Archive for July, 2012

SpeedGrade CS6 (6.0.2) Update

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Eric Philpott | Comments (8)

Today, the SpeedGrade CS6 (6.0.2) update was released. As always, we want to thank you for your feedback. Building great software is a team effort.

If Adobe Application Manager hasn’t already told you about this, go ahead and check for new updates by choosing Help > Updates. The best way to check for updates is by closing all Adobe applications other than Adobe Bridge, and choosing Help > Updates in Adobe Bridge; this ensures that all processes related to Adobe video applications have been quit and can be updated safely.

Ideally, you should install the updates automatically as described above, but you can also manually download and install the updates using updaters for Windows and Mac OS. Continue reading…

Color Correction Basics – Working with the Waveform

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Eric Philpott | Comments (3)

Most color grading workflows include two types of tasks: color correction and look design. Look design is what you do to give your story its individual character: it’s the visual style that communicates mood and place.

For example an action film might have a gritty, de-saturated look; a horror story might have a cold blue otherworldly look, a period piece might have vibrant colors, like a painting or an old color photograph. Different scenes within a film usually use slightly different palettes. In short, look design is a part of storytelling Look design is a very exciting aspect of the new digital filmmaking tools: we never had as much freedom as we do now to define how we want our productions to look.

Before you get to detailed look design, you will usually want to begin by color correcting your shots. Continue reading…

A Quick Look at the SpeedGrade Look Panel

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Eric Philpott | Comments (0)

The Look panel is where all the fun happens in SpeedGrade. This is where you apply color corrections and design your look: the two parts of most color grading workflows.

Color correction, sometimes called the “technical grade,” is about making your shots look good and matched.

The creative part of grading is where you give your project its distinctive visual style. Here in SpeedGrade-Land we usually refer to this as “look design.”

To open the Look panel, make sure you have a clip selected on the Timeline (see Four Ways to Load Footage in SpeedGrade for more info). If a clip is not selected, the Look panel tab will remain inactive and you can’t open it. Continue reading…

Move up to Creative Cloud

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Eric Philpott | Comments (2)

Adobe is making it simpler to keep your software up-to-date. And a lot cheaper.

Adobe CS6 has been so well received by reviewers and production professionals around the world, and you now have several options for buying it. Along with boxed versions (or “shrink” as they call it here), and purchasing online, you can also subscribe. That last option is a great model. I encourage you to take a good look at Adobe’s Creative Cloud Membership.

Continue reading…

SpeedGrade – A Little Bit of History

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Eric Philpott | Comments (0)

The origin of SpeedGrade can be traced back to a playback application called FrameCycler, which was first release by IRIDAS in 2001. FrameCycler provided uncompressed playback of frame sequences and was widely adopted in the visual effects community where artists needed an easy way to check their work.

In a recent interview on Animotion (great site, by the way), Lin Kayser, the founder of IRIDAS tells the story. As Lin points out in that interview FrameCycler employed the pixel shader technology in GPUs to provide LUT support in FrameCycler. Pixel shader technology is widely used in gaming to provide really fast screen refresh rates, but is not commonly used professional color applications. Continue reading…