the 2nd one cause its closer to what I want, but I like the 3rd one with how its closer to a distinct red/green/blue

and the main reason I keep screwing with that channel blend is because i get obsessive with numbers

[TEKnician]

How I color correct on a mac with FInal Cut Pro X is WAY too complicated to put into words. I mean, you'd be SHOCKED to see how difficult it is for me to change such a simple scene in Angel Beats!

I MEAN, JUST LOOK AT THIS! ITS SO HARD A FELT COMPELLED TO MAKE A VIDEO FOR IT

Try and count how many times I had to click the mouse in order to do that. Go on! I DARE YA! ITS RIDICULOUS!