Secrets of color grading

Hey, I just wanted to share this neat cllip about color theory.
Secrets of color grading

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You might like this as a followup… https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel

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would be great to have something like this in rawtherapee or darktable.

Well, dt version 3.6 will include a vectorscope, which should help on getting grading based on color harmonies.

yeah, rawtherapee is getting vectorscope too. This is amazing! And its just a matter of time and we will see more advanced tools I bet. Devlopment goes so fast… :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

They have created this open source tool as well…kind of cool….

https://medium.com/@NateBaldwin/leonardo-an-open-source-contrast-based-color-generator-92d61b6521d2

https://leonardocolor.io/?colorKeys=%236fa7ff&base=ffffff&ratios=3%2C4.5&mode=CAM02

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Yes, I envisage a tool that generates a palette like this, and allows the user to choose which hue in their image, gets mapped to which hue in the palette, then being able to blend it in any of hue, chroma, colour or lightness.

Well you can with this and using RT as it support dcp files…but this is more for a common look not an image by image thing still it does let you map colors…

Interesting tool. Not exactly what I meant, but I’d have to play around with it. On the surface it looks most similar to the new Rawtherapee Abstract Profile, or the channel mixer.

Well you grab as many colors as you want from your image and map them to a palette of hues either by eye from the color wheel or you enter them with hsl colors …but its more like creating a film simulation basically or a look…

Not dissing the use case for highly stylistic images. Outlandish fashion and product shots may very well benefit. It’s just that I’ve long been annoyed with the over grading and general self conscious look and feel of movies in the last decade or two. And personally won’ be to happy if this moves even more into photography than it already has.

There are old examples of course such as Suspiria and many others It just seems that the control has continually increased in the grading, the wardrobe and the props. The teal orange thing is just such a tedious look these days. Joker should get some slack beeing a cartoon based movie and all, but it still misses the mark imho. Perhaps particularly because it’s set in a time looking like 70’s early 80’s where we have a lot of very good movies to compare to.

In my day job however I’ve long though of setting up more complex colour palettes and these models and tools for creating palettes are useful for picking colours a bit faster.

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I love these colors… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP-rcJTJa7w

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What’s your point here? I think there is such a big variety of movies and photographers…
How should a Joker movie look so it’s pleasing to you?

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I’m a sort of with you on this one… in the end its art is it not?? As for boundaries well can we say art should be free of boundaries ?? Of course with art what some will view with beauty and reverence other will go “you have to be kidding me”… the time old saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder…

Just to be clear I don’t think the tools or the knowledge is in any way a problem.

It’s an artistic problem. Being critical of something isn’t the same as suggesting it should be illegal (although make sure I never reach a position of power because I might well outlaw teal orange :wink: )

Criticism is a way of developing art and culture in general. I find way to many movies are “self concious” as in to aware, in control and slightly insecure about every visual detail. The craft and technology has been honed over the years to a point where I think it’s gone to far. Not from a moral or technical standpoint but from an artistic. Previously there were technical or budgetary problems preventing total control. People tried but reality held the ambitions of control in check.

I actually think the artistic goals were different as well. There was a greater awareness of the value of some kind of looseness. Real or felt. At least in the 70’s and early 80’s exactly the time period the Joker fails to emulate.

No we can’t or rather we shouldn’t. Because formulating critique and discussing the artistic merit is critical for culture. If I was a nation state I would answer no, before abolishing myself, because a state or similar institution could put boundaries on art we can’t. We can only discuss the merits of any work.

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I get where you are coming from. There is so much CGI in movies now it can’t help but creep in and with the ability to edit digitally well crazy things are possible. I am actually so sick of looking at people with the beauty filter on in zoom calls. Most look like ghostly washed out messes. This has crept in to movies and shows on television and so obvious lately on many of the nightly news broadcast people. It looks so bad …to me . Clearly someone thinks its the way to go…

So dislike teal and orange?
You would outlaw something like this:
painting
Do I get it right that your point is the looseness? Like Joker would be better with more “loose” colors.

I’ve tried to explain how movies and also photography can suffer from being overly controlled. Or at least miscontrolled. Teal orange is just the most obvious example. It seems like every movie does it and every movie over does it. It’s so disappointing every time.

Painting is a different medium and can be judged by different criteria. Equally art from the 1800’s should be judged by different criteria than contemporary art. But if there was 1000’s of portrait painters working only in those colours I would complain in internet fora.

If we go back to the examples in Secrets of color grading. Almost all of them look off. I have no moral issues with post processing but they just look boring and completely artificial. As I said this artifice has a place but it’s now over used because the tools are available.

Not only movies are colour graded, but also almost every magazine (for quite some time). A large circulation magazine thinks about every inch on every page, including advertising. In magazines also patterns and postures are attuned to each other, throughout the magazine.

In National Geographic Magazine, for example, you see a bear with its arms spread, then a page further, in another article, a human in the same position. Those kind of things.

Big webpages will do the same, for example news web pages as BBC, CNN, will pay much attention to colours that harmonize or use clashing colours on purpose. They also pay attention to other things like postures, patterns, content, politics, colour psychology, etcetera. This with accompanying captions and headings. With the use of colours they can nudge you through a page and give you good and bad feelings.

On television the colours that are used in shows and in advertising are matched. The colours of different advertisements, one after the other, are also often coordinated. (again harmonizing or clashing).

Interesting, isn’t it?

I do agree that a lot of grades are over done and or just look and feel way off. Should grading be banned naw. I actually color grade every image I process for the most part. The problem is everyone tries to go for the complementary color grade like teal and orange which tend to be very harsh.

Personally I like to go more for the analogous color grade like purple/blue or green/blue very similar to what you see with certain film stocks. When subtle it looks really pleasing.