Colorista User Guide

Magic Bullet colorista

user guide

Magic Bullet Colorista User Guide

© 2006 Red Giant Software LLC. All Rights Reserved.

This manual is provided under license from Red Giant Software and is provided for personal use only. The content in this manual may be updated at any time without notice to the user. Red Giant Software LLC assumes no liability for inaccuracies or omissions.

The contents of this user guide may not be reproduced, stored or reprinted in other printed or electronic forms without the express written consent of Red Giant Software, LLC.

The images and artwork in the manual are protected by copyright law. The unauthorized use of any media may be a violation of the rights of the owner.

Trademarks: Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects are registered trademarks of Adobe, Inc. in the United States and other coun-tries. Apple Mac OS X and Final Cut Pro are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Windows and Microsoft are either registered trademarks or trade-marks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. Avid, Avid Xpress, and Media Composer are registered trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. Magic Bullet is a trademark of Red Giant Software, LLC. All other products and name brands are trademarks of their respective holders.

www.redgiantsoftware.com

Manual Content: Sean Safreed

Product Engineering: Micah Sharp, Joshua Jeffe, John Kerr

Product Design: Stu Maschwitz

Copyediting: Kelly Ryer

table of contents

Magic Bullet Colorista

Product Installation ........................................................4Welcome ........................................................................................... 4Installation ......................................................................................... 4Activation .......................................................................................... 4Support ............................................................................................. 4

Magic Bullet Colorista Basics ...........................................5Introduction ....................................................................................... 5System Requirements .......................................................................... 5Rendering .......................................................................................... 5

Colorista User Interface ..................................................7Correction Basics ............................................................................... 7Lift/Gamma/Gain ............................................................................... 7Controls ............................................................................................ 8Dot Motion ........................................................................................ 8Luminance Changes ............................................................................ 9Float-based Imaging ............................................................................. 9White Balance .................................................................................... 9Saturation .......................................................................................... 9Exposure ......................................................................................... 10

Power Mask .................................................................11Basic Masking .................................................................................. 11Mask Shape and Size ........................................................................ 11View Mode ....................................................................................... 11Invert Mask ...................................................................................... 12Draw Outline .................................................................................... 12Top Point ......................................................................................... 13Bottom Point .................................................................................... 13Radius............................................................................................. 13Feathering ....................................................................................... 13Feather Size ..................................................................................... 13

Application Specifics .....................................................15After Effects ..................................................................................... 15Premiere Pro ................................................................................... 17Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 ........................................................................... 21White Balance .................................................................................. 21Animation Issues .............................................................................. 21Motion ............................................................................................ 25White Balance .................................................................................. 25Lift/Gamma/Gain Sliders .................................................................. 25Avid systems .................................................................................... 29White Balance .................................................................................. 29Animation Issues .............................................................................. 29Overlay Control ................................................................................. 29

Known Issues ...............................................................34

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4Magic Bullet Colorista

Product Installation

Magic Bullet Colorista from Red Giant Software is a new plug-in designed for compositing and editing hosts that run on Mac OS X® (10.4 and later) and Windows® XP (Home and Pro editions) plat-forms. Magic Bullet Colorista is designed as a primary color cor-rection tool that offers floating-point-based image processing, color balance, saturation, and animated masking. Colorista paired with Magic Bullet Look Suite can color correct and finish any project.

Magic Bullet Colorista comes packaged as a complete software installer. You must have installed one of the target applications: Adobe After Effects (6.5 or 7.0), Premiere Pro 2.0, Apple Final Cut Pro 5.1.2, Apple Motion 2.1.2, Avid Xpress Pro (5.5 or 5.6), or Media Composer 5.5 before installing Colorista. The installer will automatically place the required components on your hard drive and guide you through the process of installing the plug-in.

Please check www.redgiantsoftware.com for the latest compatible host versions.

The final installation step before using Magic Bullet Colorista is entering your serial number into the registration dialog which will appear the first time you access Colorista. YOU MUST ENTER A SE-RIAL NUMBER TO USE COLORISTA. You will receive a confirmation email after your purchase that contains your serial number, or you can find it inside the inside cover of the Magic Bullet Colorista box.

The serial number for Magic Bullet Colorista appears in the follow-ing format:

#### #### #### #### ####

The activation code is a series of 20 digits. You must enter all digits to complete the activation.

Product support is available to registered customers only. You can register with Red Giant Software by opening your web browser and using the following URL: www.redgiantsoftware.com/register.html.

The best way to reach support is through our website. Navigate to http://www.rgsupportzone.com and click on the Ask a Question link on the main page.

WelcomeWelcome

InstallationInstallation

ActivationActivation

SupportSupport

www.redgiantsoftware.com/register.html

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Magic Bullet Colorista Basics

Magic Bullet Colorista is a new plug-in for primary color correction based on a new Magic Bullet color engine. Colorista in Spanish means “painting,” but our hope is that this tool lets you paint the right colors for your video.

Magic Bullet Colorista is a native plug-in that runs inside Adobe After Effects (version 6.5 and 7); Premiere Pro (version 2); Apple Final Cut Pro (version 5.1.2 only); Apple Motion (version 2.1.x); and Avid Systems compatible with the Avid AVX 1.5 standard, including new versions of Avid Xpress Pro (version 5.5.x) and Media Com-poser (version 2.x).

Magic Bullet Colorista is designed to make color correction straight-forward and fast, with an interface that lets you dial in subtle changes and generate the proper output with any version. With most versions, we support the highest bit depth possible, includ-ing 32-bit floating point. For projects that run in standard 8 bit or 10 bit mode, Colorista automatically and transparently upconverts the video to floating point format, performs all calculations with the highest precision and then returns the video to the import format. This guarantees the highest fidelity for your final output. This is exactly the way that high-end color systems like Discreet Lustre and other purpose-built systems operate.

Like Apple Motion, Magic Bullet Colorista requires specific graphics card capabilities to run. Without the correct card, the software will not install or run, and the installer will warn you if you don’t have the necessary graphics card installed in your system.

Magic Bullet Colorista supports a wide range of cards from both ATI or NVIDIA. For ATI cards, we require a 9600 XT or greater, or an X series card starting with the X700 series. Cards with greater model numbers and at least 128 MB of RAM can run the Colorista engine. For NVIDIA cards, we support the 6600 model and higher or QuadroFX 1000 and up. Cards with higher model numbers and a minimum of 128 MB of RAM can run Colorista. For users working with HD images, we require that the video card have at least 256 MB of RAM. In all cases, we suggest using the latest video drivers for your graphics card.

In most cases, the Colorista plug-in requires rendering to generate final color-corrected output. With host applications like Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro, you can use Colorista as a real-time color cor-rection effect and even edit to tape for a DV project without ren-dering first, but it is better and safer to render any clips that have Colorista applied to them. With applications such as Apple Motion

IntroductionIntroduction

System RequirementsSystem Requirements

RenderingRendering

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and Adobe After Effects, rendering is required to generate any out-put with Colorista-affected media.

In general, the faster the graphics card, the faster the rendering of media. NVIDIA cards are generally faster than ATI cards of the same level for HD or HDV projects.

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Colorista User Interface

Magic Bullet Colorista is broken into three basic control areas. The primary controls are the color wheels that let you set the color bal-ance for the shadows, midtones and highlights of your image. The secondary color control lets you set the saturation of the colors to be more or less vibrant, and provides an exposure control for setting proper exposure calibrated in stops like those on a camera exposure control. Finally, you can isolate the color changes by using the Power Mask controls. These controls let you create a single rectangular or elliptical shape that you can animate on screen to specify where the color change happens.

The Colorista user interface in Adobe After Effects 7.0

Colorista is very much like a high-end color correction system and uses a very similar color engine to produce natural-looking results. Colorista’s color correction system can augment or replace color correction tools that are built into host applications like Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro because it offers a true Lift/Gamma/Gain correction system and a mask isolation tool that is not available in the native color correction tools.

The primary control for setting the colors for your image are the Lift, Gamma and Gain color wheels. These controls let you change

Correction BasicsCorrection Basics

Lift/Gamma/GainLift/Gamma/Gain

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the color of the shadows, midtones and highlights for your image. The wheels are arranged in a triangle, with Lift on the left, Gain on the right and Gamma in the top middle position. Each wheel has two controls: a color offset control shown by the dot in the center and a luma control in the middle of the gradient band on the right of each wheel.

Lift/Gamma/Gain controls for color balance and luminance

We recommend the following order of operation for adjustment. First move the Lift luma, the Gain luma and then Gamma luma controls to get a proper balance for the lightness in the image. Then use each of the color offset controls in the same order (Lift, Gain, then Gamma) to adjust the color tone for each range. Setting the color offset is not necessary for all three wheels, but adjusting the gain to counteract the prevailing color will allow you to set pure whites. Moving the Lift color wheel can add inky blues or warmth to your shadows.

The Lift control lets you set the black level in the video. You can raise or lower the shadow levels with the luma control and offset the color balance in the shadow regions with the color wheel. Mov-ing toward any of the colored regions pushes the color balance toward that color, moving from white at the center to completely saturated color at the edge. The Gamma control changes the mid-tones in the image, shifting the middle tones to be darker or bright-er. The Gain control is a master gain that will brighten and tint the entire image but mostly effects the highlights. To make your image more warm, just move the Gamma dot toward the yellow/red area of the wheel—the more you move to the outside, the more “warm” the image becomes.

The middle dot for each of the Lift, Gamma and Gain color wheels moves relatively slowly as you click and drag the center dot of the chosen wheel. This extra sensitivity allows you to make subtle adjustments easily and concentrate on visually changing the image

ControlsControls

Dot MotionDot Motion

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while moving the color balance wheel.

If you would rather move the dot to a specific location, just click once in the wheel in a location that is distant from the control dot. To move the dot at the same speed as the mouse, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS X) and the dot will move precisely with your mouse as you drag.

The center area of the wheel is mapped so that the saturation moves very little as you move from the center toward the edge of the circle. Visually, the wheel shows a linear change from white to fully saturated but the saturation is NOT mapped linearly with change in position. This makes it easier to make relatively subtle color changes while getting good visual feedback.

The Luminance level is set by moving the black bar up or down in the gradient area on the color wheel. Clicking and dragging the black bar up or to the right cause the line to move up along the gradient toward white and increases the brightness level of the Lift, Gamma, and Gain controls. Conversely, dragging the bar down or to the left causes the line to move toward black and decreases the brightness of the image.

Underlying the Colorista engine is a sophisticated color-correction system that is similar to those used on big budget productions. The underlying model uses the GPU—the graphics processing unit—for all functions, making it much more efficient and potentially faster than even the fastest color tools built in to your chosen editor or compositing tool. But speed is a function of quality, and Colorista is balanced for quality over absolute speed. What this means in practi-cal terms is that the engine always upconverts any incoming image to floating point representation, offering much more precision than color tools that only offer 8-bit-per-channel quality.

The White Balance control is a color picker that allows you to remove a highlight color cast by clicking on a close-to-white area in your Composition, Canvas or Composer window. The Colorista plug-in will then set a color that balances out the Red, Green and Blue components to make that white area neutral. If you choose to use this control, it should be the first one you set, before adjusting the Lift, Gamma, and Gain settings. All of the host applications support White Balance, but each has a unique interface that will be covered in the Application Specifics section starting on p. 15.

The Saturation slider raises or lowers the colorfulness or intensity of color in the affected clip. The range is set from –100 to +100, where the default of 0 does not change the saturation of your image. Lowering the value drains color from the image, making it

Luminance ChangesLuminance Changes

Float-based ImagingFloat-based Imaging

White BalanceWhite Balance

SaturationSaturation

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closer to black and white. Raising the value of the slider adds color intensity and causes your image’s color to become more bold. Raise this too much, and colors can become pure and artificial-looking.

Saturation and Exposure controls in After Effects

Exposure raises or lowers the exposure of an image after the Lift, Gamma, Gain and Saturation operations. The exposure control works just like exposure compensation on a camera, with the slider calibrated in f-stops. Setting the exposure value to +1 or -1 will raise the exposure by 1 stop or lower it by 1 stop, making the overall im-age brighter or darker. You can dial in small increments of exposure compensation by using decimal values. A value of .25 or .333 will correspond to a 1/4 stop or 1/3 stop exposure change. You can dial in any decimal value between -4 and +4, but typically, small val-ues will allow you to brighten or darken your image in a natural way.

Exposure is good for setting the overall brightness of the image. You can use the Maser Gain control to similar effect, but you may already have used it to set white balance. Use Exposure when you just want to add a bit of exposure compensation after adjusting the other controls.

ExposureExposure

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Power Mask

The Power Mask is a set of options for isolating the color correc-tion that you make to a specific area in your image. Using a mask for color correction is sometimes called secondary color correction. The Power Mask offers two basic shapes (a rectangle or ellipse that is defined by two points on the image) and a radius that defines the width of the shape. Further controls let you set the Feather Size and Bias or allow you to invert the masked area.

The Power Mask control for setting and animating a mask

The Power Mask is not enabled by default, and can be turned on by choosing the Mask shape from the Mask pop-up in the Power Mask section of the plug-in interface. When you select the shape, the color correction is automatically isolated to the default shape shown in the canvas or preview window of the host application.

The Mask pop-up has three options: None to disable the mask (de-fault state), Rectangle to turn on the rectangular shape, and Ellipse to turn on a circular mask shape. The Mask size and shape is con-trolled by the placement of the Top and Bottom points and the Ra-dius control described below. The default size is dependent upon the size of the clip that Colorista is applied to. For example, with a DV size clip that measures 720 pixels wide by 480 pixels tall, the mask will be 20% of the width of the clip and 50% of the height, which works out to 144 pixels wide by 240 pixels tall. You can change the height of the mask by moving the top or bottom points and change the width by inputting a new Radius value.

The View mode lets you see the area that the Power Mask cov-ers. The default mode is Apply, and this will simply show the color correction applied to the image. The Show Mask mode will show a black and white representation of the mask area. Finally, Show Red Overlay will show you the mask as a semi-transparent area with a red fill. Both Show Mask and Show Red Overlay are intended as preview modes to let you view the mask area. You will typically want to return this pop-up to the Apply mode before you render your final result.

Basic MaskingBasic Masking

Mask Shape and SizeMask Shape and Size

View ModeView Mode

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The Apply View Mode with overlay control showing the mask area

The View Mode set to Show Mask

The View Mode set to Show Red Overlay

The Power Mask can either change the image inside the shape area or just outside the shape area. By default, the Invert Mask switch is off and color changes only happen inside the mask. Selecting the Invert Mask switch will cause the color change to happen outside the mask, effectively using the mask to protect the shape area.

The Draw Outline switch lets you remove the yellow outline that shows the mask area in the Comp or Canvas window to allow you to

Invert MaskInvert Mask

Draw OutlineDraw Outline

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see the mask edge more easily. This switch is not available in Final Cut Pro.

The Top Point control is a simple point parameter that lets you control where the top of the mask is drawn. You can alter the point value numerically or by clicking and dragging in the Comp or Canvas window of the host application. You will typically use the point overlay in the preview area to adjust the top point visually. You would only need to use the numerical controls in rare cases when you wish to constrain movement of the mask to a single axis.

The Bottom Point control works exactly like Top Point but will change where the bottom of the mask is drawn. The Top and Bot-tom Point controls can be reversed. There is no limitation on where these points can be placed, and the “Top” and “Bottom” designa-tions are only a convenience to describe where you can find their on-screen controls in the preview window of your host application.

The Radius control lets you set the width of the Power Mask shape. The Radius is a value that represents half the width of the shape as is calibrated as a percentage of the target video clip.

For example: A Radius value of 20 applied to a DV clip will yield a shape that is 40% of the frame width (288 pixels) wide, while the same value when the mask is applied to an HD clip that is 1280 pixels wide will result in a mask that is 512 pixels wide. The maxi-mum value is 100, which would result in a mask that is twice the width of the target frame size—more than enough for any selective adjustment.

The rectangle or elliptical mask shape can be softened using the Feather controls. Feather Size sets the amount of softness at the edge of the mask shape, while the Feather Bias controls the cen-ter point of the feather falloff, letting you adjust the softness to lie more inside or outside of the mask edge. These two controls let you achieve a soft-edged mask that will blend the color correction seam-lessly into your image.

Like the Radius control, Feather Size is based on a percentage of the mask size. This makes it different from most feather controls because the feather is not based in pixels. Because the feather size depends on the mask size, the feather width will increase and decrease with the overall shape of the mask. This is useful when tracking a shape that is coming toward the camera. For example, you could use a Power Mask on an actor’s face as the actor walks toward the camera. With this behavior, the mask shape gives you a very small feather when the shape is small, but as the actor moves closer to the camera, you could adjust the mask shape to match

Top PointTop Point

Bottom PointBottom Point

RadiusRadius

FeatheringFeathering

Feather SizeFeather Size

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and the feather will grow with the shape automatically.

The default setting for Feather Bias is 0, which means that the center of the feather falloff—where the transparency is 50%—lies directly along the edge of the mask. By increasing the bias, you can push the center point to lie outside the mask so that the inner shape is more solid and the outer edge is soft. Conversely, decreas-ing the bias will push the center of the falloff inside the mask edge and make the shape very soft on the inside area of the mask.

The Feather Bias control set to -100 (left), 0 (center), +100 (right)

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Application Specifics

This section will cover the specifics of using Colorista in each of its host applications, including After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Motion and Avid systems.

After Effects

Magic Bullet Colorista appears under the Magic Bullet category in the Effects menu. The following is a quick sequence for using Magic Bullet Colorista on a clip to set color balance and exposure in After Effects. All of the controls are the same as those described above.

The following are step-by-step instructions for applying Colorista to a clip and setting white balance, lift, gamma, gain and saturation in After Effects.

1. Start by loading the demo clip “Flower Defocus.mov” into the Project window.

2. Drag and drop the clip onto the Create a New Composition but-ton at the bottom of the project window and After Effects will create an appropriately sized composition.

Drag and drop the clip onto the Create New Comp button in After Effects

3. Apply Colorista to the clip by choosing the plug-in from Effects > Magic Bullet > Colorista. Next, choose Effects > Color Correc-tion > Levels to add a Levels plug-in after Colorista. You will not use this tool for color correction, but the histogram display in the plug-in will show the mapping of brightness values, which is a useful reference as you correct color.

Select the Colorista plug-in from the Effect menu

4. Command-Click (Mac OS X) or Control-Click (Windows) the White Balance eye dropper on the white flower petals in the foreground. Command/Ctrl-Click samples an area rather than individual pixels. Depending on the pixel you choose, the Gain

Getting StartedGetting Started

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wheel will move toward a bright pale orange color, eliminating the blue color cast from the flower footage.

The flower image before (left) and after (right) white balance step

5. Next, you will notice that the image is rather dark and that the histogram shows a lot of dark values. Because there are a lot of black pixels in the image already, we don’t need to alter the Lift luma levels for this image.

6. The dark image could use a bit of brightening. This could be ac-complished by increasing the Gain luma control, but we will dial more brightness using the Exposure control because it is more convenient to work numerically. Click on the Exposure numerical readout and change it from a value of 0.00 to 0.25. This will increase the brightness by 1/4 of a stop.

Change the Exposure setting in Colorista

7. The image still seems dark in the shadows, so let’s just drag the Gamma luma slider up to make the image brighter. You only need to drag it up by about ten degrees to get brighter mid-tones.

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Changing the Gamma Slider from default to +10%

8. Finally, let’s add a little saturation to this image by changing the Saturation value from 0 to 5. This will add some pop to the green leaves and apples in the background.

Change the Saturation setting to 5.00 in Colorista

That’s it, you have completed your first color correction with Colorista!

Premiere Pro

The Magic Bullet Colorista plug-in appears under the Magic Bullet category in the Effects palette. The following is a quick sequence for using Magic Bullet Colorista on a clip to set color balance and exposure in Premiere Pro. All of the controls are the same as those described above.

The following are step-by-step instructions for applying Colorista to a clip and setting white balance, lift, gamma, gain and saturation in Premiere Pro.

1. Start by creating a new project in DV NTSC Widescreen format. Load the demo clip “Flower Defocus.mov” into the Project win-dow in Premiere Pro.


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Setting up the new project in Premiere Pro 2

2. Drag and drop the clip onto the Timeline at time 0:00:00.00.

The Timeline with the Flower_Defocus.mov on track Video 1

3. Apply Colorista to the clip by choosing the plug-in from the Ef-fects palette under the Magic Bullet category and dropping the Effect onto the clip in the Timeline. Then double-click the Flower Defocus clip to bring up the Colorista controls in the Effect Con-trols palette.

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Magic Bullet Colorista controls in the Effect Controls palette

4. Click the White Balance eye dropper on the white flower petals in the foreground. Depending on the pixel you choose, the Gain wheel will move toward a bright pale orange color, eliminating the blue color cast from the flower footage.


5. You may need to balance the colors slightly. Make a new Refer-ence display (Sequence Preview > Reference) and look at the top of the RGB Parade display. When the three colored areas have the same peak level, the white flower will look white.

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In the RGB Parade display before adjustment (left), the red peak levels are much lower than the green and blue. After adjusting white balance, the peak levels (right) are nearly equal.

6. The dark image could be a bit brighter. This could be accom-plished by increasing the Gain luma control, but we will dial more brightness using the Exposure control because it is more convenient to work numerically. Click on the Exposure numeri-cal readout and change it from a value of 0.00 to 0.25. This will increase the brightness by 1/4 of a stop, just like changing exposure in a camera.



Changing the Gamma Slider from default (left) to +10% (right)

8. Finally, let’s add a little saturation to this image by

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changing the Saturation value from 0 to 5. This will add some pop to the green leaves and apples in the background.



Final Cut Pro 5.1.2

Final Cut Pro runs as a native FX Plug in version 5.1.2. This plug-in version only runs in Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 because this is the first version where Apple included support for the FX Plug API (first introduced in Motion). You will not be able to run Colorista in earlier versions of Final Cut Pro. The plug-in is shipped as a dual binary with support for both PowerPC and Intel-based Mac systems.

Colorista is NOT supported on lower-end Intel Macs such as the Mac Mini or the MacBook. Both of these types of systems include an Intel GPU that does not support many of the features that the Colorista engine needs to process images.

The plug-in features all the same controls as those shown in the Reference section except for White Balance. Because of a limitation in the way that Final Cut plug-ins work, Colorista cannot set a color from another parameter as we do in After Effects, Premiere Pro and Avid. Instead, White Balance is accomplished by Shift-Clicking the color swatch in the Gain wheel, which will bring up the standard Mac OS X color picker palette. You can then use the magnifying glass tool in the palette to select a white balance color. When you hit OK in the color palette, Colorista will convert the color into a white balance target.

Because of some specific limitations in Final Cut Pro 5.1.2, you cannot use the Lift/Gamma/Gain color wheels to do an animated color correction. To provide a method for animating a color correc-tion, we have included a version especially for Final Cut Pro called Colorista Sliders that is installed automatically. This version does NOT contain any color wheels, but instead features Lift, Gamma, and Gain controls with Red, Green and Blue numeric input that you can animate over time. Red Giant Software will try to address this limitation in a future update of Colorista.


Animation IssuesAnimation Issues

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The following are step-by-step instructions for applying Colorista to a clip and setting white balance, lift, gamma, gain and saturation in Final Cut Pro.

1. Start by creating a new project in DV NTSC Widescreen format (by using the DV Widescreen NTSC option from the Final Cut Pro > Easy Setups... menu). Load the demo clip “Flower Defo-cus.mov” into the Project window in Final Cut Pro using the File > Import > Footage command.

2. Drag and drop the clip onto the Timeline at time 0:00:00.00.

The Timeline with the Flower_Defocus.mov on track Video 1

3. Apply Colorista to the clip by choosing the plug-in from the Ef-fects palette under the Magic Bullet category and dropping the Effect onto the clip in the Timeline. Then double-click the Flower Defocus clip to bring up the Colorista controls in the Effects Controls palette.

Magic Bullet Colorista controls in the Effect Controls palette

4. Shift-Click the color swatch in the Gain control to bring up the Apple color picker. Next choose the Magnifying glass in the color


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picker to sample in the Canvas window on the white flower pet-als in the foreground.

Click to use White Balance selection with the magnifying glass

5. Depending on the pixel you choose, the Gain wheel will move toward a bright pale orange color, eliminating the blue color cast from the flower footage.


6. You may need to balance the colors slightly. Open the Video Scopes Tool (Tools > Video Scopes) and look at the top of the Parade display. When the three colored areas have the same peak level, the white flower will look white.

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In the RGB Parade display before adjustment (left), the red peak levels are much lower than the green and blue. After adjusting white balance, the peak levels (right) are nearly equal.





9. Finally, let’s add a little saturation to this image by changing the Saturation value from 0 to 5. This will add some pop to the green leaves and apples in the background.

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Motion

Colorista for Motion runs as a native FX Plug in version 2.1.2. This plug-in version will not run in earlier versions of Motion because of changes introduced with the Intel version of Final Cut Studio. The plug-in is shipped as a dual binary, with support for both PowerPC and Intel-based Mac systems.

Colorista running in Motion is NOT supported on lower-end Intel Macs such as the Mac Mini or the MacBook. Both of these types of systems include an Intel GPU that does not support many of the features that the Colorista engine needs to process images.

Like the Final Cut version, the plug-in features all the same controls as those shown in the Reference section except for White Balance. Because of a limitation in the way that Motion plug-ins work, Color-ista cannot set a color from another parameter as we do in After Effects, Premiere Pro and Avid. Instead, White Balance is accom-plished by Shift-clicking the color swatch in the Gain wheel, which will bring up the standard Mac OS X color picker palette. You can then use the magnifying glass tool in the color palette to select a white balance color. When you hit OK in the color palette, Colorista will convert the color into a white balance target.

In Motion, the application shows the numeric readouts for the Lift, Gamma, and Gain values. If you use the auto-animation feature in Motion and change the color wheels, the appropriate numeric value will animate in the Lift, Gamma, or Gain category.

The following are step-by-step instructions for applying Colorista to a clip and setting white balance, Lift, Gamma, Gain, and Saturation in Apple Motion.

1. Start by creating a new project in DV NTSC Widescreen format (by using the DV Widescreen NTSC option or creating a custom option from the Project Properties dialog). Load the demo clip “Flower Defocus.mov” into the Project by locating the Flower_De-


Lift Gamma Gain SlidersLift Gamma Gain Sliders


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focus.mov file and then drag and drop the file into the project window.

2. Drag and drop the clip onto the project window.

The Preview window showing the Flower_Defocus.mov

3. Apply Colorista to the clip by choosing the plug-in from the Li-brary palette under the Magic Bullet category and dropping the Effect onto the clip in the Preview window.

Magic Bullet Colorista effect show in the Library tab of the Library palette

4. With the clip selected, click the Inspector tab to reveal the Colorista controls. Motion lets you change the parameter values during playback, so feel free to experiment with the color wheels while you play back your footage.

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The Colorista interface in Motion’s inspector palette

5. Shift-Click the color swatch in the Gain control to bring up the Apple color picker. Next choose the Magnifying glass in the color picker to sample in the Canvas window on the white flower pet-als in the foreground.

Click to use White Balance selection with the magnifying glass


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The flower image before (left) and after (right) a white balance step





9. Finally, let’s add a little saturation to this image by changing the Saturation value from 0 to 5. This will add some pop to the

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green leaves and apples in the background.


That’s it, you have completed your first color correction with Colorista in Motion!

Avid systems

Magic Bullet Colorista runs as an AVX 1.5 Plug-in that supports the latest versions of Avid systems, including Xpress Pro 5.5.x, 5.6.x and Media Composer 5.5.x and Media Composer Software. This plug-in version only runs in the latest version of the applications at this time. You will not be able to run this plug-in in earlier versions of Avid systems on Mac OS X. The Colorista plug-in is shipped for both Mac OS X and Windows systems, but it does not support Intel-based Mac systems at this time.

The Avid version of Magic Bullet Colorista is NOT supported on Intel Macs with version 1.0. When Avid releases an Intel Mac version of their editing systems, Magic Bullet Colorista will be updated to take advantage of the new versions.

The plug-in features all the same controls as those shown in the Reference section, except White Balance is not labelled in the Effect control interface. Because of a limitation in the way that color pick-ers appear in Avid AVX plug-ins, the color picker and RGB sliders for white balance selection are not labelled, but this control is available just below the Gain section.

Unless you need to apply an animated color correction, it is best to set the “Default keyframes at head and tail” option in the Render preferences to Off. This does not preclude keyframing, but it elimi-nates the need to worry about accidentally changing color values at the beginning and ending of a clip.

The color wheels only appear as overlays in the Composer window and overlap part of the footage. You can switch the overlay off using the Overlay switch in the Colorista’s effect editor.

The Overlay switch engaged in the Colorista controls in the effect editor


Animation IssuesAnimation Issues

Overlay ControlOverlay Control

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You can also move the overlay to a different position by simply click-ing and dragging the gray area surrounding the color wheels.

Click and drag in the gray area around the color wheels to move the overlay

The following are step-by-step instructions for applying Colorista to a clip and setting white balance, lift, gamma, gain and saturation in Avid Xpress Pro 5.5.

1. Start by creating a new project in DV NTSC Widescreen format. Load the demo clip “Flower Defocus.mov” (File > Import > Foot-age command).

2. Drag and drop the clip onto the Timeline to set up a new se-quence. The footage will appear in the Composer window.

The Composer with the Flower_Defocus.mov clip and Colorista

3. Apply Colorista to the clip by choosing the plug-in from the Ef-fects palette under the Magic Bullet category and dropping the Effect onto the clip in the Timeline. Change to Effect Editor mode by clicking the shortcut in the Timeline.


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Magic Bullet Colorista controls in the Effect Palette

4. Click and drag in the color swatch in the Effect Editor palette to sample for white balance. Then drag over the flower to select a white color you want to balance.

Click the white swatch to select a color in the Colorista effect editor


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The flower image before (left) and after (right) a white balance step





8. Let’s add a little saturation to this image by changing the Satu-

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ration value from 0 to 5. This will add some pop to the green leaves and apples in the background.


9. You may need to balance the colors or check your work with Avid’s built-in scopes. You can check your final work by applying a standard color correction effect and then opening a Parade display in the monitor. See the Avid entry for “Understanding the Waveform and Vectorscope Display” in the Avid manual or online help.

That’s it, you have completed your first color correction with Colorista in Avid!

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Known Issues

There are several problems that you may encounter that do not change the render quality of the Colorista plug-in, but may cause slight error in the user interface. The following are a list of prob-lems and workarounds wherever possible.

In Premiere Pro, occasionally the mask point control appears unexpectedly in the Lift/Gamma/Gain custom control area. This is a known issue with Premiere Pro and plug-ins with custom user interface elements and one or more point controls. If you move the point control in the custom control area, then you could cause the user interface to stop responding. To minimize this problem, simply avoid moving the point control widget that appears in the Colorista user interface.

In Motion, Colorista cannot update custom color wheels during an animation, so the color wheel may show a completely different color than the expected one if you have animated from one hue to anoth-er. The numeric readouts in the Lift, Gamma, and Gain sections still animate and render correctly, but the custom user interface can get out of sync with the numeric readout.

In Final Cut Pro, the Top Point and Bottom Point controls by default are set to 0,0. This is caused by a limitation in the point control API for FX Plug plug-ins. You can reposition either point by clicking the standard cross-hair control in the Colorista controls in the Filters tab and then clicking anywhere in the Canvas window. This will change the point and update the mask shape.

Premiere ProPremiere Pro

MotionMotion

Final Cut ProFinal Cut Pro

Colorista User Guide

Documents

Transcript of Colorista User Guide