Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
My personal preference when setting midtones in an image is to cre-
ate a rich feel with a slightly lowered gamma. If your image seems a little
dark, even with the highlights raised to the peak legal level, then raising
your gamma can give you a brighter—though usually flatter—feel, some-
times somewhat akin to the look of a sitcom. The reason for this is that
often the detail of the image is in the gamma and highlight areas, so the
closer those two ranges are to each other, the less contrast there is in this
critical portion of the image. Some images with more detail in darker por-
tions of the image would actually look less flat by raising the gamma, but
The final tonal correction is to set your midtones. This is how a lot of
the mood of the shot is created.
in my experience, this is the exception, not the rule.
When setting the gamma, there's really not much to go by except for
personal taste. If you're trying to see into the shadows or trying to hide
things a little in the shadows, then raising or lowering gamma—respec-
tively—can accomplish much of what you want to do.
Often I consider the gamma controls to be my “post lighting controls.”
If I feel like the on-set lighting was a little too contrasty or too flat, I can
often use gamma to get it to look closer to what I want. Lowering the
gamma usually increases the contrast in the shadow details of the flesh
tones. Raising the gamma tends to flatten out those shadow details. A lot
of that depends on the exact levels of the shadows on the flesh tones. On
most “normal” footage, though, the shadows on flesh are in still in the
midtone range, so lowering them tends to increase the contrast between
the rest of the lit flesh tones, which are also in the midtones but are
affected by the highlights as well.
To complete the correction on the Brian interview footage, let's set the
gamma so that the flesh tones look rich and healthy but make sure that
the footage isn't too dark. This is a pretty standard interview clip, so we
want something that looks natural and not overly dramatic.
I brought the Master Gamma down about 0.05 in Color from 1.000 to
0.95. I used the “focusing” technique, looking at the eyes of the subject on
the video monitor instead of at my waveform monitor. Actually, this was
an instance in which the gamma looked good right where it was. When I
brought it up higher than 1.0, the picture started to look washed out. When
I brought it down around 0.90, it started to look too dark and I lost the
detail and “sparkle” in his eyes. I ended up at around 0.955 ( Figure 1.28 ) .
I want to point out that I wasn't being guided by the specific number of
the gamma control. I was being guided by looking at the richness of the
skin tone, the amount of texture and detail in the hair and eyes, and the
 
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