Color Correction - Magic Button

[Bill Thesken]

I took a couple of frame grabs, plugged them into Adobe Photoshop 6, pressed 3 buttons, 'Auto Smart Fix', 'Auto Color Correction' 'Auto Sharpen'. I'll admit I'm a dunce when it comes to color correction in Vegas, and am wondering if there are 3 quick steps to get similar results using Vegas Pro 9.

[Mike Kujbida]

Here's a rather long-winded reply from a few hints that I've collected over the years.
The four numbered steps are the first ones to play with to get comfortable with the process.

1. Drop color corrector on event
2. On right wheel, click left eye dropper, then click/drag on white in preview
3. On middle wheel, click left eye dropper, click/drag on flesh or neutral color in preview
4. On left wheel, click left eye dropper, click/drag on black in preview
You can often skip the middle wheel once you have black and white set.
This is especially true if your image doesn't have fleshtones to select.

If you have good light on event, you can use auto levels for quick fix (an FX).

You can use levels FX before you use CC also.

Use the highlights eyedropped (negative sign / complementary) on a highlight that is supposed to be white.
Click-drag the eyedropper over an area... this averages out noise.
Then do the midtones on something that is grey (supposed to be grey).
If the highlights look funky, drop on the secondary CC.
Limit the range to highlights, and de-saturate.

edit:
check out Vol. 6 #2 of Edward Troxel's newsletters for an excellent tutorial on this topic.
http://www.jetdv.com/vegas/forum/viewtopic.php?t=54

[Jim Snow]

I have found Color Fixer Plus, which is one of the filters in NewBlue FX Video Essentials, to be a very useful tool. It uses an eyedropper scheme for fixing white balance. It's important to correct white balance before any other color FX are applied. Otherwise, you can wind up with some very strange results. In addition to fixing white balance, you can adjust brightness, saturation and film gamma with the same tool. This tool is a real time saver plus also get consistent results.

Video Essentials Must-Have Video Tools To Get The Job Done Fast | NewBlueFX

[Dale Guthormsen]

Good afternoon,


Bill,

Vegas is particularly good for color correction. I practically never go to after effects.

95% of video shot can be corrected or track graded using white balance (use your rgb parade scope at the same time), color corrector, Color curves, and HSL. All of these are quite easy to use by holding control down and moving the sliders.

Generally most video out of my cameras I automaticly set saturation in HSL to 1.2, I then set gamma to .95.

From there put the preview on split screen and fine adjust.

With rgb color parade up you can go to curves, adjust each color to exactly the look you want. for example I tend to like red a little heavier than blue and green with parade on you can make it very precise.
with Curves a little is alot.

Totally avoid the brightness and contrast fx as it will put to much noise in your images, it is a last ditch effort.

Practice using the secondary color corrector for fun, the more familiar you are with it the more you will use it, but I gues that is true of most of the tools in Vegas!

Oh yea, it is pretty standard to adjust the Luma to black and white and adjust exposure of image (view histogram or wave form) prior to color correction.

It sounds a lot harder than it actually is!!!!! Just do some experimenting!!!

perfect image control doesn't really come from automatic fx.

[Marcus Martell]

Interesting......
thx

[Jordan Brindle]

Originally Posted by Dale Guthormsen

Good afternoon,

*SNIP*

Interesting stuff Dale, thanks for sharing.