Red Giant has just released Magic Bullet Suite 13, a massive update to our color correction and look creation tools.
This is such an epic update that I barely know where to start.
Colorista IV
Colorista IV is my new favorite creative tool. It now runs as a panel inside Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, which means that you can use it as your go-to color tool without ever having to manually apply it to your clips. Just start working with the panel and Colorista is there.
Colorista IV features new Temperature and Tint controls, as well as LUT support, log processing, an updated keyer, and a new Point Curve that works seamlessly with the familiar Colorista parameterized curve.
There’s also Guided Color Correction, a graphical step-by-step process that helps anyone quickly and easily balance out one shot, or 100. These steps are based on the techniques that a real Hollywood colorist uses to teach editors the basics of color grading, and it’s a meaningful example of how Magic Bullet empowers everyone, regardless of skill level, to create great color.
Denoiser III
Oh man. This is a big one.
Magic Bullet Denoiser has alway been good, but good was not good enough for us. We started over from scratch with an entirely new GPU-accelerated computer vision algorithm that a team of engineers spent years perfecting. It’s not only faster than Denoiser II, it also produces much higher quality results.
And, maybe most importantly, it’s incredibly easy to use. Because the new engine analyzes each frame individually and builds a noise profile, we’ve been able to simplify the controls down to just five sliders — and two of those are for sharpening.
Denoiser III is so fast that it can play back in real time on many systems at the default settings. Or crank up the quality and get great results on even your noisiest footage — Denoiser’s adaptive playback will still give you great performance if it detects that you’re playing back at a proxy resolution.
Denoiser III cleans up compression artifacts as well, and it effectively promotes your footage to the highest bit-depth supported by your editing software. It’s a DSLR/mirrorless shooter’s best friend.
Denoiser III is possibly one of the most important tools Red Giant has ever created. It runs in Premiere, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, and is coming soon for DaVinci Resolve.
Renoiser
Renoiser is a new addition to the Magic Bullet Suite. I’ve always wanted to make the ultimate film grain emulation tool, and we finally did it. The problem with most grain effects is that they simply slap a grain layer on top of the footage with a blend mode. Renoiser takes a different approach, actually rebuilding your image out of virtual grain. The grain actually “stirs up” the pixels and pushes them around — and you control how much using Size and Texture sliders. We’ve got customizable presets for popular film stocks and styles, as well as some utility noise modes that help any project survive downstream broadcast and web compression.
Renoiser also features powerful, adaptive sharpening. I plan on using it on everything I make.
Film
Magic Bullet Film is now optimized for Mercury playback in Premiere. This means that all the color correction tools in Magic Bullet Suite 13 are now real time. Yay!
My buddy Pete Lee recently graded this cool music video using Magic Bullet Film:
Magic Bullet Looks
Magic Bullet Looks is more than just a color corrector, it’s also a powerful simulation engine for real-world camera filters and effects. Presets make it easy to get started, but the friendly interface invites you to customize, tweak, and make the look your own.
In this update, Magic Bullet Looks features over 50 new looks, a new way of working with log footage, and a new Reference Library feature for storing and comparing shots. Renoiser, Colorista IV, and Mojo II tools are built right in. Oh yeah, and we rebuilt it for real time Mercury playback in Premiere Pro.
Cosmo II
Another ground-up rewrite, Cosmo II features an all new smoothing algorithm that makes people look great, often with just one click. You’re going to make a lot of people happy with this one.
Mojo II
Yet another ground-up rewrite, Mojo II is all about making your footage look great, fast. Mojo creates a cinematic look by adding color contrast, unifying your color palette, and offering easy shot-to-shot adjustments. It’s perfect for editors who need to make log footage look great for a rough cut, but it’s also used as a final sweetening pass by real Hollywood colorists.
Color and the Color Experience
I used to think that my role in overseeing Magic Bullet was to make professional color correction accessible to everyone. But in today’s world, where a lot of color software is effectively free, I now realize my role is much more challenging — but also more rewarding. My job is to make great color results accessible through easy-to-use tools that don’t sacrifice any power, and work the way you want to work, right inside your editing software. Color work is real work, but the tools don’t have to be punishing. Red Giant has devoted an immense amount of effort to make Magic Bullet a great creative experience for anyone who wants better color, whether they’re grading an entire feature or just punching up a quick edit.
And we’re not done yet.
Magic Bullet Suite 13 is available now from Red Giant.