The Tao Colorist

The Craft

• Grading 'Great Expectations' - A terrific article with the colorist on this BBC production. Great read. (DefinitionMagazine.com)

• 'Hustle': Color Grading Canon C300 Footage - Synopsis of a discussion from a recent Boston Creative Pro User Group on grading the short film 'Hustle'. (Chris-Portal.com via NotesOnVideo)

• S-Log and the F-3 - Part 5: 3D Look Up Tables - The more I work with them the more convinced I've become that Look Up Tables (LUTs) are as much craft as they are science. And here, Andy Shipsides shows us how to create and manipulate LUTs using a variety of tools. He also provides download links for his F3 LUTs. (blog.AbleCine.com)

• [Video] How Color Influences Black & White Photography - This tutorial is for still photography using Lightroom. Industrious colorists should be able to walk away with a few new ideas on how spice up their Black & White treatments. The big takeaway: Don't just de-saturate your images - that leaves a ton of unrealized opportunity for creating interesting B&W treatments. (Vimeo.com)

The Tools

• [Review] BaseLight for Final Cut Pro 7 - Yup. FilmLight has finally released their FCP Legacy plug-in and it is impressive. Really - it's phenomenal. Too bad Apple pulled the rug out from under them. This review is from full-time colorist and BaseLight aficionado Jack Jones. He provides a quick overview and some opinions and introduces to us the concept of the 'offline colorist' and the 'online colorist'. (JackJonesColorist.com)

• [Review] Checking Out the Baselight Plug-in - Checking out? More like a full-body MRI scan. Alexis Van Hurkman digs deep into the Baselight plug-in. Lots of pictures with a focus on a few of Baselight's nifty controls. Refresh your cup of Joe before digging into this one. Well done, Alexis. (VanHurkman.com)

• [Review] ScopeBox 3.0 - A quick overview on this latest version of Software Scopes for the Mac. (StudioDaily.com)

• [Video Review] Avid Artist Color Control Surface - Carey Dissmore does a nice job with this overview of the Artist Color. (CareyDissmore.com)

• My Top DaVinci Resolve Requests - Colorist Robbie Carman offers up his feature requests for DaVinci Resolve. Others (including your humble Tao Newsletter Editor) offer up their requests in the comments. This list is probably too late for whatever the DaVinci team has waiting for us at NAB next month.... but hopefully some of these will be addressed. (RobbieCarman.net)

• LinkColor - Take Control of your HDLinkPro by creating and exporting LUTs. Works not only with HDLinkPro but also exports LUTs to a large variety of containers. (Linkcolor.tv)

• Sync Red Cine-X with DropBox - And the metadata changes you make to your footage will populate to all your computers. Nifty! (RedUser.com via @RoyalGalactic)

• [PDF] Arri Alexa Dailies Using DaVinci Resolve - A WhitePaper from Arri on creating dailies (and then conforming back to the originals) in FCP and Avid using Resolve. It's updated to include the latest Resolve 8.2 release. (Direct Download via @ResolveTips)

• [Video] Canon 5D mk III and Avid Media Composer 6 - A very quick overview on how to import Canon 5D mk III footage into MC6. Turns out it's very simple stuff. (Vimeo.com)

• Aliased Fringing on the C300 - It occurs on hard-edge high-contrast borders. This article does a good job explaining a potential defect with the codec. (NextWaveDV.com via @FreshDV)

• F65 Workflows Parts 1 & 2: Working with Sony SRMemory Cards - On the CineTechnica blog, Andy Shipsides offers two videos showing what it takes to get Sony's SR codec onto your workstation. Part 1 demos Sony's SR-PC4 memory card reader and Part 2 shows how to get footage off the SR-PC4 and onto your computer. That's right - it requires a two-part video to perform what should be a simple feat. Curious that Sony has waited to release the Desktop card reader - forcing early adopters to integrate yet another piece of kit into their DIT workstations. Gotta say, I'm not too impressed with the SR-PC4. (blog.abelcine.com)

• F65 Workflows Part 3: Sony SR Codec - Working with the SR Codec in Avid and FCP 7. (blog.abelcine.com)

• FCPx Tools Part 3: Color Effects - A nice round-up of the various 3rd party color effects filters for FCPx. (digitalfilms.wordpress.com)

• 11 Free Color Effects for FCPx - Don't let the ugly thumbnails of these effects fool you - there are some nice time-saving filters in here. (alex4D.wordpress.com)

• iPad 3 & Still Images: Color Shifts - If you transfer still images to your iPad 3 via iTunes, hopefully you don't require pixel-for-pixel color accuracy as the images get 'optimized' for the iPad. This article shows a great example of how iTunes is altering the colors of photos. (PCWorld.com via NotesOnVideo.com)

• iPad 3's Color Gamut - Great post on how closely the new iPad tracks to the Rec. 709 high-definition color gamut. I'd also love to see how each of the RGB channels track along grayscale. I need to check with a few of my projects to see what I think... but I've long told clients that I'd accept color notes off an iPad 1. That build was close enough that when they say they saw a problem I could see it on my reference monitor. (NegativeSpaces.com)

• An Interview with 'X-Keys' - If you've never seen them, X-Keys are programmable buttons, dials, and hardware do-dads for controlling software. Their controllers can be pressed into service with most of our color grading and NLE apps. Splice Vine offers up a great interview about this nifty niche hardware / software manufacturer. (SplceVine.com)

• [PDF] An Idiots Guide to JamSync - The cutest little manual I've seen in a while. Here's the link to the JamSync app itself. (LightIllusion.com via @JayFriesen)