ACADEMY COLOUR SCIENCE
Unlike the Sekonic, which has its very own display, the Datacolor unit works with the free Lightcolor Meter app on Android and iOS. The device measures continuously and sends the data to your phone. The unit is small, rugged, powered by AAA batteries and includes a mounting plate for stands or tripods. Its integrated dome can also be recessed for more directional readings. For interviews, green-screen set-ups, product work or any scene that involves mixed lighting, that kind of precision is a major time saver. TAKE 3: POLISH IT IN POST Most editors begin in Adobe Premiere or Apple Final Cut Pro. Clips are put on the timeline, and then the matching begins by eye or using tools such as Luma Waveform, RGB parade and vectorscope. That process can work, but it quickly gets messy when many different cameras, profiles and lighting conditions all get involved. It is even riskier when you are dealing with compressed formats such as 8-bit 4:2:0, where aggressive adjustments can quickly degrade the image. A far more reliable editing route is to use a colour-managed application that is specially designed for precision matching. DaVinci Resolve remains the strongest option, and the free version offers more than enough for most filmmakers’ and creators’ projects. If you took time to shoot a colour chart on-set, your reward is that Resolve can now do a remarkable amount of the hard work for you. It supports chart-
FINALE CUT The Color Finale 2 Pro plug-in not only transcodes Raw footage but also lets you select LUTs for different looks
and choose the Colour Chart tool. Select the correct chart from the pull-down menu, then define your source gamma based on how the footage was recorded, such as Rec. 709 or S-Log. Choose a target gamma – usually Rec. 709 unless you are grading for HDR – and enter the colour temperature used in camera. You then draw an overlay grid to align with the chart in the frame and hit Match. Resolve compares the known chart values with the recorded image and automatically adjusts the clip for more accurate colour reproduction. It reveals where the camera is drifting as well, helping you understand the characteristics of different sensors. If you apply that process consistently across your footage, you can build a clean, matched starting point before any creative grading begins. From there, you can either continue inside Resolve or send the footage back to your NLE for final editing. Once the primary colour correction is sorted and the clips are balanced, LUTs and style treatments begin to make sense. Tools such as Filmconvert and Color Finale 2 Pro can be used to build mood, emulate film stock or create a more stylised palette. But the key is for the footage to already be technically sound. That is the real secret to easier colour correction. It is not about finding a magic plug-in. Instead, it is about establishing consistency from the very start, so that every subsequent decision on-set and in the edit suite becomes faster, cleaner and more predictable. Get the monitor right. Set white- balance properly. Measure light when it matters. Use charts when you can. Then let the software do the heavy lifting from a solid baseline. That is how you get better colour results without making the process harder than it needs to be.
based matching using targets from major manufacturers like the DSC Labs Oneshot, Calibrite’s Colorchecker charts and the Datacolor Spyder Checkr. The basic workflow is simple. Just import the footage, go to the Colour page “Establish consistency from the very start, so that every subsequent decision becomes faster and more predictable”
DAVINCI CODE Blackmagic’s free Resolve software is one of the best ways to get truly accurate colours, every time
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