How to Create the “LUT Look,” and Still More Tutorials

Five new, short tutorials on the new Magic Bullet Suite 12. First up is the Memory Colors scope in Magic Bullet Looks:

Looks 3.0 comes with a set of presets designed to get you started with basic to advanced color grading. Here's how they work.

Here's a short overview of the new Lens Vignette Tool in Magic Bullet Looks:

It's easy to quickly toggle the grade off in Looks to check your work. Here's how:

And finally, I show you how to create from scratch, using just Colorista III, the heavily hue-constrained look that so many popular LUT packages provide. Although I prefer to keep this look "live" in Looks or Colorista, I also show how to easily save the grade as a LUT and re-use it elsewhere.

NAB 2015 Impressions

This year I combined my love of Las Vegas and crowds, and attended the NAB Show. I tweeted up a storm during the show, and collected all that noise on Storify — but I also wanted to summarize my impressions here.

Blackmagic Design URSA Mini

The URSA Mini is not “mini,” it’s the right size. The new EVF seems very nice. pic.twitter.com/gxEs4732SN

— Stu Maschwitz (@5tu) April 13, 2015

When Blackmagic Design announced the URSA at last year’s NAB Show, I joked that they had finally created a “camera-shaped camera” — but that was before I saw one in person. The URSA is a 16+ pound behemoth covered in LCD displays everywhere but where you most need them, unless you’re doing the only thing I’ve ever seen anyone do with one, which is drop it on sticks and shoot at eye level.

This year, Blackmagic showed that three years of making cameras has taught them a few things. The URSA Mini they showed off at this year’s show is truly a mature, smart camera design. I totally want one.

There are more thorough overviews of the camera out there, but here are a few tidbits I picked up at the show:

• The URSA Mini is available with either a 4K sensor or a new 4.6K sensor. The 4K sensor is apparently the same one Blackmagic has used previously, which was criticized. The new sensor promises 15 stops of dynamic range and a global shutter. My opinion is that Blackmagic would have done well to make this the only option.
• The Mini lacks internal ND filers, which is about the only criticism I’ve seen making the rounds, albeit very loudly. When I asked a Blackmagic rep about this, he was very candid with me — he said they simply don’t have the optical expertise to do it well — yet.
• The Mini works with the new Blackmagic EVF that also fits the “maxi” URSA. This EVF is really lovely in person, and I wouldn’t consider buying any URSA without one.
• If you held the Mini at the show, you should know that the production models will be made of magnesium, and therefore lighter than the aluminum show models.
• If I was going to pre-order an URSA Mini today, I’d get the 4.6K model with EF mount, the EVF, the shoulder kit, and the battery plate. All told, that’s about $7K — which is pretty darn reasonable.
• Oh, and don’t forget CFast2 cards.

Canon C300 Mark II

The man @vincentlaforet rocking the Canon booth. pic.twitter.com/eK1Gwgm2J5

— Stu Maschwitz (@5tu) April 13, 2015

Canon may not be disrupting anything with this $16,000 4K sequel, but I’m sure it’s a solid camera. And hey, it has built-in NDs!

Resolve 12 and Adobe Premiere CC 2015

With the latest release of Premiere and the new Magic Bullet Suite 12, I am finally dropping my long-held stance that the best way to master a film project is to move it from your NLE into a finishing environment such as Adobe After Effects. This means I’m a fan of color grading in the NLE, as you can tell from my latest spate of tutorials.

Both Adobe and Blackmagic Design are supporting this idea by converging their flagship filmmaking products. Adobe added a bunch of color correction tools to their NLE, and Blackmagic is pushing very hard to make an NLE out of their color correction software.

I’m excited about both of these developments. Adobe has essentially done exactly what I recommended back in 2011 when they acquired IRIDAS SpeedGrade. Basic color control should be as intrinsic a part of a video clip as volume control is to an audio clip. Now that Adobe has done that, I’d love to see more support for real color grading workflows in Premiere — things like stillstores, tools for comparing/matching several shots in a sequence, and more advanced masking options, such as the ability to cut one mask with another, as we can in After Effects.

Am I concerned about Premiere shipping with color effects that do some of what Magic Bullet Looks, Colorista, and Film do? Quite simply: no. Red Giant’s tools provide a power and ease-of-use that’s tough to beat, and I relish the opportunity to complement Adobe’s color tools, and even to compete with them in a friendly way. Remember my tips for How to Kick the Tires on a Color Corrector? Keep holding both Red Giant and Adobe to those standards, and we filmmakers will always come out on top.

As for Resolve, my biggest complaint has always been that few working editors I know have luxurious enough schedule or client relationships to lock a cut and move their projects to a dedicated color tool. But if you could start your cut and finish it in Resolve? Now that’s interesting.

Gimbals

That's @ClintTorres rocking the @chdntech Nebula 4000 gimbal and his @SluglineApp shirt. pic.twitter.com/VjG2sGNo1m

— Stu Maschwitz (@5tu) April 14, 2015

There were two disruptively-priced gimbal rigs that caught my eye. The DJI Ronin-M is available now for preorder for only $1,399, and then there’s the Nebula 4000lite, which is tiny, affordable at $769 with a battery, and fun to use — as long as you’re not the one that has to balance it. Its compact design blocks your view of the camera LCD though, so I was very happy to be able to try one out before buying. You might find yourself needing enough additional support gear to push the price into the Ronin territory.

LCD Monitors and Recorders

Blackmagic Video Asist. 10-bit 4:2:2 ProRes and DNxHD recording to SD cards for $495. Uses two Canon batteries. pic.twitter.com/HnYU0XNLfb

— Stu Maschwitz (@5tu) April 14, 2015

One of the more confusing things at the show was comparing the various monitoring and recording options. Blackmagic announced the Video Assist 5“ HD LCD that will record 1080p ProRes, for just $495. SmallHD showed their 502 with optional Sidefinder attachment, which costs over twice that and doesn’t record — but supports 3D LUTs, which Blackmagic told me the Video Assist will not. I went to the Atomos booth a few times to try our their monitor/recorder options, but got distracted by their naked ninja lady every time, so I’m of little use to you there, sorry.

The @SmallHD 502 with Sidefinder. Cool setup. Very nice UI on this 5" 1080p LCD. pic.twitter.com/eoarO6P8ea

— Stu Maschwitz (@5tu) April 14, 2015

Frame.io

Since I first posted about it, I’ve had occasion to use frame.io on a real project, and I already can’t live without it.

Redrock Micro HĀLO

So far the @redrockmicro Hālo system is the star of the show for me. It really works, and it will be affordable. pic.twitter.com/mbHXicdTjo

— Stu Maschwitz (@5tu) April 14, 2015

Holy crap.

Thank goodness Brian Valente of Redrock Micro never learned to pull focus. He seems to have a personal vendetta against out of focus video. And he was very humble about showing off his latest effort in this holy war, perhaps because some of his previous solutions were slow to materialize. The result of his quiet humility was the best experience of the show for me — the slow, dawning realization that I was seeing something truly transformative.

The HĀLO system is a LIDAR scanner combined with a powered remote lens control system and a wireless focus controller with an LCD touch screen. The LIDAR scanner — the same kind self-driving cars use — recognizes the contours of people, and tracks them, displaying them in a way that will have you reciting your favorite quotes from Aliens.

“They’re in the room man!” Hālo LIDAR focus tracking system from @redrockmicro is insanely cool. pic.twitter.com/OpHAzIYdwf

— Stu Maschwitz (@5tu) April 13, 2015

You can use the tracking dots to assist manual focus pulling. Or you can tap one of the people-dots, and HĀLO will automatically track it. Tap a different person’s dot to instantly rack focus to them — even if they’re out of frame, as the LIDAR scans a very wide field.

HĀLO can be aware of your aperture (possibly even driving it), so it can show your true DOF as a soft glow around the focus radius. And you can also manually focus by dragging that focus radius with your finger. Release, and focus snaps back to the person you were last tracking.

The system requires nothing in front of the camera, and is very compact. It’s as useful as an aide to a professional focus puller as it is to a single shooter who would rather not stress out about keeping sharps on a slow push-in on a moving subject.

The most amazing things about all this is? It actually works. And Redrock Micro intends to make it preposterously affordable.

Don't take my word for it. Hālo by @redrockmicro in action. pic.twitter.com/0DsD2vMRCu

— Stu Maschwitz (@5tu) April 13, 2015

Avengers Assemble

I was quoted in print at a broadcaster’s convention from a panel that was streamed live from a telephone. pic.twitter.com/ATW2DCpnMA

— Stu Maschwitz (@5tu) April 16, 2015

Red Giant hosted several press events, including a really fun panel with myself, Seth Worley of Red Giant Films, Ryan Connolly of Film Riot, Niko Pueringer and Sam Gorski of Corridor Digital, and the singular Freddie Wong. We had a blast talking about how much Freddie hates slates. Seriously.

And The Rest

This was a really solid NAB Show. Not a lot of frivolous products or trends, and some nice maturations of kit we’ve seen through its awkward toddler stages. I was happy to catch up with friends at the RED booth and wrap my head about their powerful but confusing Weapon upgrade path, and to hold an ALEXA Mini, a camera I expect to see everywhere I go for many years to come.

Do check out my long string of postings from the show floor for many more things I didn’t mention here, including cameras from Kinefinity and Apertus, and a look at my SMPTE socks. And if you want real, solid impressions of the show from someone who actually knows what he’s talking about, you won’t do better than the most recent episode of the RC podcast, featuring Jason Wingrove breifing Mike Seymour on many of the items mentioned here.

Vegas: Same rule as Taco Bell. Always leave before you've had enough. See y'all next time! #NAB2015 pic.twitter.com/wf9NR5ANh3

— Stu Maschwitz (@5tu) April 15, 2015

Red Giant Spring Sale, and More Tutorials

For the next 24 hours, everything at redgiant.com is on sale for 25% off with coupon code SPRING25. That includes Magic Bullet Suite 12, as well as Trapcode, PluralEyes, and Universe. Even the awesome and already-affordable Offload.

Red Giant has steadily been posting Magic Bullet tutorials each day since NAB. First up is a quick overview of the new Shadows/Highlights Tool in Magic Bullet Looks 3.0.

Next is a short and sweet look at handy keyboard shortcuts in Looks:

In Magic Bullet Looks 3.0, we made it a ton easier to organize and manage your Looks presets. Here’s how:

The sale ends tomorrow, April 29th, at 8:00am PDT, but there still more of these short tutorials to come! To make sure you don’t miss them, follow Red Giant on Twitter and Facebook.

Daily Tutorials Leading Up to the Red Giant Spring Sale

Red Giant has been releasing a new tutorial each day leading up to their Spring Sale on April 28. I've gathered the most recent ones here.

First up is one I've wanted to do for a long time. We so often see keyers demonstrated as at way to change the color of an object in the frame. But you can also use a keyer to design a customized, powerful color adjustment. Here I show a couple of examples in Colorista III, including creating a saturation control that doesn't affect skin tones.

Magic Bulet Looks 3.0 includes a new Color Space Tool that makes it easy to work with any kind of footage, from video to log. Used in conjunction with the new Tool Pinning feature, this means any of the 198 new Look presets work perfectly with any camera.

Here's a quick look at the Duotone Tool, new in Looks 3.0:

Here's a breakdown of the similarities and differences between the standalone Colorista III effect, and the Colorista Tool inside of Magic Bullet Looks 3.0.

This tutorial uses Premiere, but the same applies to Final Cut Pro X — including the ability to use masks, as of version 10.2, released last week at NAB.

There are many more of these short tutorials to come! To make sure you see them, follow Red Giant on Twitter and Facebook.

Prolost Graduated Presets for Lightroom, Version 2.0

Adobe has just released Lightroom CC (AKA Lightroom 6), featuring facial recognition, HDR and panorama merging, and GPU-accelerated editing. There are also updates to Lightroom mobile for iOS and Android. They are great updates, and I'll have more to say about them in the future.

But today I have an announcement of my own: The release of version 2.0 of my Prolost Graduated Presets for Lightroom. This is the first major upgrade to my unique workflow presets that allow you to make powerful adjustments to your photos without needing to be an expert in Lightroom.

If you’re not familiar with the Prolost Graduated Presets, you can brush up with this video. These Lightroom Develop presets, arranged in gradations, allow you to dial in common color adjustments by previewing and reacting, rather than moving a bunch of sliders. In version 2.0, I’ve added several more complex sets of presets that do things no slider can, including four variations on the “blockbuster” (cool shadows, warm highlights) look that I previewed at the Bay Area Lightroom Users Group earlier this year.

While other presets give you canned effects, the Prolost Graduated Presets put you in control. Dial in just the right amount, and combine multiple presets together to create a look all your own. It's all the power of Lightroom editing, with the ease of picking an Instragram filter.

View fullsize

Ximending Taipei, shot on Canon 5D Mark III and processed with Blockbuster Cyan.

These presets have completely changed the way I work in Lightroom, and I’m making them available here in the spirit of keeping color work fun, powerful, and intuitive.

Here’s the complete list of what’s new in 2.0:

• Color Temperature II (JPEG) – 29 gradations of white balance adjustments (warm to cool) that produce more pleasing results than Lightroom’s default controls on non-raw images.
• Blockbuster Blue – 15 gradations of a cinematic, cool-shadows look with a deep blue tint.
• Blockbuster Cyan – 15 gradations of a cinematic, cool-shadows look with a green-blue tint.
• Blockbuster Gold – 15 gradations of a cinematic, cool-shadows look with a warm tint.
• Blockbuster Sundrench – 15 gradations of a warm cinematic look with pale colors and low contrast.
• Blockbuster Hues – 15 gradations of a cinematic color adjustment that allows separate control over the hue isolation used in Blockbuster Blue, Blockbuster Cyan, and Blockbuster Gold.
• Blue Squeeze – 11 gradations of compressing only blue hues toward cyan. This provides a more granular control over the Blue to Cyan preset found under Color Treatments (HSL).
• Candy Apple Red – 12 gradations of boosting red toward a rich, saturated shade.
• Invisible Vignette – 15 gradations of a subtle vignette that range from unnoticeable to pronounced, but still organic.
• In Prolost Creative, three new subtle vintage looks:
  • Aged Olive
  • Aged Teal
  • Aged Umber

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Florence, Italy, shot with Canon 5D and processed with Blockbuster Gold and Candy Apple Red presets.

The Prolost Graduated Presets 2.0 work in Lightroom 4 and up, including Lightroom 6, with or without Creative Cloud. They are available now at the Prolost Store for $49.99. If you purchased a previous version, you could be eligible for a discount on the upgrade — details here.

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