For this whole lab exercises, we will be touching on colors, which is quite a new thing to me in After Effects, since we have not done any color correction or color changing in the previous exercises.
After following through the 9 short tutorials about colors, I have learnt quite a lot about the different tools and functions in After Effects about colors.
Below are some of the sample images that I have done, before and after I have apply the different coloring tools in After Effects.
For the 1st image, I have darken the overall lighting of the image using levels, as well as slightly increasing the pink factors using hue and saturation. Lastly, I use the curves tool and lower the red factor by slightly only a little. I decided to make the image look a little bit darker as the girl in the picture doesn't smile, which gives sort of a cool tone to it thus I feel that the lighting must be darken down by a little to make the image looks more fitting in par with the girl mood.
Original Image
Edited Image
For the second image, I decide to change the contrast of the image to a more warmer tone. I feel that the warm tone looks good on the girl image, as the mood of the image is sort of happier compared to the 1st image. Thus, I use the curves to reduce the blue channel greatly, and the opposite of blue is yellow, thus the image will turn into yellow first. Next, I slightly increase the red channel using curves as well, and also using hue and saturation to turn the image a little orange in color. Lastly, using the color balance, which I think is a great coloring tool to touch up on the color of the image.
Original Image
Edited Image
Lab 1 - Part 2
For the second part of Lab 1, we are task to reverse the color tone of the 2 given video, the "Warriors Way - Flashback.wmv" as well as "Warriors Way - Showdown.wmv", we are entitled to reverse their color tone with one another, so the "Showdown" to a cooler tone which is blue, and "FlashBack" to a warmer tone which is around orange in color. Below is the original footage as well as the ones that I have edited accordingly to the task given.
For the 1st "Showdown" footage, I used the curves to slightly reduce the red channel, as well as increase the blue channel significantly. Next, I use the color balance tool, to once again reduce slightly the red tone, and slightly increasing the blue tone. With the blue channel increase by a lot, it gives a very cool tone to the footage, I also use the hue and saturation to touch up on the color tone of the footage to make it look better.
Original Footage
Edited Footage
For this second footage, it is slightly harder to do than the previous footage. I once again use the curves and reduce the blue channel greatly, where it will turn the whole footage yellow if you reduce the blue channel by a lot. I then increase the red channel slightly, so that the footage with turn to orange instead. However, I found that orange looks a little weird on the footage, and that slightly brownish will be just perfect for the fight scene, depicting a little bit of sun setting fighting scene in a mountain area with muddy and soil which is have a brownish atmosphere. Thus, I use the color balance as well as hue and saturation to slightly increase the red channel a little more, and it will turn the tone a little brownish for the footage.
Original Footage
Edited Footage
Lab 2 - Part 1
For the second Lab, we learnt more in-depth about color correction, where we need to follow the two given tutorials, "Primary color correction" and "Secondary color correction", and use the given image to color correct the background and less important items, where our main point is to let the audience focus more on the two main characters rather than the unneccesary background stuffs. Below is the original and edited version of the image after I have done the color correction by following the both tutorials. I done both together as the 2 videos are linked towards one another.
After following both the tutorials, I have use the new tool called color finesse 3 (for me is color finesse 2 in Adboe CS4). The color finesse tool is an awesome tool which is like all-in-one color correction feature, with curves, levels, color balance and more!
For the 1st primary color correction tutorial, we done color correction for the background, where we focus on the 3 main colors, white, grey and black, which can be found in the guy shirt collar (white), background shirt at the most right of the scene (grey), and lastly the woman shirt with a black patch in between her hand and her shirt (black). By hightlighting on all tthe 3 colors, we can reduce all of the white, grey and black in the whole background, not only the selected items. We also put a mask around and slightly feather it, so that the focus now goes to the middle.
For the 2nd secondary color correction tutorial, we will focus on the most notorious red bucket below the guy. The red bucket is too bright and becomes the center of attention for the image. Thus, by using color finesse tool, we can highlight the whole red bucket slowly, and reduce its saturation so that it is alot less brighter.
The image is in some tif. format where I can't view it, thus in After Effects, I don't know how to export it out so I render out as a video instead.
*My color finesse 2 is in trial version, thus will have the purple grid line on it, I apologise for the cause.
Original Image
Edited Color Correction Image turns Video?
Lab 2 - Part 2
In this second part of the lab, we are going to apply what we have done previously, which is reducing some of the bright in color attention seeking items, the "Flag" and the "Pope's shirt".
Both were very similar to that of the previous exercise, which is to reduce the saturation of the red bucket. For both, you just have to highlight the red color part of the flag, as well as the red color part of the pope shirt, and reduce the saturation greatly similar to how you have done it for the red bucket. If you select the red from the flag or the pope shirt, all the surrounding of the background with the similar red will be reduce together along with the flag and pope shirt red color. This excercise is pretty easy and straight foward to be done.
*My color finesse 2 is in trial version, thus will have the purple grid line on it, I apologise for the cause.
Original Footage
Edited Color Correction Footage
Original Footage
Edited Color Correction Footage
Lab 3 - Part 1
In this lab, we will follow the tutorial "Bleach Bypass" in our most famous videocopilot website. A very simple tutorial which teach us about the bleach bypass technique. We just have to increase the brightness and contrast of the image, and lastly, use the "CC Composite" and change the mode to color. Thus, the whole image will turn brighter in both brightness and contrast, but still it depends on your footage, and the bleach bypass will act accordingly to the footage coloring.
Original Footage
Edited Bleach Bypass Footage
Lab 3 - Part 2
In this final lab exercise, which I find it the most difficult of all, where we need to color correct two different footage from what we have learnt so far during the whole Week 3 exercises. Although we have an image reference to follow what is the best to correct the color of the footage, I still take a long long time to color correct the footage to the best that I could done.
I have use the color finesse to do all the work that I could done. For the first footage, I massively reduce the red channel in the curves, as well as slightly increasing the blue channel. I also slightly increase the brightness of the footage using the levels. I tried other stuff like hue and saturation, as well as color balance, but it didn't go very well, and the color looks like is all mess-up, thus using the curves and levels provided in the color finesse, this is the best I could have done to color correct the footage. It may not look perfect, but I think it is still presentable.
*My color finesse 2 is in trial version, thus will have the purple grid line on it, I apologise for the cause.
Original Footage
Edited Footage
For the second footage, I actually got really fed up as the color was all mess up and really hard to color correct it. Thus, I actually mask out seperately the sky and the ground and color correct them differently with one another. Using color finesse, for the sky part, I reduce the green channels in the curves greatly as well as increasing the blue channel, also increase the brightness slightly using level as it looks a little dark. For the ground part, same thing using color finesse, I reduce the red channel greatly in the curves and increase the green channel in it, also make it brighter using levels. It appears that the masking is not obvious and can't be seen, as I feather the mask and successfully achieve what I want which is to hide the audience about the masking. Overall, this is the best that I could done, pretty much looks good and quite nicely done.
Original Footage
Edited Footage
Reflection:
For this whole week of exercise, we will be touching on something new, which is color correction. I find these exercise rather simple, but, if you want to get the perfect coloring, you must really spent time and efforts, cause is not really easy to perfect all the coloring in these exercises. Some of the exercises I tried a lot of time to get the coloring right, but sometimes, I feel that it is still up to personal views about the different color standard of one another, as different people have different views and likes about different colors. However, there is still a universal indicator on which colors suit best on which image atmosphere or any purpose it have on the color of the image. Still, through these exercises, I learnt a lot about colors and contrast that I didn't know previously. Through these 3 weeks, I learnt a lot about After Effects and hope that I could continue to improve on it!
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