It's the Newsletter's 10 Year Anniversary!

10 years ago yesterday the very first Tao Of Color Grading Newsletter was emailed. The early Newsletters were pretty light and not easy to read (formatting-wise).

With the continued support of the Tao Treasurer, the Original Sponsor (Flanders Scientific), the many Sponsors that followed, and a willingness to sacrifice Saturdays (long before Work From Home became a 'thing') this Newsletter continues to ship over 40 weeks a year.

Thank YOU for your continued readership!

And thank you for reaching out to my Sponsors and letting them know you appreciate their support of this effort. As someone who has been on the marketing side of the new'ish online economy, I know how difficult it is to track the impact of Sponsorships for Newsletters like this. When Sponsors get emails directly from readers like you, that's when they know their hard-earned dollars are being spent smartly and are being seen by an audience that matters to them.

Today is also Issue #CDL!

That's right! 450 Sunday Newsletters have been sent, which translates in Roman Numerals to: CDL.

You don't think I could let that get by me, the Editor of a newsletter dedicated to the craft and skill of digital color grading? I've dropped a few items in here to celebrate this CDL edition.

I've also dropped in an item from the Avid-L2 mailing list, which also had a link in the very first Newsletter. Finally, I'm re-sharing the very first Sunday Fun(ny) - both because it's still fun and it's still online!

Thanks for celebrating this milestone with me! If you really want to celebrate, share the sign-up page on social media and see if we can't grow the readership to help celebrate this craft of ours, that's a fusion of logic, science, and creativity: https://TaoOfColor.com.

I'll see you next Sunday.

Stay busy. Stay healthy.

Happy Grading!

(and remember - if you have a story that's a fit for this Newsletter, hit reply or email it to 'newsletter@taoofcolor.com'! Include a quick reason for the suggested link.)

- Patrick Inhofer
Colorist | Publisher | Coach

Join the 'Color Cartel' Protein Folding Team - Rosetta@home allows you to donate the spare CPU cycles of your rig to the scientific fight against corona viruses and cancers! The Tao Newsletter's Color Cartel is a Top 5% team and climbing. Join Rosetta@home, set up an account, start 'folding', and connect to The Color Cartel team! 

(webinar) "Image Engineer Daniele Siragusano will explore some of the intricacies of the sRGB standard, and explain the reasoning behind the upcoming changes to the sRGB implementation in Baselight 5.3."

(webinar) "LA colorist Juan Cabrera will discuss high-profile episodic finishing workflow using Mistika Ulitimate & Boutique." July 23. Registration required.

Downloadable assets include Dolby Vision and ATMOS encoded files. (via Avid-L2 mailing list)

Reading between the lines in this long article, production is staying shut down until the Covid-19 virus is eradicated.

(podcast) "The DOP of thew new Tom Hanks movie Greyhound, Shelly Johnson ASC, talks to host Ben Concoli". I have to admit, I really enjoyed this film, the constraints it places on itself, and the cinematography.

(podcast) "We talk with original Broadway team artists . . . along with the film’s sound team . . . [about] the challenges of designing a custom sound system for the historic Richard Rodgers Theatre, translating the live show into a cinematic world, and how Dolby Atmos played a key part in giving the audience at home the transformative theatrical experience." (via Robbie Carman)

"NetFX is a cutting-edge platform which will provide collaborators frictionless access to infrastructure to meet Netflix’s demand for VFX services around the world as our library of original content continues to grow." A pithy article that leaves open as many questions as it answers.

"The ASC CDL functions are mathematically orthogonal primitives that can be used to represent vendor-specific corrections."

"The three tone curve parameters are Slope, Offset and Power. These parameters are simple mathematical operations, which allow the colourist to modify the incoming data."

I'm linking to the 16.2.4 update Read Me, consisting mostly of Fusion and audio fixes. Also released this week was 16.3beta1 update, which seems to mainly add support for their new camera, also released this week.

Download three RAW clips from the URSA Mini Pro 12K. You'll need to scroll down to the section titled 'Generation 5 Color Science'. You'll probably also need v16.3 of DaVinci Resolve to grade them.

(video) "Clear the cloud of doubt and dive deep into Secondaries and will explain the mathematics behind it and how parallel nodes are being deployed by some of the world's colorists."

(video) Colorist Luke Ross is back with a series of Baselight beginner/intermediate videos. This first teaches "how to create and edit shapes, add feather/blur and track shapes through a scene." This Newsletter will share the rest over the next few weeks.

I've never bought into the value of using these controls in 'RAW panels' versus in software. But if you disagree and have been avoiding ProRes RAW for this reason then Scratch may be what you're looking for.

(video) Learn powerful keyframe editing techniques in DaVinci Resolve's Fusion page, using the built-in spline and keyframe editors.

(podcast) In this installment of From The Mailbag we sit down to talk about tone mapping and how it's used in software and on consumer displays.

(video) In this webinar, learn an alternative approach to color grading ACES projects in DaVinci Resolve plus collaborating with others in ACES.

"Can an eGPU box with a desktop GPU close the gap between the 13-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro?"

"Many people are wondering if their Thunderbolt 3 devices will work with Thunderbolt 4 equipped computers, or if this is just another crazy ploy to get everyone to purchase all new gear." Good answers to reasonable questions as yet another interface is hoisted upon us.

I had no idea this tool was installed with Windows, which provides detailed information on attached displays.

If you're rebuilding your grading suite you may find this new product interesting, "Replacing older Thunderbolt 2 models, these new models feature Thunderbolt 3 which makes possible greater features, such as more video formats, greater selection of colorspace, RGB video formats and lower cost."

"Real-world maps that look like 80s video games." This item was the very first Sunday Fun(ny), in the July 18, 2010 edition of this Newsletter.

"Keeping busy despite a ban on visitors, residents of Sydmar Lodge recreate famous images of musical artists such as Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, and Elvis Presley." Brilliant.