Day 2: 25 Insights in 25 Days Holiday Marathon
The Always Popular Leave Color Behind Look
No matter how played out or cliche you think the leave color behind look is, the fact is, it’s an essential look to have in your color grading arsenal.
If you’re not familiar with the look that I’m talking about it – the leave color behind look leaves one color in full or increased saturation and desaturates or mutes all other colors in the shot.
Of course, there is some variance to how this look is applied – some colorists prefer to not apply a total desaturation to the image but desaturate it just slightly to allow the color they chose to leave behind to pop more without creating an overall stylized look.
The leave color behind look has been made popular by movies like Pleasantville, Shindler’s List and countless commercials and music videos.
One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Like many grading techniques, one method of creating a look doesn’t fit every shot!
That’s why when building this look I have four main techniques that I use depending on the footage, the overall look I’m trying to create and what my client’s preference is.
As I’ll show you in the movie below, the techniques break down as:
- Using the Hue vs Sat Curve
- An inverted HSL Qualification (key)
- Using the RGB Mixer With A Layer Mixer Node Tree
- Using The RGB Mixer In Monochrome Mode With A Parallel Node Tree
You may have other techniques (please share them in the comments) but these are my 4 main methods.
No single one is the ‘right method’ of creating the leave color behind look. Each has their own benefits and draw backs, but having multiple techniques for creating this popular look allows you to be prepared the next time you need to create it.
– Robbie
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