The Tao Colorist

The Craft

• A Pickpocket's Tale: The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins - This has nothing to do with color grading and everything to do with craftsmanship. I love this story. Hopefully you will too. (newyorker.com)

• Animals Speak Color - About the use of color in the Animal Kingdom. Published a few years ago. (harvardmagazine.com via @joshpetok)

• What Color is Night? - Plus, why the teal-and-blue look isn't going away... and why it's not the fault of colorists. (redsharknews.com)

• Processing Color with Analogue Eyes - Last week this newsletter featured the iPad app, Dale Grahn Color. This is a short article about the development of the app. (redsharknews.com)

• Infographics: Charting Hollywood's Odd Obsession with Orange and Teal - Nifty article about a gent who charted a year's worth of color palettes for film trailers and then visualized it. One thing to keep in mind, this speaks more to the trends of trailers than films, since often the look of a trailer doesn't match that of the film. (wired.com)

• What is the difference between CIE LAB, CIE RGB, CIE xyY and CIE XYZ? - Like the title says. Interesting note at the end of the page about the 'L' component in LAB. (wolfcrow.com via @IAmColorist)

The Tools

• Understanding Autodesk Smoke 2013 Project Files - Where and how to find Smoke project files. (premiumbeat.com)

• A look at SpeedGrade - An overview of SpeedGrade CS 6. (nycppnews.com)

• [Video] 4 Tutorials to help you improve your Green Screen Skills - Because a good colorist should know how to pull decent keys. (nofilmschool.com via Justin Minich)

• [Video] DaVinci Resolve 9.1: Add Matte - Juan Salvo demos some additional features in Resolve 9.1 when adding a matte clip. (vimeo.com via @j_salvo)

• [Podcast] Noise and Gain Reduction - Various noise and grain removal tools for the digital artist. (toolfarm.com) 

• Baselight Web Tech Episode 3 - A demo from colorist Allen Kelly and combining color grading with VFX to make an explosion look more dynamic. (blog.filmlook.com)

• [Video] Keyboard-Driven Color Correction in Final Cut Pro X - Because clients love digital artists that zip around using keyboard shortcuts. (provideocoalition.com)

• [Video] Assimilate Webinar: Optimizing your DI Workflow for Web Episodics - This looks interesting. It features Scratch. Clocking in at almost 90 minutes, brew up a full pot of coffee. In my initial scan, even if you're not on Scratch there are a lot of good ideas in here. (vimeo.com)

• 'Iron Man' Editor Develops a '21st Century Moviola' for the iPad - First we go retro will a film timing app, now a Moviola-style app for editing. Are we all feeling a need to get back to the basics? (hollywoodreporter.com)