Primary Color Correction: Color Control Primer - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 90

T I P
While trying to balance col-
ors using the vectorscope,
it is common to zoom the
scale of the vectorscope
in to about 5x. For Color's
built-in vectorscope, the
scale is reversed, so to
zoom in, you choose 75
percent, 50 percent, or 25
percent from the small
buttons just above the
vectorscope. To return to
normal scale, choose 100
percent.

Fig. 3.21 Avid MC Color user interface. Devices like this one dramatically improve color grading efficiency
by allowing multiple controls to be manipulated simultaneously.

Once that is done, balance the highlights in the same way. The high-
lights are also blue, so the move needs to be towards yellow again. It is
possible that the color cast is not the same color in each of the three tonal
ranges. It is highly likely that the cast is a different strength in each of the
ranges. Slowly focus the trace in to the center of the image. The key to
many of these corrections is subtlety.
The image is almost balanced, so now use the midtone wheel and
focus the trace so that the remaining blue cast is balanced out. It's
possible that the corrections from the highlights or midtones affected
the shadows, so go to each tonal range again and tweak it slightly to
better focus the trace in the vectorscope right in the middle of the
crosshairs.
If you have one of the manual user interfaces, you will find that the
easiest and fastest way to do these corrections is to manipulate multiple
trackballs at the same time. It takes a bit of coordination to pull this trick
off, but one of the reasons that experienced colorists can do color correc-
tion so much faster than a novice is their ability to manipulate multiple
controls at once.
Now let's try a real-world image to see how that compares. With
real world images, balancing with the vectorscope is a little trickier
because instead of a nice, sharp monochromatic image, all of the natu-
ral colors in the image turns the trace of the vectorscope into a big
fuzzy ball. But with experience and practice, you can see the white
and black points in the trace and “dial them in” to a well-balanced
image.
Call up the images “Field Museum proper” ( Figure 3.24 ) and “Field
museum blue.” ( Figure 3.26 ) Compare the images on the vectorscope
( Figure 3.25 and Figure 3.27 ) .
The “proper” image has some of the trace in the middle and the
rest skews off toward yellow and green, which makes sense because
the Field museum is made from the same yellowish stone that the
Art Institute has and the green is coming from the pine trees in the