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Colorist Tip #7 – Skin Tone Line
Most vectorscopes have a line that represents the color of skin. When balancing, use that line to get the skin tones right. The skin-tone line lies between red and yellow: All skin tones, regardless of race, fall somewhere along (or very close to) this line. It has to do with...
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Colorist Tip #6 – Printer Points
If you have them, Printer Points are a great way to quickly match and balance shots or fix a bad white balance. They affect the whole image, not just a tonal range. Used in conjunction with the RGB parade they are very powerful. What printer points are (taken from the...
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Colorist Tip #5 – The RGB Parade
When balancing a shot, the RGB parade is your friend. Getting the shadows region to be relatively even works wonders. Balancing the highlights helps too, but in most cases just the shadows is enough to fix a bad white balance. The RGB parade splits the image into separate red, green,...
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Colorist Tip #4 – Make Shots Edit
Having a shot edit well with the previous shot is more important than exactly matching the hero shot. Try to use a full-frame stillstore, not split screen. Grading from memory helps you learn to make shots edit well faster. Few things are more jarring in a scene than when two...
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Colorist Tip #3 – Pick a Hero
When matching shots, pick a "hero" shot per scene to match all others to, and make sure you can match your problem shots to it. Can't match the problem shot? Pick another hero. Maybe balance the problem shot as best you can and use it as the hero.
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