Primary Color Correction: Tonal Range Primer - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 5

not necessarily technically
correct terms, but they are
terms that were used by
the colorists as they were
verbally conveying the use
of these individual tonal
ranges. The terminology in
the topic will not remain
the same, because in real
life, these terms are often
interchanged—sometimes
even by the same speakers.

Gamut: The complete
range of colors that can
be captured, displayed,
or broadcast by a device
or a system of devices.
Most cameras or color
correction devices have a
much wider gamut (range
of colors) than those that
can be used further on in
the production stream.
For example, the gamut of
colors later in the produc-
tion stream that could
require a limited gamut can
be those: recorded to tape,
burned to a DVD, encoded
for the Web, broadcast
from a TV transmitter, or
viewed on a TV set. So
there are multiple gamuts
that have to be considered
(see the previous definition
for “legal” and “valid”).

Fig. 1.4 Color corrected using automatic correction tools.

This point is a good thing to keep in mind as you're color correcting things by hand.
Not all images need to be at 100IRE and not all color casts are a bad thing. Some images
need to be very contrasty and others need to have less contrast. You need to look for the
clues in each image to help you find where the image wants to go. The long shadows of
dawn or dusk should indicate warmer tones and lower contrast. The sharp shadows of
the noonday sun should indicate higher contrast and maybe a hint of blue—or possibly
yellow for heat.
The contrast for “golden hour” and “high noon” can be the reverse of what I just
said. It depends on where the sun is. If the sun and camera are both pointing in the
same direction at golden hour, things will be very evenly lit, like by a giant softlight. But
if the camera is pointing toward the sun or perpendicular to it, instead of low contrast,
it would have higher contrast because the difference between what was lit by the sun
and the shadows would be great. The same goes for high noon. It can have great con-
trast, throwing deep shadows under the eyes, for example, or it can have lower contrast
because the entire sky is acting as a big bounce light.

Keeping these exceptions in mind, let's consider the approach to most
of the images that—as you will see—will benefit from spreading the tonal
range as much as we can.

Monitoring

My first book on color correction, cowritten with Jaime Fowler— Color
Correction for Digital Video —goes into detail about monitoring. I don't want
to address those same issues as thoroughly in this topic, but I will touch
on them briefly.