Can Photoshop help with colour correction?
 

I've shot with two cameras in a bright daylight setting on a river cruise boat (under a glass/plexi canopy). Tape from the backup camera (Sony D8) is darker than from the VX2000 and colour in the late cruise is more saturated than the noon cruise. Are there tools in Photoshop that can tell me, by looking at frame exports, how to use Premiere to smooth out some of the differences? I'm ok with light levels but colour work is outside my real experience.

David Hurdon

I guess it could IF you want to manually adjust every frame. Why not use the color correction tools in your NLE?

Sorry if I wasn't clear, Edward. I asked how to use Photoshop to analyse differences in frame captures and act on the info in Premiere. Not how to correct frame by frame. I'm a little old for that kind of time investment.

David Hurdon

The problem will PS is that it will use colors outside the range (gamma) of NTSC video. In the filters there is an NTSC color safe filter, but it's not the best conversion. You're better off using the software waveform monitor/vectorscope in your NLE.

Thanks, Jeff. I do have those tools in the Canopus DV Tools set but like Premiere 6 there is no way I know to keep a reference clip/frame on the screen while "correcting". If I have to rely on my memory to correct I'm in trouble. I've seen demos of FCP in which a "correct" frame is next to the "to be corrected" frame for visual reference of progress. How can you accomplish that in Premiere and if you can't, how the heck do you correct other than by trial and error?

David Hurdon

Thanks, Jeff. I do have those tools in the Canopus DV Tools set but like Premiere 6 there is no way I know to keep a reference clip/frame on the screen while "correcting". If I have to rely on my memory to correct I'm in trouble. I've seen demos of FCP in which a "correct" frame is next to the "to be corrected" frame for visual reference of progress. How can you accomplish that in Premiere and if you can't, how the heck do you correct other than by trial and error?

David Hurdon

I believe that was added in Premiere Pro as well???? I know Vegas 4 can do this too.

I'm a Mac guy, so I can't be much help here, except to say that PS is not the best tool for the job. Maybe rephrase the question so the Premiere users can post on your questions.

If you have one of the real time Canopus cards, then you could import the footage into the Canopus editing software, fix the problems in there and then export the footage back to Premiere.

The latest color correction tools in the RT software are fairly good. Not as good as Edius but OK.

Try the gamma curve control to get the brightness levels similar. If you correct the color saturation (an easy task in the Canopus software) it will no longer look like afternoon but the shadows may look all wrong.

There is a good book on color correction that you can get. I find it to be of great help. Color Correction for Digital Video" by Steve Hullfish and Jaime Fowler is the name. I'd like to thank Ken Tanaka for mentioning the book.

Thank you Mike. I'll get the book.

David Hurdon