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The Tao Colorist

Issue CX                                                           Brought to you by: Tao of Color.com

Editors Note: A huge thank you to everyone who has emailed me over the past few weeks, as Hurricane Sandy took a bite out of our roof. It took longer to get back on track than I expected. But here we are: Safe, sound with a tarped roof over our head, plenty of heat and electric - and, except for these last few days as I cram to deliver Dead Man's Lake: The Grade-Along, a family that's perfectly healthy. Thank you for your patience as I bring the Tao back online.

 

Speaking of Dead Man's Lake... if you're wondering what the heck is a 'Grade-Along', the product page will go live sometime later today (Sunday). Check it out and let me know what you think!

The Craft

• What Display Should I Buy? - Alexis Van Hurkman delivers his thoughts on the state of color critical reference monitors and how we should choose the displays we use. He's heads in a different direction than you'd expect. As usual, Alexis is dead-on and it's an excellent read. (VanHurkman.com)

• The History of Color Correction - I've linked to this before but it recently popped up in my RSS feed and is interesting to revisit. (icolorist.com via ilovehue.net)

• How do we perceive Color? - "Color vision is shaped as much by human perception as it is by mechanical functioning." A philosophical musing about the nature of perception, explored through how we see color. (filmmakeriq.com)

• Thoughts on the Color Science of the Canon C300 - Art Adams has another great post. This one filled with tons of interesting tidbits on Canon's C300 color science... plus a terrific reason why that camera's Log mode isn't nearly as useful as you'd think. (ProVideoCoalition.com)

• Color Palettes: David Gray - A fascinating write-up on oil painter David Gray. There are two very interesting videos (for this audience) embedded in this blog post. The first, ½ way down the page, is a timelapse of him initially painting a portrait. Very cool. The second is ¾ down the page titled, "Glazing, Correcting". Particularly interesting was his comments about the areas of the face he likes to push more color. It got me thinking about a few things to try the next time the opportunity arises. (underpaintings.blogspot.com)

• The Magical Tech Behind Paper for iPad's Color Mixing Perfection - "While the appearance of a color on a screen can be described in three dimensions, the blending of color actually is happening in a six dimensional space". Very interesting article that touches on the weakness of RGB color mixing - all in the pursuit of creating an iPad app. (fastcompany.com via Tom Parish)

• Cinematography of 'American Horror Story: Asylum' Uses Classic Tools to Terrify in 35mm - Personally, I can't stand Season 2 of this show (and I LOVED Season 1). Professionally, I love this series' use of color and look as part of its narrative. This is a blog post summarizing an article in Cinematography Magazine about the film stocks and processing used to achieve the looks in Season 2. (nofilmschool.com via Dave Kendricken)

The Tools

• DaVinci Resolve 9.0.3 Released - Among other things, adds support for FCPx's latest XML format. (forum.blackmagicdesign.com)

• DaVinci Resolve 9 Keyboard shortcuts - Several different sets of keyboard shortcuts to download and print. (jonnyelwyn.co.uk)

• SpeedGrade Shortcuts - An app for your Android. (play.google.com)

• SpeedGrade Wishlist - A thread in the Adobe forums. (forums.adobe.com)

• [Training] Up and Running with SpeedGrade with Robbie Carman - In case you missed this from a few weeks ago. (lynda.com)

• SpeedLooks from LookLabs: The Ultimate Digtial Film Look - A review of this Film Look emulation plug-in. Personally I've been turned off by how LooksLabs markets this product. But this DP seems to buy into the messaging. Maybe there's something to it? (matthayslett.com)

• Red Giant Retrograde - Gives you the look of real 8mm and 16mm film stocks - right inside Final Cut Pro X. (crumplepop.com)

• FCPx 10.0.6: Red Support, Dual Viewers, New XML - And drop shadows. (tejbabra.com)

• Photoshop for 4K Video - A retouch plug-in that seems to track faces within Photoshop. (NoFilmSchool.com)