color correction versus color grading?
 

Whats the difference? Different techniques? I`m a little confused

To me, color correction means correcting errors in the colors from scene to scene and ensuring consistency throughout. Grading refers more to the creative "look" that gets applied (if there is one).

The terms are pretty interchangeable at this point though. Color correction and color grading can both refer to any color work done in post, whether corrective or creative.

They use the same filters, just in different ways. In color correction, you're trying to match shots and correct subtle shifts in white balance and exposure to give yourself a stable platform upon which to "grade" your shots.

The Panic room 3-disk box set has great post production BTS that covers this as does the Se7en BTS (this one is on youtube somewhere...can't find it though) and the King Kong (PJ's version) has ggood stuff on it in the BTS where they do tons of correction including very complex "windowing" of just eyes with rotoshapes that ring the eyes back up after the grading for the scene drops the life out of them.

I think of it as using color correction to "zero out" the images so the whites, blacks, and colors are consistent through out then the color grading is applying the "look" you want. I don't think the terms are interchangeable though. For example, at a place I used to work many times an AE would do color correction in preparation for the on-line editor who would do the color grading.


-A

Some people use the terms interchangeably... and it's not like there is an official terminology police.

2- It helps to understand that some people use the terms differently.

(Much like "DI" and "linear". Some people use DI to refer to any color correction or color grading, whereas some people only mean that in context of a film-out; as in, not video output. Linear might refer to video gamma or linear light.)

It's something of a crossover term from film. In the U.S., shot to shot correction when printing film is called "timing", whereas in the U.K. and some other countries, it's called "grading" -- but it means the same thing.

In video, traditionally it has been called "color correction" but now film terms like "timing" and "grading" have crept in. It all means the same thing more or less.