The Tao Colorist

The Craft

• Dead Coloring: The First Painting of Flesh - Slightly esoteric for today's digital colorist. But an interesting insight into how a painter prepares her canvas to create clean skin tones. (UnderPaintings.blogspot.com)

• Surrealistic Skin Tones - A Scratch tutorial to get those hyper-real skin tones popular in fashion photography. Also an example of why I'm personally excited to have 'Composite Modes' directly inside Resolve's nodes when version 8.1 ships.  (Vimeo.com)

• Bart Simpson and the Blockbuster Look - A link to an terrific color wheel of cartoon character flesh tones. And an observation on the link between Bart Simpson's flesh tone to one particularly well-known Hollywood Blockbuster palette. (CMieritz.blogspot.com)

• DIY Color Grading - I'm sure I've linked to this. But it was recently pointed out to me again, so why not? After all, this article starts from where so few indie filmmakers begin... thinking about color in pre-production and through production then into post. (MikeJones.tv)

The Tools

• Looking Good Everywhere: A Color Management Case Study - With THX Cinespace coming to the rescue. (iColorist.com)

• In Depth Video Demo of BaseLight for FCP Plugin - Both Filmlight and Red Giant finally figured out how to give FCP users very elegant plug-in interfaces. Too bad FCP is dead. Otherwise, this looks like an amazing implementation for the mouse-based color grader and BaseLight Assist Station. (ProVideoCoalition.com)

• Tangent Design's 'Element' Control Surface: Mockups & Final Prototype - Tangent is showing production prototypes of their new 4-panel control surface at IBC. Alexis Van Hurkman shows photos of some of their initial foamcoare mock-ups and compares to the final results. (VanHurkman.com)

• Introducing the Tangent Devices 'Element' Control Surface - Big pictures. Lots of them. CAD. Final Prototypes from different angles. Pretty. I've been Tweeting with Walter (who posted these and is at IBC) and according to Tangent, pricing has not been finalized but is expected to be in $3,500 range for the full set of (4) panels. Not sure if that's Euros or US Dollars. (BiscardiCreative.com)

• Baselight | FCP Workflow Guide - This link is a direct download of the PDF. (Filmlight.ltd.uk)

• Baselight: RED Integration - A short webpage on working with RED in Baselight (Filmlight.ltd.uk)

• DaVinci Resolve: "Morph Into" Command Tutorial - Warren Eagles demos the difference between a Layer and Parallel node by using the "Morph into" command. (YouTube.com)

• Avid Media Composer: De-Log Effect - Grab this little Media Composer effect to give your Log footage a nice S-Curve. (TheCurrentCut.com)

• Avid Media Composer: DNxHD with Embedded Multichannel Audio - I had no idea this was so difficult in Avid. Here's a blog post about a potential wrench when trying to work-around this Avid limitation. (LFHD.net) 

• After Effects: Alternate Workflows - If you're used to doing all your finishing and color grading within your NLE, why would you want to offload some of those duties to something like After Effects? Oliver Peters explores the 'DV Rebel' workflow. (DigitalFilms.wordpress.com)

• A Review of FCP 7 from a FCPx User - The worm turns... or does it? Or am I using that saying completely wrong? I don't know. But a fun read. (FCPxMegaTest.blogspot.com)

• RED: R3D Data Rates - Nice handy chart. (PeterSalvia.wordpress.com)

• Digital Acquisition: The Last Nail in Celluloid's Coffin - Is there much of a point in comparing all the techinical differences between digital cameras anymore? Is how we're shooting now more important than what we're shooting on? (DCinema.wordpress.com)

The LM-2461W is an affordable 24" color critical reference monitor featuring 10bit color depth, 3G/HD/SD-SDI Inputs, 12 onboard scopes, and DCI P3 support. All standard and all for just $4,995.

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The Business

• Adobe Buys Iridias - Not the company. The technology. According to the Iridias press release Adobe didn't buy their customer database... (MacWorld.co.uk)

• Adobe + Iridas = FCP Dead - Peter Salivia has been working with SpeedGrade for the past 6 months. Here's what he thinks about this 'technology-not-the-company' acquisition. (PeterSalvia.wordpress.com)

• 'The Foundry' End-of-Life's 'Storm' - Because of RedCine-X Pro (NoFilmSchool.com)

• The 'Storm Commiseration Thread' - Over on RedUser.net (RedUser.net via @Filmbot)

• Transforming Technicolor - Legendary Technicolor has been forced to transform itself as our industry undergoes radical workflow and technology changes. This Q & A gets you up to speed on what they've been doing and what they're thinking. (DigitalCinemaReport.com)

• A Dongle Nightmare - We all know that Dongles are no better at protecting software than other forms of licensing. They can be amazingly convenient (think: software-anywhere just plug in the dongle) and they can be unbelievably annoying (they get lost, stolen, put through the washing machine). Here's one person's not-so-happy encounter with his DaVinci Resolve dongle. There's a lot of other pros chiming in on the good and bad of USB Dongles. (RedUser.net)

• The Freelance Surge Is the Industrial Revolution of Our Time - Would it be more accurate to say the Freelance Surge is getting back to the pre-Industrial Revolution? (theAtlantic.com)

• Is 'Reality TV' Written? I had trouble deciding to include this in the Tao Colorist Newsletter. The reason it's here isn't for the first 2 minutes of this piece but for the last minute. It's a perfect followup to the 'Freelance Surge' article. Essentially, according to this video: Not being in a Union, not having a Pension, not earning Residuals is demoralizing. I guess Freelance Surge'ers must be leading miserable lives. (FilmmakerIQ.com)

• FCPx Boosts Sales of Adobe Video Tools by 45% - I don't suppose the 50% discount had anything to do with some of that? Another non-rumor brought to you by... (MacRumors.com)

• Alexa Frame Rate Safety Guide - Pass this along to your DP friends... (blog.abelcine.com)

• The RED Revolution - The LA Times Magazine did a big profile piece on RED, Jim Jannard, and the RED's place in overthrowing the supremacy of film. It's a local newspaper story about a local boy doing really big things. Read the comments for 'the rest of the story'. (LATimesMagazine.com)

IBC 2011

• IBC 1967 vs 2010 InfoGraphic - A good infographic on the IBC tradeshow and how it's grown over 4+ decades. (blog.quantel.eu)

• 'Marquise RAIN' Color Grading System - It's often said that the best part of going to a trade show is finding 'that guy' in a tiny booth sitting all alone with an innovative solution. One of my Tao of Color students found exactly that in the Color Grading space  (thanks for the heads-up Pepijn!).
  
  Marquise RAIN is a Windows-based solution and Pepo said he immediately fell in love with the interface. My 45-year-old eyes agree with him, as you can see in this video demo for setting up RED footage (scroll 6 minutes in for a better look at the primary interface).  Pepo reports he had a bit of sticker shock with a turnkey price of 40,000 Euros.
  
  RAIN supports the full range of Tanget surfaces, includes Real-Time Degrain, Stabalization, and Dirt / Scratch removal and is part of a family of DIT and finishing solutions. If you're still at IBC you can find them in Hall 7 Booth 7.K25. (Marquise-tech.com)

• LightWorks Phase 2 - Includes OS X and Windows support plus new: codecs, export / import options, stereoscopic tools, Decklink / AJA / Matrox support, controls surface support (including Tangent's forthcoming Tube protocol) and more... In my deepest most secret place I hope LightWorks becomes the inheritor of FCP Legacy. (editshare.posterous.com via @exte1977)

• LightWorks Official Announcement - From the Lightworks website with a bit more historical perspective. (LightWorksBeta.com)

• NVidia Enables 'Dramatic' New Video Processing I/O (marketwire.com via @GenArtsInc)

• THX Announces Room Certification for Critical Viewing - Why do I get the feeling if you need to ask the price you can't afford it? (THX.com)

• DaVinci Resolve: Do Resolve Engineers Ever Sleep? This post covers the new features in Resolve 8.1 - announced at IBC. New features include: Composite Effects directly inside Nodes, AAF Export, ACES support, Copy / Paste Nodes. (VanHurkman.com)

• DaVinci Resolve 8.1 - The press release of the full range of features for the 8.1 upgrade. (BlackMagic-Design.com)

• DaVinci Resolve for Windows !! -  No sleep, indeed. BlackMagic announced a feature parity version of Resolve for Windows will be released in 1Q2012. Current Resolve 8 customers will be able to use their existing dongles, cross-platform. (BlackMagic-Design.com)

• DaVinci Resolve: Linux Price Drop - The $20,000 price for Linux has been eliminated if you own / buy the Resolve Control Surface. Previously the Linux version was a $20,000 add-on. (BlackMagic-Design.com)

• Assiliate Scratch Announces AJA Support - SDI output now available via the AJA Kona 3G card for it's Mac OS X products. Also: New remote grading option and new Stereo tools. (AssimilateInc.com)

• Avid Adds New EuCon Workflow Partners - New partners to the Avid Artist series of controls surfaces include Baselight and Colorfront (on-set dailies). (eon.businesswire.com)

• AJA: KiPro Mini to Support Avid DNxHD Codec (Aja.com)

• AJA: New 'iO XT' Delivers Thunderbolt for Professional Video I/O (Aja.com)

Edumacate Yer'Self

• DaVinci Resolve Workshops - Your humble newsletter editor will be presenting DaVinci Resolve this Tuesday in Washington DC and later this month in Montreal (including a raffle for a license of Resolve 8 and a seat of the Tao Of Color Resolve MasterClass training). Alexis Van Hurkman will be in Sacremento, Ca. doing a Resolve workshop at the end of September with the good folks at Silverado Systems.