I was wondering what are the benefits of color correcting/grading in AE instead of Premiere?
For those of you that color with AE, whats the best way to batch edit?
Last, whats the best way to correct WB in post? I currently use fast color corrector and 3-way.
Although I always try and get it right in camera, there are times at live events in which I cannot dial the WB in accurately.

A friend of mine who's a professional colorist kind of destroyed my enthusiasm for doing it in AE for one simple reason: no scopes. The color finesse tool seems really cool and powerful for many projects, but without something objective to measure what you're doing, you're kind of flying blind. Even with a pro monitor you still want to know where you stand with luminance and color levels.

Now, you can BUY a scope plugin. I found one for $150 or so. Do you want to do that? Premiere has scopes built in. I'd like to hear what folks have to say about Premiere's tools as well as I recently got the CS6 suite and don't know too much about how powerful it is for things like this vs FCP6/7.

If you're serious about color grading, SpeedGrade is an excellent option. It is part of the Adobe CS suite. It does have a color temperature correction tool that the color corrector effects in PPro don't have.

forget what i said earlier about missing scopes. . looks like i was given bad info.

(grump warning) IMHO speedgrade is a muddle, I know that Adobe bought it whole and slapped their name on it, but it's so unlike the expected Adobe interface that it's baffling to use. I wish they would "Adobe-ize" it. And Color Finesse is sooo nice to work with, even if you do have to hand off to AE......(end grump. Didn't mean to hijack the thread. That is all for today.)

Apparently I have Speedgrade! Did not know that! SO MANY CHOICES!

Hopefully at this year's NAB Adobe will demo big improvements in Speedgrade as it is a powerful color grading application.

Integrating Speedgrade into the Adobe UI and flow is a tough task to do as it is such a different interface to start with.

But very important basics like being able to output to an external calibrated grading monitor S T I L L cannot be done on the Mac platform. At last year's NAB Adobe stated they recognized that was an important issue and were working on resolution. That was a year ago. Many have had to move on.

You just mean speedgrade on mac cant be output to an external monitor on mac right? Not that it cant be done period?

It does 2 monitors just fine on my Win 7 PC.

It does 2 monitors just fine on my Win 7 PC.

Pete are you using speedgrade successfully on a regular basis? I ran into difficulties with it but am now wondering if I just need to spend more time learning it.

From the description it sounds like adobes answer to apple color...so a full fledged cc suite. So more complicared/sophisticated than color finesse or the cc tools in premiere.

PS in answer to the original question, colorista 2 is a cc plugin that works with a number of programs, runs about $300, and is supposed to be very good.

SpeedGrade was high dollar software for professional colorists when Adobe bought it from Iridas in late 2011 to complement Creative Suite:

http://www.dvinfo.net/news/adobe-acquires-iridas-technology.html

and I have little doubt that the interface will be transformed to be more "Adobe-like" in future iterations. I have to say, though, that it wasn't difficult to learn the basics even though I'm NOT a professional colorist...not even in my dreams. Once I got familiar with the interface and played with it a bit, I was quite taken with the power of the tools. I don't use it all the time, but it can definitely come in handy so I did this short video workshop to help folks get started on it:

Adobe CS6 DVi Workshop: Using Adobe Premiere Pro with SpeedGrade and Audition at DV Info Net (http://www.dvinfo.net/article/post/adobe-cs6-dvi-workshop-speedgrade-and-audition.html)

Hope it is helpful. If in the next version or two Adobe manages to keep the power of the existing tools while fully integrating into CS, I know I'll use it even more.

Very nicely done and helpful tutorial, thank you!

I have to admit that for my limited needs, speedgrade tools don't seem all that more useful than the 3-way color corrector in PPro, plus the time-consuming file conversion to get into speedgrade in the first place. Perhaps I'm missing something.

...and there's a free plugin of Colorista available with similar tools, except for the the pre-set "looks" of course, but personally have little use for them....the Free Colorista plugin, for anyone who is interested, is here: Red Giant - Products - Magic Bullet Colorista Free 1.0 (http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-colorista-free/)

You just mean speedgrade on mac cant be output to an external monitor on mac right? Not that it cant be done period?

Yes - as stated in my post that this year long problem of not being able use the basic tool of grading using an external calibrated monitor is a MAC platform issue. The Windows platform has many I/O solutions for grading judgement on external NTSC calibrated monitors.

And taking the time to learn even just the basic functions of Speedgrade and/or Resolve is well worth your time - so much more powerful than the internal color correction tools inside Premiere. Functions like Power Windows and Tracking to control moving areas of effects are just amazing in these true grading apps. Very much like Photoshop for motion pictures. Believe Pete when he tells you it is worth your time to glean the basics of either of these programs.

Very much like Photoshop for motion pictures.

Or just edit your video in Photoshop. So many options in CS6.

Can you seriously do that?

As for features. . .surely premiere/AE have some kind of masking that you can animate/keyframe similar to power windows if that's really important to you.

Yes you can.

Editing Video in Photoshop CS6 on Vimeo

That is so totes amazeballs.

Premiere Pro has various matte effects, but not what a colorist would expect for a "power windows" sort of application...AE has versatile masking and of course SpeedGrade has very flexible masking tools as well as spot correction, etc. Colorista is quite good. I love the power of SpeedGrade (even as it transitions to a more "Adobe" interface...), but to make a correction on the PPro timeline, Colorista is convenient and fast.

SpeedGrade will feed an external monitor or scopes through an SDI output module on a Quadro card.

As far as whether to use AE or Premiere Pro, it comes down to preference for many people. Premiere Pro has the scopes...but AE has the color management. Depending on your workflow it can be a bit like having to choose arms OR legs...

Pretty sure I found a reference to scopes in AE in an online tutorial. Unless I'm wrong?

Color Finesse 3, included with AE, has a great set of scopes. You have to select "full interface" to see them.

Bingo Bango Bongo!

Yes...Synthetic Aperture has scopes... AE itself does not.

As long as you want to apply Synthetic Aperture, you're good to go.

If you use RGB curves, or anything else to do color correction, or any alteration in AE, there are no "general purpose" scopes that apply to the comp generically like in Premiere Pro, where you can use any effect to make adjustments that you choose and use the scopes to see all changes.

Ah. I see the distinction. That is goofy, especially how much I see AE touted across the web for color correction! What a strange feature to leave out. Or maybe not. . .since there's a $150 scopes plugin. . .

SO, whats the workflow ?

Finish video editing in Premiere Pro, export the project to mp4 or something and then import the mp4 to After Effects and do the color grading and then render all again on After effects ?

Using Dynamic Link (which has been improved in CS6) you don't have to import and export as the files are simply linked between the apps and you can work on a PPro sequence in AE and it will appear in PPro in it's revised form automatically. In truth it is sometimes balky but that is the workflow Adobe recommends.

You mean, finish video at Premiere Pro, dont close it, click on dynamic link and get the video to After Effects, then apply colour effects, then again use dynamic link on AE and move project to PP and finalise render ?

Edit: Quick answer in next post, but you may want to watch this video for a quick overview of how the linking works in CS6. http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-premiere-pro-cs6/dynamic-link-improvements-in-premiere-pro/

Here's a video tutorial that will explain dynamic link better than I can --- The Power of Dynamic Link | CS6 & Creative Cloud Feature Tour for Video | Adobe TV (http://tv.adobe.com/watch/cs6-creative-cloud-feature-tour-for-video/the-power-of-dynamic-link/) The speaker gets carried away with the details, but watch the whole thing, he finally gets to the point: dynamic link lets you easily move material from one program to the other without rendering and fuss.

Basically, dynamic link lets you open PPro and Ae, or PPro and Encore, and treat them as parts of one big program, rather than thinking of them as two distinct programs that you have work between. You can send compositions or clips between the open programs like any other asset, you don't have to render and copy them first.

The CS6 help files have a good discussion on this also. http://help.adobe.com/en_US/premierepro/cs/using/WS318FB3AB-E1D1-40f7-9FD9-BB04A6F6A465.html

You mean, finish video at Premiere Pro, dont close it, click on dynamic link and get the video to After Effects, then apply colour effects, then again use dynamic link on AE and move project to PP and finalise render ?

Let me answer your specific question. take a clip in your PPro timeline, right click on the clip and select "replace with ae composition." AE will launch if it is not launched already, the clip will appear in the AE browser panel. Put it on the AE time line, apply your filters, effects or whatever, alt-tab (mac: ctl-tab) to go back to PPro, and there is your clip on the timeline replacing the original, with all the AE process in place. Simple as that.

I must admit that most of the time I color grade in PPro using Colorista II.
Premiere has all the scopes and it saves me from using 2 programs.

However I do use dynamic linking for other stuff that needs to be done in AE. And then I grade the embedded comp in Premiere. (Which creates a previewfile as well after rendering, so it's easier to watch it all)

To take this to another level...

Ok, so I've just recently begun color correction in PPro CS5 using the RGB Parade and RGB curves effect, and sometimes the fast color corrector and it has really helped me match cameras and fix various color issues.

My question is, is there any benefit to getting something like NewBlueFX stuff for color correction? I mean, to me it seems like the built in tools in Premiere do a good job (for my purposes), and I'm not sure what benefits I'd get from using a third party application.

Just curious.

Thanks!

What is newblue?

Colorista 2 is supposed to be very good for the average users color correction needs, maybe not if youre working on pro features or something where you need all the power windows etc. its a plugin that works with most nles and runs about $300

And remember, there is a free version of Colorista on the RedGiant website, gives you a taste of what it is about, now up to ver 1.01: Red Giant - Products - Magic Bullet Colorista Free 1.0.1 (http://www.redgiant.com/products/all/magic-bullet-colorista-free/)