Primary Color Correction: Color Manipulation Tools - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 139

the first point to determine where the second point should go. Did the
first point affect a tonal range that was slightly above or below the range
you really wanted? That will guide you in picking the correct spot.

T I P
Some applications, such
as Avid Media Composer,
allow you to eyedropper a
point on the image and see
exactly where on the curve
that point lies. This feature
is a great instructional tool
to develop your ability to
know where these points
would fall without letting
the software do it for you.
A good photographer
knows how to use a light
meter, but most also pride
themselves on being able
to set exposure by eye if
they have to. Develop-
ing a good sense of the
luminance levels of various
parts of an image will
make you much faster as
a colorist, because your
corrections will be more
intuitive.

Use extra points on the curve to protect portions of the curve that
you don't want to affect.

You also want to remember the tip from Chapter 2 about curves: use
extra points on the curve to protect portions of the curve that you don't
want to affect. For example, if a correction to the midtones of the red
curve is working great for the midtones, but it is adding too much red to
the highlights, then place a point on the red curve between the top of the
Curve and the area that you are moving in order to protect the red high-
lights from being affected by the red midtone point. When you do this, be
careful not to place the points too close to each other or it will cause band-
ing or posterization. You can use the previous tip about eyedroppering the
image to determine where the “protection point” should go.

RGB Lift, Gamma, and Gain Sliders

A tool that works similarly to curves are the red, green, and blue numeri-
cal or slider controls for lift, gamma, and gain. Virtually all color correc-
tion software includes sliders like these. In DaVinci Resolve, they are in
the Color Screen in the Primary tab. They are available in the Advance tab
of Color's Primary Room. They are available in Color Finesse and many
Avid and Final Cut Pro color correction plug-ins, such as 3Prong's Color-
FiX AVX plug-in or Magic Bullet's Colorista plug-in for Final Cut Pro.
Note that I'm not talking about simply adjusting lift, gamma, and gain,
but adjusting the individual color channels of red, green, and blue in each
of those tonal ranges.
Figures 4.50 through 4.56 show a range of options from various prod-
ucts and plug-ins that allow you to color balance your images using RGB
sliders or numerical values in each tonal range. Although we're going to
do this correction in Color, any of these applications—or others with a
similar RGB-level UI—will work similarly.
For this tutorial, we'll use the “ChromaDuMonde_properexwarm”
clip from the DVD.
Looking at the ChromaDuMonde chart is a little more complicated on
the vectorscope and RGB Parade, but it is still very similar to the grayscale
chart. To familiarize yourself with how the chart should look on the scopes,
import the “ChromaDuMonde_properexwhite” clip from the DVD. Notice
the way that the color from the color chips surrounds the center of the