Learning Color, but have a few questions
 

I've finally been teaching myself how to use Color 1.5 with my FCP package. It's a whole new world for me, and I think it'll hopefully vastly improve my work once I become fluent with it.

So, Basically I've been mainly increasing my contrast in the primaries, sometimes giving it a goldish/blueish tint depending on the time of day and where it takes place. I also sometimes use my secondaries to heighten specific colors like the green of grass or trees. I do this by putting a vignette around the trees or the grass.

This leaves me with three immediate questions (though I'm sure I'll have thousands more as I proceed.)

1. When I change my contrast using the line in the "Luma" box on "Primary in" mode how do I apply the exact same setting to another shot, so that way there isn't a slight jump if the camera cuts from a medium to close up, but takes place in same location at the same time. I can never seem to bend the line so it's exactly the same.

2. I notice that in certain shots, if the camera moves so will my color grades. It's like the luma is bouncing up and down along with the camera I'm not sure why this is happening or how to stop it.

3. If I have a shot where I put a vignette around a patch of grass, and heightened the green within the vignette I find that it works quite well. However, the vignette is completely stationary, so if my camera moves, the vignette doesn't, leaving me with an awkward sequence where the color correction stays in one plays, but the subject being corrected moves.

Any help with any of these questions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Cole

RE: Vignettes:

Tracking Vignettes : Apple Color Video Tutorial

If you are the interactive type lynda.com has wealth of good training material, highly recommended.

Question 1. You simply grab and hold the Color grade under your clip and move it to your next clip and let it go. The settings will be applied.

Question 2. I am not exactly sure what your saying here....luma will not be static within a shot...if you can give us some more detail maybe I can help

Thank you very much guys!
I did find that tutorial to be pretty helpful.

And Gabor,
Thanks for the tips, figured the copying of settings from one clip to another would be a quick fix, I just couldn't figure it out for the life of me.
Also, I'm not really sure how to explain the other problem, I'll mess around with the program some more, and see if there are any more clear cut symptoms I can use to describe it.

Thanks again,
Cole

For something like green grass you might not want to use a vignette. If there's nothing else that's green in the shot you can just use the hue, saturation and luminance 'rainbow' controls (forget what they're actually called) in the secondaries. i.e. add a point on green in the saturation tab and pull the line up, then add points on either side and pull them back down. This will boost saturation for just green with a rolloff to colors on either side of the spectrum, and it won't matter if the shot moves.

If you only want to increase the saturation in a color in one area of the shot you can use a combination of a vignette with a color selection. Use the eyedropper to select the color and tune it with the selection sliders in the upper right corner, then use a vignette to limit the adjustments to a smaller portion of the screen. If the subject moves around a lot you'll need to go into the geometry tab and use a tracker to track the subject, then go back to the secondary and select that tracker for the vignette.

If you haven't done so already I suggest reading the manual. The whole thing cover-to-cover provides a wealth of information. Not only in how the program operates but also common traps to avoid because, to steal a line from another Color user, the workflow between FCP and Color can be like tap dancing through a mind field. FCP and Color will allow you to hang yourself w/o any warning whatsoever and you won't know anything is wrong until the end of the project when you try to send the timeline back to Color.


-Andrew