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thorr

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Join date
7-Sep-2008
Last activity
6-Jan-2024
Posts
449

Post History

Post
#1290363
Topic
Color matching and prediction: color correction tool v1.3 released!
Time

Is there any plan to make a batch version of this? I want to use it to overlay 4:3 and 16:9 sources and it takes forever to do one frame at a time by hand. If not, is there a way to write a plugin script in PhotoShop to use external programs and then use PhotoShop’s batch processes? I know I can theoretically do it a scene at a time, but even within a scene there is drift and the color matching does not last longer than a few frames in some cases. Thanks.

Post
#1287888
Topic
Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker - Discussion * <strong><em>SPOILER THREAD</em></strong> *
Time

I am a bit worried from the little I have seen so far from articles on imdb. Daisy Ridley just said she was excited because the lightsabers are “lighter” like they are swinging light around instead of heavy swords. So they are going prequel on us again. In Empire, Luke had a lot of trouble dealing with his light saber when fighting Darth Vader and that made it much more tense. When he cut off Vader’s hand in Return he was swinging it hard like a heavy bat. It brought emotion into the scene. Also, John Boyega hinted that 9 sucks. I liked VII a lot, VIII some, and I expect IX will be in between.

Post
#1114824
Topic
Color correction methodologies
Time

Here is the “final” version using my method and not making it so tight. It still corrects the color, but doesn’t clip as much.
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/7YGNNN8X

And here is the same but further adjusted using the channel mixer to try to get the sky to be less green in the Bluray1 version: http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/91MNNN8U

Edit: I just started playing with the Curves option and noticed I can use my same method because there are sliders, but there is a “show clipping” checkbox. This is really cool because I can adjust to the edge of the ramp up just before clipping and it still works sort of automatically. After doing the curves, I can go into levels and adjust the middle slider to get the gamma without clipping and then use the channel mixer to make subtle tweaks from there. Very cool!

Edit 2: just for fun I tried Auto Color and it ended up looking almost identical to the method I mentioned in my first Edit. The problem with Auto Color is it can’t be reliably applied the same way to each frame in a sequence of frames from the same scene.

Post
#1114809
Topic
Color correction methodologies
Time

Thanks! Here are the two screenshots using the levels adjustment method from my first post. There is some “junk” at the left side of the levels that I removed to get the left and right side aligned between the R, G, and B channels. I didn’t use anything in the picture to come up with the color correction. I just looked at the histogram and slid the left and right sides to just before the ramp ups. I also added adjusting the gamma to show the darker areas are in tact. I over adjusted it, but it can be done less so to bring up the dark areas just a bit.

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/7YWNNN8X

I will see if I can get similar results by playing around with the curves and other tools you mentioned when I have some more free time. Thanks again!

Post
#1114766
Topic
Color correction methodologies
Time

Here is an example comparing the new extended cut of Superman to the previous Blu-ray: http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Superman-The-Movie-Blu-ray/189338/#Screenshots

Look at the sky in the cemetery scene. Neither really looks correct. The ground is also slightly different between the two. What would be a method to color correct everything in that shot?

Thanks,
Mike

Post
#1114759
Topic
Color correction methodologies
Time

Thanks. I never know how to adjust the curves. Is there a method that can be used where you can just look at the R, G, and B curves and align them similar to my method with the left and right side of the levels without needing to look at what it is doing to the color and it gets it pretty close to correct? I hope that makes sense… I find it difficult to just blindly make adjustments because what I think looks good might not be correct at all. With my above method, it takes all of the colors into account and aligns them pretty well and things look correct. It also spreads the color out across the full range which boosts the saturation, for better or for worse. I would prefer to use a method that doesn’t lose any information as you mentioned, but I am looking for something to help me do it correctly even if I was color blind.

I will start playing with the Channel Mixer as well. Thanks for the tips!

Post
#1114751
Topic
Color correction methodologies
Time

There a lot of threads about color correcting, so hopefully it is ok that I start a new one. 😉 The purpose of this thread is to discuss color correction techniques that can be used by the average person. I feel like I am getting better at doing my own color correction, but I am still a complete novice.

One simple method that I like to use is looking at the individual levels of R, G and B. If they are not crushed at either the low or high end, then in Photoshop or After Effects, you can drag the left and right slider to where the slope just starts going up on each end for each color channel. After doing this, the color looks pretty close to correct most of the time especially in outdoor scenes. Whites are white, etc. However, if any of the channels are crushed, then for those channels, you need to adjust the middle slider to eyeball it and usually you need to do this for the other channels as well. After getting the individual color sliders where they need to be, I then go to the combined RGB sliders and adjust the middle one to get the gamma where I want it. Overall, this method works for me most of the time and it is sort of an automatic color adjustment method without needing to know what color each thing in the scene is supposed to be. If it is too red then I adjust the red channel gamma, etc.

Are there any other methods that you use with tools like Photoshop or After Effects to correct the color sort of automatically (without using the Auto-color tool)?

Also, how about in general where, for example, you want the sky to look a perfect blue, but not affect the ground too much without setting up masks to adjust just the sky? Or, the perfect skin color, etc? Do you use the white balance tools in Photoshop to correct the whole frame based on known white, black and gray points?

Thanks,
Mike

Post
#1105738
Topic
Color matching and prediction: color correction tool v1.3 released!
Time

In very dynamic scenes, the color matching needs to be done frame by frame such as when lightning strikes or police sirens are running and messes with all of the colors in adjacent frames. Also I am a perfectionist and I notice when it isn’t exactly perfect.

This is another reason to explain for my request to have the program work with four folders (cropped source color frames, cropped target color frames, full sized source frames to correct, full sized corrected frames) and automatically color match each numbered frame (they can all have the same filename in each folder since they are in different folders).

I already have the folders set up, and use Photoshop to script out the aligning and cropping of each source and target color frame to folders, but when using the color matching tool I have to load each frame and go through the process one at a time and babysit it and each frame takes a long time when I increase the color spaces to the maximum for the most accurate results. I would love to be able to set up the folders and have it run on its own.

Thanks again for your consideration.

Post
#1098616
Topic
STAR WARS: EP V &quot;REVISITED EDITION&quot;<strong>ADYWAN</strong> - <strong>12GB 1080p MP4 VERSION AVAILABLE NOW</strong>
Time

Great job, Adywan! I don’t have ESB perfectly memorized like most here, so I was watching it in a way that wouldn’t necessarily know what has been changed. There were a few things that stood out as being different than before such as the Wampa, the asteroid field, the extra walkers on Hoth, Han in carbonite, the Emperor, the spider creature, some of the Bespin improvements, and probably a few other things I am not thinking of right now. Otherwise, I never would have guessed it wasn’t just supposed to be that way, while at the same time, it felt fresh and exciting. All of it flowed wonderfully and is a much much better special edition than the special edition. It would be awesome if they would come out with a new blu-ray set that included the originals, the special editions in their various forms, and revisited. Revisited is really the best of the them all which is saying a lot coming from me since I like the originals a lot more than the special editions. I would love to see a version with pop-ups that point out most of the changes. Maybe that could be an extra feature of the blu-ray. To make it easy, subtitles could work. This was a fun project that I enjoyed being a small part of and watching it progress.

Post
#1097444
Topic
Color matching and prediction: color correction tool v1.3 released!
Time

Williarob said:

Dre, if you are planning to make some improvements… a way to batch jobs would be really useful. For example, if we could select a test folder (instead of just a file) and a reference folder then have it cycle through, taking the first file in the test folder, matching it to the first file in the reference folder and generate a LUT for each pair before moving on the the next pair.

Sure, it could take hours to run, but you could color match every shot in a reel automatically, and not have to sit there watching it, waiting to select the next pair of files. Just run it before you go to bed, and apply the LUTs in the morning.

I came here to ask for nearly the same thing and see that it was already posted. I would love to be able to set up two folders with perfectly aligned and cropped frames to figure out the color correction and a third folder with the frames to apply the color correction to. I have a 4:3 source and a 16:9 source that I will use a photoshop script to align and crop into two folders for the color correction program. Having to manually color correct each frame would take forever, but currently due to the dynamic color, doing only a few frames at a time produces good results. Having a way to set up three folders (color reference frame, color target frame, frame to apply it to) with filenames that match would be great (0001.bmp, 0002.bmp, etc.) and a fourth corrected output folder. A whole movie could be automated with perfect color correction if the frames were always aligned the same way.

If you could create this, it would be great! Thanks for your consideration.

Post
#1091884
Topic
STAR WARS: EP V &quot;REVISITED EDITION&quot;<strong>ADYWAN</strong> - <strong>12GB 1080p MP4 VERSION AVAILABLE NOW</strong>
Time

I just had a funny thought. Ady could complete the Wampa into a full body costume and go up in the snowy forest somewhere and use the Wampa as the abominable snowman and start a whole new set of conspiracy theories, this time with clear footage. Or he could make a viral video of the wampa scaring hikers and tourists. It would be great if this could be done in an ice cave. Just make sure nobody is armed with weapons.

Post
#1079862
Topic
Info &amp; Advice Wanted: for my Prequel edit - Advice for newbie
Time

I would suggest Adobe After Effects. You can create what is called a Mask by drawing lines around the objects you want to either remove or add from/to the scene. You can apply other effects to blend it in as well. After Effects works with layers so you can put stuff on top of other stuff in any order and duplicate layers and so much more. You can get a 30 day trial I believe when you first install it. Watch youtube videos on how to work with masks in after effects.

Good luck!

Post
#1024797
Topic
Carrie Fisher Suffers Major Heart Attack
Time

So sad about Carrie. I am glad that I got the chance to see her in Anaheim. She is a class act and great with the fans and a “real” person. 2016 has been very rough. The list put out earlier was missing Glenn Frey and Alan Thicke. So many shockers and it reminds us how delicate life is, and hopefully we will remember that before we do or not do things that we could later regret. Carrie will always have a place in my heart because of her role in Star Wars and how much it affected my childhood and the rest of my life. I still hold onto that sense of wonder and excitement and belief in the supernatural, even though in my head I know they were make believe.

As a side note, I have been thinking about how this might affect the movies. I don’t know what is going to happen in Episode 8, but I hope she was a big part of it, and that in Episode 9, they can keep her in the story in the way that Luke Skywalker was in Episode 7. Talk about her and keep her as a major part of the story, but she won’t have any screen time unless it is a brief CGI cameo or if they can reuse some that was meant for 8. I don’t want them to rewrite the originally intended story for 8 or 9, unless it make it better and would have happened regardless.

Post
#1015444
Topic
The Original Trilogy restored from 35mm prints (a WIP)
Time

poita said:

Feel free to do so, I won’t be using any output created from the community for what I am working on, but I’m more than happy for people to try their own thing on it. I tend to find Photoshop fixes result in weird crawling generally, but it sounds like you have a good system, so by all means give it a shot.

You will need to PM me for access to the full files, but here is a short 1080P sample
https://infinit.io/_/VTNTxB6
I’m rendering it out fairly flat, with the gamma a bit high, to give people maximum latitude to correct it how they see fit.

Thanks! Here is what I did with my trailer project. http://infinit.io/_/88wWy9j

Post
#1015317
Topic
The Original Trilogy restored from 35mm prints (a WIP)
Time

Would you be interested in help with carefully performed content-aware photoshop fixing of nicks and scratches on each frame? I would be happy to help with this. I did this with my trailer project I was working on and the end result was beautiful. If we all helped, we could get through all the frames and have a near-blemish free final product. People would need to be careful not to fix things that are in multiple frames because they are supposed to be there but look like a blemish.

Post
#1014879
Topic
Info: The Ultimate Super Resolution Technique
Time

Mind blown
Would love to see this effort combined with a technique to discover the correct color using multiple sources and Dr Dre’s magic autocolor technique that I wish I could have a copy of. 😉

On my own, I discovered using After Effects, when I wish to color correct something, I can get really close by adjusting the levels with individual controls as long as the histogram of each color has room on either or ideally both sides of it. I just slide the right and left slider to just before the ramp up for each individual color and that gets it close. Then if it is too green or pink or blue, I adjust the center slider a bit until it looks right. It really makes the picture punchy and much more correct in color most of the time unless they intentionally changed it from the original color. This usually needs to be done scene to scene and sometimes if it is a long scene, it needs to be tracked and changed throughout the scene.

Post
#993163
Topic
STAR WARS: EP V &quot;REVISITED EDITION&quot;<strong>ADYWAN</strong> - <strong>12GB 1080p MP4 VERSION AVAILABLE NOW</strong>
Time

The name came from when I was in college and started doing IRC. I had to pick a nickname and for whatever reason “Thor” popped into my head. The nickname “Thor” was already taken, so I added an r and made it a lower case t to make it different. When people asked for my real name, I would kid around and say it was Thomas Orr, and then they would say, “Oh, that makes sense why you have two r’s then”. Since then, I just kept it so I wouldn’t have to keep thinking of a new login name. Since y’all are taking an interest in my name, I thought I would share my history lesson with you. 😉