Color Correction - Nuke 101: Professional Compositing and Visual Effects - page 150

Color Manipulation Building Blocks
Color correction is a somewhat intuitive process. Often compositors just try something
until they get it right. Understanding the math behind color correction can help you pick
the right tool for the job when attempting to reach a specific result—which is better than
trial and error. TABLE 4.1 explains most of these building blocks.
Table 4.1. Basic Color Correction Functions
Dynamic range
When dealing with color correction, I usually talk about dynamic range and its parts. Dy-
namic range meansallthecolorsthatexistinyourimage,fromthedarkesttothebrightest
color.Thedynamicrangechangesfromimagetoimage,butusuallyyouareworkingwith
an image that has black and white and everything in between. The parts of the dynamic
range, as mentioned, are split according to their brightness value as follows:
• The shadows or lowlights, meaning the darkest colors in the image
• The midtones, meaning the colors in the image that are neither dark nor bright
• The highlights, meaning the brightest colors