Secondaries with the Pros - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 258

Fig. 6.87 The 3D Keyer shows the qualification of the warm, saturated skin tones that were selected.
Creating Depth and Texture
For Encore's Pankaj Bajpai, it's a cardinal sin for an image to leave his suite
“flat.” Bajpai explains as he examines the “sleeping woman” shot, “So, the
first thing you want to get away from is the image looking flat. To me, flat
images are just flat images, and part of it comes from having been so closely
involved in photography and photographers. Aesthetically the first goal for
me—which I think is the goal for most colorists—is to get away from being
a flat image. This is a generic image, it doesn't feel like life, so the first thing
would be to just build that image from being not as contrasty.
“We have to make us feel present in this world, so right off the bat, I
lower the contrast—I got myself some meat in the picture. I also lowered
the gamma. A lot of the magic lies in the midtones. That's where a lot of
your play happens. So right off the bat, we do that. At this point I'm going
to go in and organically cut it up” ( Figures 6.88 and 6.89 ).
Bajpai softens his hand-drawn shape and corrects outside of the mask,
darkening the image and giving a sense of lighting ( Figure 6.88 ) . He
explains, “We have gone and created a sense of depth, and I've done that
in this organic way. I could take the saturation and actually go a touch
warmer. So now with that little desaturation happening, you are starting
to feel more in that world. I also use a lot of keys. I do a lot of masks. At
this point, I will see if I could get to the really light where she is sleeping,
so now you see how her skin has suddenly become radiant. That feeling
of three-dimensionality: it feels human.
“I could just break up the face just a little bit and then soften it, so now
you can see that even on that face, I have broken it in highlight and the