The (finally) Shipped Edition – The Color Grading Sunday Newsletter

"The survey covers everyone in our industry, from executives, facility owners and hollywood's top colorists, to content creators and PAs. This is for colorists, vfx artists, editors, sound designers and audio mixers, producers, post supervisors, assistants, trainees, interns, technicians and workflow supervisors, DITs and dailies operators, and everyone else working professionally across America."

I filled out this anonymous survey yesterday. If you're reading this and work in the U.S., you should too! Sharing this information is how we keep our wages from devolving down to the lowest common denominator as newcomers are clueless about reasonable wages.

(Podcast) "We discuss artists’ rights and how several key lawsuits in the US around generative AI may be resolved. We discuss the various key US initiatives as well as the EU’s upcoming AI Act."

A great summary of terms we should all get familiar with: "AI and Machine Learning have a large number of technical terms that can be confusing to those new to this space. This glossary features easy to understand definitions for a variety of terms related to AI and machine learning."

"Metamerism is a phenomenon where two objects with different spectral power distributions appear matched in color under one light source, but when illuminated by a different light source, mismatches become visible."

Click through for an excellent primer on this important concept for all professional colorists and finishers.

"We learned from talking to video creatives who make trailers and social media videos that being able to find needles was key, and a big pain point. The solution we described has been fruitful, works well in practice, and is relatively simple to maintain."

Simple is a relative term. I can't say I understand the details – but overall I got the gist and it's interesting.

A provocative headline on an important concept. But I'm linking to this for the short discussion at the end of the blog post concerning female researchers that pioneered color theory – but have been forgotten.

"To continue enjoying 4K, HDR10, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and the ability to stream on 3 devices concurrently, users in the US must upgrade to the Max Ultimate tier, which costs $20 per month or $200 per year." Thus ensuring the highest-quality content on all those amazing consumer displays is mostly unseen by the masses. But then, most of my neighbors still keep their displays at factory defaults – so I'm mostly singing inside a tornado.

Cullen Kelly offers a good primer here on Resolve's color match feature – specifically for using it in color-managed workflows. Personally, I've never had good luck with that feature since Resolve can 'see' spikes in the spectral distribution anomalies of LED lights; and tends to over-correct for them which creates artifacts.

This new add-on will be released on November 20, "The primary controls allow you to adjust the sensitivity, strength, hue, and softness of the halation on your image. There are also more advanced settings to further tailor the halation."

Big bonus points from me because Boris avoids the 'AI' cliches and calls a spade what it is, 'Machine Learning. New features in this roto and tracking tool, "A new UpRes ML node makes resizing images a cinch, Denoiser ML and Stable Diffusion XL model updates, and faster Mocha tracking workflows."

(video) "A new plugin for DaVinci Resolve that adds Align and Distribute controls to Fusion – similar to what you might find in Photoshop." (via Rich Roddman)

(video) From Luke Ross, "Learn to use multiple power windows and parallel nodes (along with the cloud and point tracker) to relight a landscape shot."

(video) A simple technique: "Learn how to paint out blemishes in Blackmagic Fusion with Frequency Separation and the Channel Booleans tool."

Oliver Peters writes, "Not only was Final Cut Pro not showcased in either video, but it’s also implied that the in-house Apple team cut this using Premiere Pro. Needless to say, this has Final Cut Pro fans scratching their heads."

"Alteon is helping to bridge the gap between the iPad and macOS versions of Final Cut Pro by automatically generating proxies that sync with raw footage in the cloud. Here is more information shared by the company about the new solution…"

"The projectors were scrutinized side-by-side on criteria like color accuracy, contrast, motion resolution, processing and sharpness using static test patterns, clips and full movies and TV shows. Judges gave each projector scores in the categories and picked their top three favorites."

Scott Simmons writes, "I had some post-production tests at the ready so it was time to give them a run on the new M3 MacBook Pro with the M3 Max chip." He uses DaVinci Resolve.

Click through for details on this NAS.

(video) Philip Bloom, "This video is about Crucial's tiny SSDs, in particular the X9 Pro and X10 Pro SSDs."

(video) "Following on from my video last year about Accsoon's Seemo device for turning your iPhone or iPad into a fully featured monitor, here is the superb follow-up on the Pro version, which is made out of metal, adds SDI in and Out. This is a sponsored video, so it cannot be called a review, but it is in all but name!"

(video) A pink pond. A Maui pink pond. Watch the embedded news story and scroll down the page for some great photos.

Looking for ideas for client gifts this holiday season? CMY Cubes is always fun, and with Black Friday approaching you may find some deals.