How To Quickly Generate Color Correction Ideas At The Start Of A Session

Day 6: 25 Insights in 25 Days New Year Marathon

Learn How to ‘Think Like a Colorist’ At The Start of a Session

Watching Dan Moran’s ‘How to Think Like a Colorist’ series got me thinking about the steps I go through at the start of a session. What do I do in the first moments of a color grade? How do I cycle through the various tools in my software and figure out the ones I want to use? How do I quickly generate color correction ideas for presentation to my client?

In this Insight, learn my process for starting a new project

The key at the start of a session is to quickly iterate. Our goal is to find the edges of a client’s taste. What do they like? What do they hate? And often, finding what they hate gets you moving much more quickly.

You can follow along with this video Insight since I’m using the same footage Dan used in his Forest Scene Insight (the direct link to the footage is here, on Red’s website).

Of course, this workflow can be adapted to color correcting in non-linear editors.

If you have several different color correction plug-ins then follow this same technique for cycling through them (perhaps saving each version on an upper track that you can toggle on and off for quick comparisons).

Enjoy!

-pi

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Comments

Creator

Discussion
January 6, 2017 at 6:29 pm #33190

Patrick Inhofer
Keymaster

This is the discussion thread for the Insight: How To Quickly Generate Color Correction Ideas
Creator

Discussion

Greg Greenhaw
Member

January 6, 2017 at 10:11 pm

Why are you choosing to use stills over versions?
Patrick Inhofer
Guest

January 6, 2017 at 11:01 pm

Honestly… my mood. I don’t have a strong preference between the two. Some days Stills. Other days Versions.

One good thing about Stills is I can see them all at once. Very visual.

In practice I’m more likely to do Versions when I’m experimenting with my initial corrections. And then I’ll move to Stills when I’m iterating Looks, since it’s very visual – being able to see them all.

But I don’t have a hard-and-fast rule either way.
Nurali Kushkov
Member

January 7, 2017 at 9:04 am

Hi Patrick 🙂
One thing I noticed watching insights here in library is your videos dont playback as easy/ smooth as Dan’s or Robbie’s do. I wonder if it’s something to do with which codec and compression setting you use.
Just a small bit of feedback from my end, i don’t know if anyone else experiencing this. I think I recall it happening on my laptop (MBP) and now on iPhone 6 through 3G mobile connnection(I’m on vacation, no wifi around ).
Looking forward to seeing this to the end 🙂
Nurali Kushkov
Member

January 7, 2017 at 9:05 am

It might also be safari thing, I’m no expert by any means!
Jamied
Guest

January 8, 2017 at 9:40 am

Great Insight, I love the sky. Once you have a look approved and you move on to the rest of the scene, where in your nodes would you balance other shots if they don’t match? First node, last node, extra one in the middle?
Author

Replies

Author

Patrick Inhofer

Insight # ML 0554

Type Video

Duration 15:51

Skill Level Intermediate

Skills DaVinci Resolve

Categories Breakdown Client Relations Curves Log and Raw Technique Workflow

How To Quickly Generate Color Correction Ideas

Day 6: 25 Insights in 25 Days New Year Marathon