Secondaries with the Pros - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 206

the term, the tools allow for the correction of a specific geographic portion
of the image that is usually defined or qualified by a geometric shape or
possibly by a user-defined shape that is created by combining geometric
shapes or by the use of Bezier or B-spline curves ( Figure 6.1 ).
Apple's Color uses the term “vignette” to define any of these geo-
graphic corrections, but when most colorists are discussing vignetting,
they don't mean any geographic correction, but the specific act of dark-
ening the edges and focusing the viewer's attention on the middle of the
screen ( Figures 6.2 and 6.3 ) . Sometimes the technique is done with a defo-
cus vignette that blurs the outside edges instead of—or in addition to—
darkening them.
Almost every colorist in this topic used vignettes in their work, but
many of them seemed almost a little embarrassed that they used them,
although vignetting is a tried-and-true technique that you can see in
practically any national TV spot on the air.
I asked veteran colorist Bob Festa of New Hat, a Santa Monica telecine
boutique, about this aversion to vignettes.
“Well, I'm one of the original architects of one of the most abused
techniques in color grading,” Festa explained jokingly. “The beauty of it
is that in any given shot—if it's done well—you can't point to it and say,
'That's got a vignette on it.' It's a very subliminal, subconscious 3D thing.
And quite frankly, I used it as recently as 20 minutes ago. I'm not going
to let it drop.”

D e f i n i t i o n
vignette: (noun) An
image in which the edges
are darkened or faded.
(verb) The act of darkening
the edges of an image. This
term is slightly confus-
ing now for Color users,
because Color uses the
term to define creating a
geometric or user-defined
shape in which to do a
secondary color correction.

T I P
Look in the corners of an
image and you'll see that
they are often darker than
the middle. This should be
visible on at least one shot
in about 50 percent of all
TV commercials.

Fig. 6.1 The yellow and green lines in this window describe user-defined windows in DaVinci Resolve. Secondary color correction can be
applied inside and outside of these shapes. Image courtesy of Seduced and Exploited Films from Kiss Me in the Dark.