Hey everyone,

I was thinking that it would be great fun to have a color grading competition of some sort. To make it most accessable we could work on stills from video. Maybe have a new still posted every week and see what sort of things people can come up with? It's not really something that lends itself to easy interpretation of which is better... maybe if a still and a theme were chosen. Say, picture of a kid in a costume and the theme is "fear" etc. Would anyone be interested in this sort of thing? It would provide a way for all of us to 1) enhance and practice color grading, 2) get some good (helpful) criticism and 3) learn new techniques. We could even have the winner (optionally) write up what they specifically did to get the winning effect. Good idea, bad idea?

That's an interesting idea, Mr Shaw.

Maybe a "Change the mood of this..." theme.

I'd submit something for it, though it would likely be more along the lines of silly photoshoppery. http://www.stevenrichards.com/images/smiley_creepy.gif

Post a still and try the idea out.

Good idea Zen.

Is anyone else interested? If so I have a still I can post right now.

Sounds interesting

That's an interesting idea, Mr Shaw.

Maybe a "Change the mood of this..." theme.

I'd submit something for it, though it would likely be more along the lines of silly photoshoppery. http://www.stevenrichards.com/images/smiley_creepy.gif

Post a still and try the idea out.

PHOTOSHOP! :mad:

And you do such great work with MS PAINT! :mope:




I'll post something. I'm all about trying new things.. After seeing Poke's entry, I like the idea of color and how it sets the mood. I just saw "O Brother where art thou" again and really took notice of the coloring. Very interesting.
I'm for it!

Yeah, I don't know if you checked out the special features on the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" DVD but they go all into how they do the color correction. I think it's funny... The movie was made in late 1999 and they have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and I can do the identical thing in FCP. I guess that if you have a big budget, you should go ahead and buy whatever you can get your hands on. Another funny thing is that the DP was commenting on the future of cinematography and he conveniently left out everything about shooting digitally. He said that he thought that the movie business will only get as digital as converting film to digital in post. Video is beginning to look more and more like film.

Oh, by the way, I'd be up for this little contest. There are some great color correction utilities in FCP 4.5...

Luke

Oh, by the way, I'd be up for this little contest. There are some great color correction utilities in FCP 4.5


I will more likely use Combustion to do my entry... Yes I can use PhotoShop, BUT whis is a video forum and want to use my Video tools... PLUS it's more practice. :D

Go ahead and post the still Shaw ... Don't know if we can really do it so much as a contest, but it will be a fun experience.

Poke

Great, sounds like it will be great fun :). I agree Poke - kind of hard to do this as a contest but fun as experience at least and feedback is always great stuff!

I've posted two stills. Feel free to work on one or both. For the actual "feel".... any ideas?

Image 1 (http://www.weet.us/color/colorgrade1.tiff)
Image 2 (http://www.weet.us/color/colorgrade.tiff)

NOTE: These are uncompressed TIFF files. Right click and "save as."

EDIT: Changed the second link. Sorry about that!

How about we leave this one open for individual interpretation? That sound like an ok idea?

And lets end this first one Friday 5th. Sound ok?

Friday 5th.

Perfecto. Short and sweet.

One problem though ... for some reason I can not download the files. Maybe if you posted them as jpgs for easier accessability ...

Poke

I'm in.

No doubt I'll do something silly...

...but as I'm not really quite sure how the colouring works, I'll be looking forward to learning a lot.

_______

There are a few flicks that come to mind, where the colour is most important in the telling of the tale.

"Moulin Rouge" is one of my favourites.

Let's learn about colour!! http://www.stevenrichards.com/images/smiley_bounce.gif

Still looking for those jpgs ....................

Poke

I posted those files in jpg format on my site. Here's the link.

Colorgrade (http://www.lukewilbanks.com/shorttermfiles/colorgrade.jpg)
Colorgrade1 (http://www.lukewilbanks.com/shorttermfiles/colorgrade1.jpg)

Hope this helps.

Luke

Those are nice photos Shaw. this shall be fun.. :)

Great :)

Thanks for the complement Will. They're both from my latest work.

Sorry about not getting those JPGs up for you poke. Indietalk was inaccessable to me last night for some reason. Anyone else have this problem?

You might notice that the aspect ratio is a bit strange. Somewhere around 1.73. That's what happens when you try to design your own lens, heh.

Indietalk was inaccessable to me last night for some reason. Anyone else have this problem?

It's been running really slow for me lately.


Ok..so what's the main point of this contest? Is it to color correct the best, or to just be creative with color?

It's been running really slow for me lately.

Should be back to normal tomorrow. :)

It's been running really slow for me lately.

and here I thought there was just me and my machine. Glad to here I am not alone.

Is it to color correct the best, or to just be creative with color?

Good question. It's rather hard to judge who did the best job (which is rather subjective) so I'm thinking that either way would be fine. It's less of a contest and more of an exploration really (for now at least until we see how this first one turns out).

How would you guys like to display the final results? I can collect all the files and make comparison image to post if you think that would work well. Any ideas?

How about we just post our pictures here so anyone can see them? Here are mine:

Picture1 (http://www.geocities.com/jkrproductions/old.jpg)

Picture2 (http://www.geocities.com/jkrproductions/winter.jpg)

I wanted to make the first one look old and the second look like it was winter. I did them in Photoshop.

Katie

Nice. The "old" one was done well. It looks like you used the blur tool in the areas that didn't have any subject matter. is that right? or did you just use sepia and film grain and other filters?

Luke

How about we just post our pictures here so anyone can see them? Here are mine:

Picture1 (http://www.geocities.com/jkrproductions/old.jpg)

Picture2 (http://www.geocities.com/jkrproductions/winter.jpg)

I wanted to make the first one look old and the second look like it was winter. I did them in Photoshop.

Katie


Very interesting. Not the way I'm going very interesting. I like the "Old" one.

Ok since I am going to be busy for the next day or so I thought I would post what I have finished so far. I may or may not have time to go redo or tweak either of these so I figured I may as well post 'em. I'm still not entirely happy with the results but they are slowly getting there:

Image #1

I wanted to go for a basic warm film type look with this one. Nothing too special really. I felt it would be interesting to enhance the surrounding environment and sort of blend the marines into it with color.

http://www.weet.us/color/graded.jpg


Image #2

I wasn't entirely sure what to do with this one. I tried several different things but nothing seemed to fit my taste. I decided I would try to go for a cooler look (as in color temp) than the first image. Still needs plenty of work but it's a start. To a degree I followed the look of a bleach bypass but I certainly did not try to mimick the look to perfection. Too cliche now.

http://www.weet.us/color/graded1.jpg

Thoughts and citiques are most welcome :)

EDIT: Images should work now

Comments, good, bad? :)

These are really rather lame attempts but I did what I could with the time I had. If I had it to do over again I would have retained more of the original colors.

OK here are my entries... I took my time on the first one... the second.. started getting tired...

http://www.big-discount.com/CootBB2/public/img-1099454409.jpg
Image1

http://www.big-discount.com/CootBB2/public/img-1099454515.jpg
Image2


Let me know what you think...

Who's judging these N E way?

Is it going to be a poll? :yes:

The simulated depth of field is cool in that first one.

I think a poll will do quite well. Mostly I think this will be a good way to get feedback on our images and pass around techniques.

More thoughts to come

Shaw, I can't see your images.

Cootdog, I love your second image. It looks like cross processed slide film, very cool.

I did use a blur filter for my first one just around the edges then I desaturated it completely and used the color balace to bring up the tone that I wanted. For the First one I also used a distort filter called diffuse glow. I love this filter, it blows out your whites adds grain and makes your pictures look dreamy.

Oops, Shaw your pics just popped up, I don't know why I couldn't see them before. I like your changes they are very subtle. I like your second one best.

It's hard to judge because everyones computer monitor could be set different but this was quick and fun. I enjoyed it mucho.

First Image

http://www.dreamorphans.com/images/post/c1.jpg

Second image

http://www.dreamorphans.com/images/post/c2.jpg

Toxzy

Yes it is hard to judge these things via a monitor but I think it's the best that can be done at the moment. If anyone has a TV they can hook up to their computer that would provide a better example.

You have some nice saturated colors there and you managed to keep the skintones nice and clean. Good stuff.

Note to all indietalk members: I'm sure everyone here would love to hear comments about they work! Any and all comments by anyone are welcome!

good job everybody, but i have to say i like Christopher's a lot...In his, the photos became more bold and defined, it was a cool effect. :cool: ...it was indeed.

I am noticing (and this includes my upcoming entries) that there are a lot of shifts to green and blue. Only Coot has shifted to reddish color in his version of Pic 1 (there's also KT's version of Pic 1, but her's was more a washout of color). Like I said, the pics I'll be posting follow this trend, I'm just wondering why people might think this is ...

Poke

I gotta say... I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.

In fact, it's a wee bit frustrating.

So here's some silliness, instead. http://www.stevenrichards.com/images/smiley_creepy.gif

_______

http://www.ZenWeasel.com/temp/colorgrade_01.jpg

:lol: ! nice!

lol thats great Zen :D

I know how frustrating fiddling with color can be. Maybe I should write a tutorial on the subject. Would anyone be interested? We used to have an articles section at one point! In fact if anyone has problem grabs they could send me (overexposed, underexposed, dull footage, undersaturated, oversaturated etc etc) I could use them to make a tutorial...


Poke: I think the reason we are seeing a lot of green is the subject matter. It's pretty normal to want to increase the green in these sort of images I think. Not sure about the yellow... my pic #1 had an increase in yellow and a slight red shift. Not a lot going on with the red though. I think red will be a very nice adjustment for these images. It could look really, really good.

I like Christopher's entries... I knew everyone would go green because it's easiest thing to do... I wanted to test my skills and the app and fiddle around... Thing is... you can color correct 'til the cows come home and still not be satisfied... I would have loved to spend more time on the 2nd image but have to get ready to fly out to CA tomorrow.

I like the saturation and contrast in christopher's adjustments thjough... seems nice, crisp and clean, and green.

I think that we're used to seeing hot green jungles when that sort of camo gear is worn by military. Then add the green and black face paint , reminds me of hot green jungles again, so warmer colors like red and yellow might come into play.


Uhhhh I hope this made some sort of sense. :weird:

http://www.indietalk.com/images/colorgradenv.jpg
(Just messin' around with PS for fun, do not include)

Ya-haaaaa!!!!

Go go snipers!

:lol:

Ya-haaaaa!!!!

Go go snipers!

:lol:
Naaah, just a photographer ;)

Here's my quick addition... about 20 min in photoshop to generate the 9 new layers:


http://www.intensityweb.com/~will/colorgrade-o.jpg
http://www.intensityweb.com/~will/colorgrade.jpg
If the pix don't show up, here's a link to the new one (http://www.intensityweb.com/~will/colorgrade.jpg).
I think it may have lost a bit from the jpeg compression, but it looks good with a white background (click the link to see)

awsome effect...looks like a dream or a memory...

The effect reminds me of an oil stain on the ground right after the rain starts. Know what I mean? same thing when you look at a soap bubble and see all those colors moving around.

i indeed see what you mean.

Nice Job! Reminds me of a scifi movie. They are hunting some creature that escaped for a government facility. Not sure how I got all that from the pic but those are my vibes.:weird:

I was actually going for more of a smokey look, but it just didn't come across right in the jpeg.. glad you like it though. :) I finished playing with Image 2.. (About 10 min of photoshop work or so.. gotta get to school and then work)

http://www.intensityweb.com/~will/colorgrade1-o.jpgOriginal
http://www.intensityweb.com/~will/colorgrade1.jpgNew

Cool guys :). I think the second one came out better in regards to a smokey look. :)

Just a reminder for everyone: Tomarrow will be the last day. We need all images up by the end of Friday so I can put up a poll. You are, of course, welcome to post images after that but they will not make it into the poll for voting. Thanks to all who have been participating. Ive had lots of fun seeing what people have come up with.

hehe.. go figure, the one I spent less time on came out better. ;)

Alrighty guys. I'm going to close this first one at 8:00 Eastern Time. If anyone else has images please get them up by then :)

Test round is closed :)

Just a quick thought...

Would it make sense to only utilise filters that are also in an editing prog?

That's kinda subjective though... because I believe just about every photoshop plugin works in premiere.. ;)