The Tao Colorist

DaVinci Resolve 9

• [Video] DaVinci Resolve 9: How to Safely Upgrade the Pain-Free Way - This is a special preview of the Special Report from Tao of Color's DaVinci Resolve MasterClass... it's my typical 50 minute tutorial and the first 15 minutes offers advice on how to upgrade from Resolve 8. Then it's a 35 minute magical mystery tour of the new UI. I highlight my favorite 5 new features in v9 while orienting v8 colorists on the new Interface. Note: I've been having trouble with YouTube this evening. It may take until end of day Sunday (New York City time) for the video to go live. (TaoOfColor.com)

• Seven New Features in Resolve 9 - These are previously unannounced features. And some of them are Big Time. If you're a Resolve colorist, a must-read. (VanHurkman.com)

• [Video] DaVinci Resolve 9: Five Features in Five Minutes - Warren Eagles shares his fave five. He picks some good ones. (Vimeo.com)

• [Video] Demo: Resolve 9 Live - This is an excellent recording from the FCP Montreal User Group previewing the then upcoming DaVinci Resolve 9. There's good stuff in here for those of you unfamiliar with Davinci Resolve. Note: This demo is from an earlier Beta build shown at NAB. (VanHurkman.com) 

• [Video] DaVinci Resolve 9: Walk through - Denver Riddle highlights a few of the major new features in Resolve while color grading a shot to achieve the 'Dragan Effect'. (YouTube.com)

The Most Read Articles of 2012 (First Half)

The Craft, Part 1

• Getting That 'CSI' Look - Using DaVinci Resolve. It starts with a nice tip on how to control what your LUT is doing to the image. (Vimeo.com)

• How A Waveform Monitor Can Help You Improve Your Images- A series of tutorials by Tektronix on using waveform monitors to accomplish specific craft-related goals. (Tek.com)

• [Video] Tutorial: Grading RED in Resolve for a Sunrise Look - Good tutorial with nice little Resolve tips and tricks... including the only way to see your softness settings with the Polygon Power Window. (presynkt.com)

• 7 Tips for HD and DSLR Color Correction - Decent list of tips. Though the Order of Operations tip doesn't make much sense to me - but it isn't wrong. Just... a personal preference that may or may not work for others. (HurlbutVisuals.com)

• Skin Tones in DaVinci Resolve - This nice tip will work in any app that supports Layer / Composite modes. A nice example of using a Resolve Layer Node to control your skin tone corrections. (Vimeo.com)

• RED Scarlet & Resolve: Black & White - One way of getting to Black and White. (presynkt.com)

• Grading A Complex Shot using Assimilate Scratch - What's the difference between a 'finishing' app and a 'color grading' app? This tutorial shows it pretty well. The colorist is grading a television commercial with complex compositing and multiple alpha channels using Assimilate Scratch. Nice. (Vimeo.com)

• 5 Lesson from Stanley Kubrick - I especially like "The Power of Adaptation". (MikeJones.tv)

• Exploiting A Single Light Source - Another great post by Art Adams on lighting. This one about using a single source of light. If you're new to color grading it's important to read articles like this. Being aware of the direction and source of your footage's light ensures you don't impose your will at cross-purpose to the DP, resulting in a weaker-than-necessary image. (ProVideoCoalition.comvia @IAmColorist)

• Flat Doesn't Really Mean Flat - Word up. Alexis Van Hurkman (one of the potentially fabulously handsome colorists doing the full day color grading training at NAB) makes a pithy point about 'shooting flat'. It's a point you'd think would be obvious... but, sadly, isn't. (VanHurkman.com via David Bell)

• The Color of Emotion - Handling skin tones when your subjects get flushed with emotion. (VanHurkman.com)

• The Secret World of Color Correction: Part 1 - A great post on the fundamentals of color correction. Includes some interesting thoughts on how to approach the initial balance of your images by thinking across two color axis. Good stuff. (TheFilmBakery.com)

• [Video] DaVinci Resolve: Color Grading Sessions - The final in a series of DaVinci Resolve videos where two colorists swap real-world projects and re-grade them. Really nicely done. Kudos to Carey Dissmore and Steve Oakley. (CareyDissmore.com)

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

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

The Craft, Part 2

• [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)

• How I Use LUTs - Some interesting thoughts on how to use LUTs to solve both technical and creative problems. (CharlesBoileau.tumblr.com)

• The Wonderful Color Wheel: Part 1 - A fantastic article with amazing images of color wheels spanning almost 5 centuries. Just terrific. (imprint.printmag.com)

• [Video] Seeing Color and Value - Squint! It's a tutorial for painters. But I was introduced to this technique from a talented award-winning motion graphics designer back in the '90s and it works for us too. (YouTube.com)

• Do You Feel Lucky, Punk? - A color grading workflow breakdown by colorist Jack Jones on a recent short film. Shot on RED, graded on Film Master, DCP delivery. (JackJonesColourist.com)

• 21 JumpStreet: Getting the Color Right - A discussion of the look of this new 'playing-it-straight' comedic feature film. (StudioDaily.com)

• Color Correction Practice Game - Steve Hullfish thinks this game might improve your grading skills. Try it and see. (ProVideoCoalition.com)

• The Purple Blockbuster - Some good ideas on how to segment your image to create a look. Notice, of course, how Aaron starts first with a balanced image. (AaronWilliams.tv)

• DreamWorks Q&A with Jeff Olm - I missed this post back in March. An interesting Q&A with colorist Jeff Olm, including the 8 different deliverables he needs to deliver for each film he grades. (iColorist.com)

• Post-Haste: Because Organization IS Craft - I'm a big believer that to rise to the level of craftsman in our business you must first and foremost stay organized. This is a good overview of Digital Rebellion's 'Post Haste' app that will help you develop and then enforce a solid folder structure for your projects. (mac.appstorm.net)

• Technicolor 3-Strip: Explained in 37 Seconds - Nicely done. (YouTube.com via Cub Reporter Jim Wicks)

• You Sunk My Battleship - A conversation with the DPs from Battleship. What I found most interesting was the discussion of how they handled the mixed color temperatures of all the different monitors and practical lights. Also interesting - how tightly they controlled their iris to a specific range. And then there's the final paragraph, with a universal truth facing all colorists. (ICGMagazine.com)

• What's In A Name? - You've heard about the 'skin tone line' on a vectorscope, yes? Did you know that line's purpose has nothing to do with skin tones but is a legacy of analog video processing?
  
  This 'skin tone line', its name and the question of its usefulness in a digital world has been a source of controversy. At the center of the storm is Author and Colorist Alexis Van Hurkman and he's written a post supporting the I-Bar's inclusion in digital vectorscopes (its been disappearing from software packages).
  
  Personally, I understand where his critics are coming from... but I'm with Alexis on this - the I-bar has a place in modern digital vectorscopes, even if it's a distortion of its original purpose. Read his full post to get edumacated on the subject. (VanHurkman.com)

• [Forum] Building a Low Cost Grading System - A discussion thread that's really about low-cost monitoring... and one person's struggle to find a professional cheap grading monitor. This is getting to be a tiresome meme. Whattaya think: Time to write a blog post addressing this? (CreativeCow.net)

• DI Artist Stephan Nakamura on Prometheus - A terrific in-depth article on the DI process to finish the grading for Prometheus. There's great insights in here on why they did 6 different DI passes for 6 different deliverables, which they chose to start with first and why. (magazine.CreativeCow.net)

• DaVinci Resolve Grading Tips - A blog post that collects a range of interesting video tutorials from colorist Warren Eagles. (JonnyElwyn.com)

• [Forum] Building A Custom Sharpen in Resolve - Colorist Josh Petok adopts a technique he learned at FXPhd for working with RED footage and uses it to selectively isolate and sharpen the Luma channel. After reading this I tried it on a job to soften some chroma artifacting and it worked reasonably well. A must-read for Resolve colorists. It's a starting point for a whole lot of interesting node trees. (LiftGammaGain.com)

• Dialing In A Look - Using DaVinci Resolve with a RED Scarlet. Note how he uses an Arri LUT for his initial gamma curve. Goes to show... LUTs are as much a creative tool as technical. (Vimeo.comvia @JimWicks)

• [Video] Bringing Color to Life: Paint Sound Sculptures - A terrific Behind the Scenes video of a new campaign for Canon printers. The images they captured are stunning. How they did it... nothing short of craftsmanship. Must See TV. (Vimeo.com via@ColoristBoy)

• Luma Processing - The power of isolating your effects to just the Luma or Chroma channels of your image. Some great examples in here. If this concept is new to you it's a must read! (ProVideoCoalition.com)

• Rescuing Dark Footage - Using composite modes to build up underexposed images while (hopefully) minimizing noise. (ImNotBruce.blogspot.com)

• Color Grading Noel Gallagher's "The Death of You and Me" Music Video - This is a terrific color grading breakdown by Milton Adamou on a music video he recently graded. He shares his thoughts on his decision making and reveals some of the techniques he used to achieve his final results. His blog has several other breakdowns that are well worth your time. Well done, Milton. (MiltonAdamou.com via @Quantel)

The Tools

• Top 5 Ways to Avoid Catastrophe In Post - Point #2 says it all. Read the details to understand what it takes. (StudioDaily.com)

• Are PCs Poised to Take Back the Edit Suite? I've been wondering the same thing myself. Included are good links looking at the render speeds of PC-based edit suites. (SpliceVine.com)

• Avid or Adobe Premiere: A False Choice - Who says it's an either / or decision? (BiscardiCreative.com)

• RGrain: Realistic Film Plates For Your Digital Footage - A collection of 7 film grains to overlay on your footage. (HDCamTeam.com)

• [App] VideoGrade - Color grading for the iPhone. (iPhoneCinematographer.com)

• Overlay An Inverted Layer To Brighten Underexposed Areas - A Photoshop technique you might want to try out. (PetaPixel.com)

• HD Monitor Calibration: SMPTE, ARIB, and White Balance - Using test patterns and scopes to balance your monitor... DIY-style. (NegativeSpaces.com)

• [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)

• 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)

• [Forum] Smoke 2013: A User's Perspective - So what does a current Smoke user think of the new version unveiled at NAB? And is Smoke a color grading tool equivalent to Resolve, Baselight, et al? Click through to this post by Hillary Knox on LiftGammaGain. Also, the first post of the thread is a great collection of Smoke 2013 links. If you're 'jonesing' for more Smoke details, this is the place to get it. (LiftGammaGain.com)

• SpeedGrade CS6: First Look - A good overview of SpeedGrade. And why many colorists are choosing to sit this version out. (ColorGrader.net)

• Formats Explained: Raw, Log and Uncompressed - What's the difference between these three recording formats? (HDVideoPro.com)

• Arri Alexa: DNxHD for Avid Media Composer - Getting your Alexa prepped for DNxHD recording. Plus, understanding the MXF files and importing / viewing the files in Avid. Gotta say, two words to the creators of this video: Power Windows (YouTube.com)

The Business

• [Video] The Future of the MacPro in Video Post - And why Thunderbolt is not the answer (hint: Not enough PCI Lanes). Plus - the cost of a high-end Windows workstation. (CareyDissmore.com)

• More On The Switch to Avid Media Composer - Well-known Final Cut Legacy advocator (and FCPx abandoner) Walter Biscardi offers up a lengthy blog post on why, after running Avid and Premiere side-by-side for six months, his company decided to make the switch to Media Composer 6. It's a pretty even-handed account of where Premiere failed. (BiscardiCreative.com)

Outside 'The Box'

• Saying Goodbye to FCPx - A reasoned post on why one editor has decided to abandon FCPx, even after the most recent updates. (ScreenLight.tv via @twainrichardson)

• Woody Allen's Cinematographer Has 6 Life-Saving Tips for Low-Budget DPs (IndieWire.com)

Sunday Morning Fun(nies)

• Color Matching: A Game - Tests not only your ability to match Saturation and Hue... but also tests your ability to figure out how to play this game while under pressure. (color.method.ac via@percolate)

• Clients From Hell - Client advice on how to fix every problem with your images. (ClientsFromHell.net via @comebackshane)

• Desktop Backgrounds for Editors (and Color Graders) (UniqueDesigners.wordpress.com via @digitalreb

• [Video] Earth: As You've Never Seen It - If you're in the midst of writing or shooting a Space Odyssey... then you've got to watch this video. Gorgeous. Inspiring. Don't wait until George Lucas un-retires to create Episode VII and steal it from under you! (YouTube.com via James Wicks)

Gear Heads

• [Video] NAB 2012: Software Scopes -  Tao of Color's 3-part video roundup of the three best software scopes on the market (YouTube.com)

• ProMax ONE 16-Core Tower: The Future of the MacPro? - Just how stale has the MacPro become? Read it and weep. (BareFeats.com)