How to Grade Under & Over Exposed Images
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- čas přidán 27. 02. 2023
- In this video, I share ways to handle over and underexposed images, discuss how to pay attention to creative intent over by-the-book exposure rules, and point out the different things I look at when assessing an improperly exposed image as a pro colorist.
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Cullen, I am very much a novice at color grading. My films are mostly drone travel videos for fun. But I want to make them look as professional as possible. For the last two months I have followed through your videos and adopted your technique and advice. For the first time my latest video actually looked like it should. Thank you so much for your time and effort in sharing your expertise.
I cannot agree more.
I'm so thankful to you, Cullen Kelly, for breaking down complex concepts and making them so easily understandable. Your video lessons have been an invaluable resource to improve our color grading skills. Thank you so much for your constant help!
Cullen, thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge on color grading. It has been so informative and helpful to me. I have owned Davinci Resolve for about 3 years now but am just now diving into color management and it's such a drastic improvement. Straight out of the camera v-log color managed is pretty much spot on then add your look. It really has simplified the process of getting to a repetitive starting point.
1:12 is one of the many things you've said on your channel that instantly helped me clarify something that has clouded my mind for so long.
You didn't touch upon the most obvious overexposure issue - clipped skintones. You even have them on the thumbnail!
Could you explore this subject a little more?
I hope to see this in grade school
beautiful, all my life I was lifting and dropping gain wheel to balance my expo, but learned today that offset can be smoother way to get the perfect balance between over & under expo. thank you can't wait for live session.
Can’t wait to dig into this one!!!
Nothing else would make the tutorial more beautiful & human, than the kid crying in the background! Amazing video, I see respect for the DP's original intentions! congrats
Recently found your channel. Absolutely top content! Subbed 🙌
Solid examples and I never thought of that Lum v Sat technique to smooth out the transition to clipped highlights.
Sometimes you want to bring down the exposure on your subject, but it brings down the pinned highlights too much. One trick I've used (and this really depends on your shot) is I'll luma key the pinned highlights and apply Gain to bring them back up to the desired brightness, to increase the dynamic range/contrast between the subject and the blown out highlights. A curves adjustment could do that too.
I think that communication between the Dp or the person's film you're grading on exposures is the one thing not mentioned here and in my opinion is the most important. The problems I see is that newer prosumer cameras are pushing the abilities of pushing ISO and being able to shoot in low light. But in reality the hollywood looks that they are trying to emulate - choose the ISO and Apertures for the look and expose with light, and not so much with camera. The underexposed in your video is an example that the DP might have wished that they had exposed and lit the peoples faces higher and then your recovery process would need to go into gear. But can't tell you how many times cinematographers want a silhouette, and add a recovery goes against the intent of the shot.
My advice to people shooting is to try to set your cameras to native ISO and light to the exposure. On the grading side, we can then set the exposure middle grey to what it should be and we should see exactly what the filmmaker intended. If the film maker can't get to exposure and bumps up middle grey - the communication that I mentioned would come into play.
In the grading process, Cullen you touched on it a little, the ratio between the darkest parts and the brightest parts are the on set problem that usually requires us squeezing the stop ratio and then grading it. If the brightest stop is 15 stops brighter than the stops in the shadows - something has to give. A process of putting an extreme toe and knee, to keep all the detail into a gamma curve is a solution, but is difficult to pull off without forcing a look onto the footage.
That was brilliant! I didnt know thats how films were shot. Me being a consumer, I shoot exactly like how you explain...just manipulate the ISO without too much concern about lighting.
I totally resonate with the conclusion, which is "let the image guide your exposure". :) There is just a spot/range where the image "feels" right, and it's often tied to the way it was shot. Another great video ! :)
Excellent video. It's such a fundamentally important starting point that a colourist thinks like an artist first and a technician second. I remember shooting a car commercial back in the 90s and when I saw it on TV for the first time I was surprised to see a shot included that I'd just run off the end of the roll of film at completely the wrong exposure before changing mags on the camera. But it just worked and elevated the whole spot. If the colourist had tried to correct it (which would have been impossible anyway), the whole effect would have been lost.
Great stuff, learnt lots! Thank you Cullen.
A new video, yaaay ! Always excited to learn some new content :D
You are everywhere I see “color grading” in the title Sasha haha
@@Visethelegend gotta soak in that knowledge like sponge 😄
@@Visethelegend hahaha xD
"That's not really a problem until I make it a problem." 10:41
Fascinating. Really teaches you how to lean into the footage you have.
Great insight here. Thank you for your time.
Thanks, you saved me a lot of time!
Very helpful. I learned a lot. Thank you
Great explainer wins new subscriber.
I think this question fits in here as well.. I am shooting mostly 1 stop over with SWideGammutCine3.Slog3 (to be out of the noise floor) and grade within AWG/ArriLog3. What ist the best option to bring back down that 1 Stop? Should I do it before the CST-IN to AWG/ArriLog3 to have a better math into the Intermediate Space? Or should I forget about it an reduce exposure after the CST-IN and just do it in AWG/ArriLog3? Thank you so much...
Thank you, Cullen!
Hi ! Thanks for this very instructive video ! Im just wondering why did you put some Noise Reduction in a parralel node, although you said in an other video that it would bring some issue to the final image.
Thanks again !!
Would these voyager Luts work with DaVinci IPad version? I don’t see the option to change LUT interpolation to Tetahedral. Would love to use on Mac as well as iPad
@cullenkelly Love your videos. I've learned so much from watching them. I recently shot an 8min one take on a BMPCC 4K. On the best take we have there is a portion that is super dark, I mean almost black. I've been able to recover most of the information but I've maxed out my abilities. Do you have any suggestions on what can be done to get things a bit better?
Hey Cullen! Why didn't you adjust the highlights slider in the clips where the highlights were problematic?? I would have thought that would be where you started - and then moved to the tangential controls
Hey Cullen, I really love Your tutorials but I'm dealing with my Macbook Pro to get the proper colors and contrast when color manage the project. If I do a color space transform in every clip while set Rec709A in color management, everything works fine and the export matches the timeline look. But with the color management everything looks different on export. Could You please recommend how should I set my color management for Macbook Pro? Thanks in advance.
set color management into DWG and input color space nd output will be rec 709 gamma 2.4
When I see other colorists doing shots like these, particularly with the subjects at 12:15 I see them qualifying the couple, tracking their movements for the entire shot, moving up gamma, like 7000 things, that I cannot believe would happen in real life. What I see Cullen doing is what I imagine happens irl. Im curious if Cullen tracks, and qualifies and all that for shots like these
Great question! In general I use qualifiers very sparingly, same deal with tracked windows. Great tools when necessary, but way too often they're used in place of cleaner, broader, simpler solutions...ESPECIALLY in CZcams tutorials
Hey Cullen I'm a big fan of your videos and the way you explain the proper techniques of color grading. But I just saw the BTS of The Whale and they shifted the look pretty much with the color grading. They shot mainly with a daylight balanced light and some colder or warmer practicals. So I had the question if you as a professional colorist do receive movies to color grade mainly shot on kida daylight balanced and then it's you job to dye it or is this film a special case?
Can you please share where you saw this BTS of The Whale? I'm curious about this because I would suspect that such a highly accomplished DP (Matthew Libatique) and colorist (Tim Stipan) figured out their look in pre-production and didn't drastically change the look in the grade.
Hey Cullen. Do u have an actual color grading masterclass for newbies like myself? I’ve searched the web and the only thing I’ve found is your Lut pkg. thanks in advance.
I was fairly new 4 months back and I got my feet underneath me by watching cullens videos from the start. Now I feel more comfortable knowing what I know and knowing what I don’t know so that a color grading course would be more beneficial to me, whereas before, I would be spending most of my time wondering what the heck they were talking about. Plus it’s free!!!! Hope this helps.
@@flochfitness Same here
Hi Cullen, great stuffs! I have a question. My workflow starts and ends in davinci, meaning I cut, edit, color and eventually export from the whole package. My issue starts when the clients have archived images or videos they want to include in the video as well and the color management causes the gamma for the provided content to shift. I’ve tried bypass but it washes out the colour and theres no way I can manually input a colorspace on the thumbnail. Is there a work around for this?
Hi Naiveoldman
I think Cullen discusses about your issue in this Grade school video
czcams.com/video/1pIm3s_mXLw/video.html
I’d really like to see the reply to this question as it poses an interesting dilemma, and I’m wondering if a solution was offered, but for some reason can’t see the reply🤷🏽♂️…
@@neelan2001 thank you so much! I’ll check it out!
Will these principles work with baked in colors from iMovie videos or cams set to base standards? I will be editing these I fear the limited amount I can edit
iPhone
Starting with footage that has already been transformed to a display space like Rec 709 will limit you a bit in the grade. However, the principles regarding exposure would still be applicable. Even though your footage is already in Rec 709, I'd recommend moving into a working space such as Davinci Wide Gamut to do your grading!
I appreciate the channel very much.
Although I can't not notice that when comparing at 10:08, yea the overall shot looks better, but her face looks so much worse in he after vs before.
I bought the Voyager essentials pack and am using it on a student film project right now. Anyone with the PRO pack, am I missing out on a lot?
not sure, but are you enjoying the essentials? In the future I plan to get the pro pack, just wondering how the essentials are
@ImCrimson The Essentials Works! I am using 2 looks, Cruces and Valo on a short film I am working on atm. They help with the military compund type of look going on in this film.
@@TempyEdits Nice!
We definitely need an episode on the channel mixer!
As usual I love the way you always head in the philosophical direction of color correcting … But this time I have to disagree with you. There definitely is over exposure and under exposure. I’ve gotten footage that has been shot by people that have no business being behind the camera… And the footage is not savable whatsoever. When I’m behind the camera the exposure is usually dead on. But yes unless you have a Hollywood crew you can’t make all parts of the footage look great all the time. Now the shot with the guy and the girl, couldn’t you mask them out a bit and bring the sky down a bit? Anyways, I love your videos. Even though sometimes it’s like reading war and peace. Lol.
just go back to the location and shoot again
Sometimes, you just have to accept that a shot needs to stay on the cutting-room floor rather than trying to save it. One or two of your examples work well with the design choices of the photographer and colourist to get the best out of the composition. And one or two are just wrong for the lighting conditions and best left out of the edit completely.
Why is your talking head shoot so "underexposed "? 😅
AI should be used to regenerate over / under exposed images. AI should be able to convert 8bit footage to RAW or at least to 10bit. Why waste AI on creative work like writing scripts?
Unfortunately, it is not possible. AI can't recover lost details and color information, it generates them.
It is like painting over an image.
Guy makes a bunch of adjustments on controls that are off camera. Learned pretty much nothing from this video.