This was EXTREMELY helpful. When you said “why does my video suck after adding just contrast and saturation” I was like “lol thats me”. Thanks again and hope to see more videos geared towards beginners :)
I would like to extend my gratitude to Gerald's mother. Thank you for bringing your son into this world and raising him to be the wonderful person that he is!
Hi Gerald, just so you're aware "middle grey" for Rec.709 is defined in the ITU-R BT.709 spec as 40.9% - this is why slog3 has you target 41% and their Rec.709 LUT keeps middle grey there as it is technically correct for Rec.709 (so not the "50%" you seem to target in this video). There are other things including the usage of the term "linear" in this context that may confuse newcomers, but overall good attempt to help that audience learn. - Hook (Blackmagic Design)
Yes, I'm confused about "linear" - linear in a perceptually uniform encoding, or linear light intensity? Edit: I have some understanding now - log encoding is a simple form of data compression, and it's basically the same type of dynamic range bit depth "companding" that's been used for computer displays & image encoding for decades. It appears that for video, log recording is a relatively simple dynamic range companding, that broadly encodes in a perceptually uniform manner, and omits the subsequent stages of image "enhancement" - the enhancement is left up to the user, and that's referred to as "grading". I assume that the reason we need different log encoding codecs is because, being an imperfect ("lossy") encoding, different codecs will be more appropriate for different material & intended viewing devices & conditions. For even more flexibility, that's why we have the option to record fully raw video.
This should be the "Intro" video to every color grading course. In less than a half hour, you clearly explain what's important to starting a grade and where to take it from there. Thanks so much.
It's very difficult to find people (TH-camrs especially) who really know -from a technical standpoint- what they are talking about and are actually technically competent, considering most only give generic and basic information to try and sell tremendous LUTS. I think it's safe to say your videos are contributing to school a new generation of more competent videographers. Thank you. ❤️
This video is more than how to handle LOG. It’s an explanation for why using the Tone Curve is always more nuanced than using Contrast sliders. Entirely applicable to photography as well.
I'm guilty of having done the "just add contrast and saturation" to Log footage and now I know! Clearly where you expose your footage is key. So useful, especially as I have to match a lot of cameras in upcoming work.
I learned about some things I didn’t know existed in this video. It’s a lot more helpful when you share more than just “change the saturation and contrast”. Most people don’t explain WHY certain things matter, so thank you.
Whenever I'm feeling cocky and arrogant and thinking I'm a genius, I watch a GU video and it pumps me full of perspective. I understood about 30% of this, but I enjoyed it. This will be a good video to watch every six months or so... Each time it will (well SHOULD) make more sense.
@Gerald: Since you're working in Resolve, it would be good to also mention its "Color Space Transform" function (which can be either globally applied in the project settings or applied as an effect to a node). It does all that a LUT or ACES DIT can do and more, i.e. translating most common log formats into the most common color spaces like Rec709, sRGB, Rec2020 etc. But even more importantly, it can apply Tone Mapping to automatically correct exposure and avoid clipping of under- or overexposed Log-material during the transformation. It also features gamut mapping to make colors that are outside the range of the target color space fit that color space without bleeding out. On top of that, since it acts as a mathematical function while a LUT just a color allocation table (that in most cases reduces color resolution), "Color Space Transform" is non-destructive. As a result, contrast boosts done after "Color Space Transform" are much less likely to result in clipping or color banding than contrast boosts done after a LUT.
Florian Cramer This is a very good point, and also worth mentioning that it is becoming the standard for delivering projects to companies like Netflix. Using Colour Space Transforms is a very good way of delivering multiple deliverables for example a HDR Rec 2020 PQ and an SDR Rec. 1886 2.4 gamma whilst using the same standard. The problem with the described workflow in this video is that you have to essentially regrade for any deliverable you do. Software like Resolve and the lesser known Baselight are perfect examples of professional tools which provide the ability to do exactly this. By using colour space transforms you allows for the ability to grade in an abstracted sense where all of your corrections are applied before the “tone curve” in a colourspace which is the same size if not larger than the original capture gamut. @Gerald it would be good to see a video on ACES/RED IPP2/ARRI ALF type workflows.
As a musician and sound design guy, its funny how all the sliders and panels remind me of musical EQs, multiband-compressors, etc. I think its a lot easier to understand what’s happening to a picture with a bit of that sound engineer knowledge. Fantastic work! And all available with a click 🤩 Thank you!!
Minor tweaks are not that noticeable (esp on 8-bit monitors) and then it becomes opinion - the colors look "good enough to me" or I think LUT #1 is better than LUT #3 maybe like flying a plane in fog or at night - you are flying off the instruments your maintaining altitude and avoiding objects not necessarily flying the most efficient route or providing the smoothest ride and definitely avoiding flying by site or feel. GU's dashboard just shows where things are supposed to be regardless of whether it "matters". Take cam A and cam B and match their colors... ok here's the results. Finally, on TH-cam there's no shortage of color grading 'Fails' to make a "how not to grade" guide.
Gerald, I don't know whether to thank you or curse you. I thank you for showing why my colors didn't feel 100% correct when using HLG3, but I curse you for making me want to regrade all of my old videos to cure the problem. Agh! Wonderful video as always.
Holy shit, this video literally changed my entire grading process. The "X" demonstration was incredibly eye opening. I was having a really difficult time trying to grade some low light log footage, kept getting too noisy or not looking quite right. The curves totally solved the issue. Thanks for this.
I've been dabbling in and out of video work for a few years and am constantly coming back to your videos to learn more. This video is several years old, and I am still using it to gain knowledge on what I am looking at on resolve and how to get technically great results and then use my creative touch as a final grade. Thank you for the way you speak about such complicated topics!
That's very informative and i wouldn't listen to anyone but you for such technical topics, however i would have loved a "real life" demonstration just so we can see how all this applies on, let's say...outdoor lit skin etc. I understand that those color patch are essentially doing the job and every situation and shot are different but..i think a real life demonstration would have been a good help. Thanks for all your work man !
Just got an R5, and you have helped me understand how to grade footage and use curves CORRECTLY. I was over here thinking that my camera was broken because my footage was so grainy, but it turns out I just didn't understand how to use curves.
Not dealing with manually linearizing LOG and HLG and accurate colors is a great reason to just apply the Leeming LUT first and then tweak to taste. Great video and clear examples.
Oh wow. Thanks buddy. I had serious issues grading my C200 raw footage. You paved the way. Pulled out my color chart, followed you directions and "boom!" my raw footage is now usable. Very useful. Thanks again. :-)
I like this follow-up video. In a past video comparing Sony picture profiles, you said in passing "If you want Alexa colors, you may have to mess with luminance." I actually took that advice and experimented with color depth for my SLOG-2 footage and increased the saturation considerably in camera and I found that my corrections in Resolve were more predictable and closer to real life - requiring less effort. That relationship between luminance of a color and our perceived impression of saturation and contrast is incredible. You proved that here, too. Love your help guiding some experimentation!
I haven't started the video yet but i know that this is something that i was waiting for someone to upload. Almost everyone kn youtube tends to grade log footage incorrectly! Which is just annoying. Thanks for the video
THANK YOU for making videos like this. I'm an experienced stills photographer planning to film my first movie sometime next year, and I've avoided jumping into color grading and LUTs and picture profiles because it seemed so daunting. I use a lesser program to Resolve to edit what I do now, again, because while I know Resolve is better, the learning curve seems/feels so much steeper. For the last month, I've been watching your videos like crazy, shooting test footage, and dipping my toe in the water with all of these things. You have made it so much easier and so much more approachable. I would STILL be avoiding it if not for videos like this.
I know Gerald's channel has been growing steadily, which I'm happy about, but I'm blown away that he doesn't already have a million+ subscribers. I can't imagine my educational journey in cinematography without Gerald's channel.
This was SOOO helpful. I am (or shall I now say "was") totally guilty of correcting C-Log footage with just contrast and saturation. INVALUABLE INFORMATION GERALD THANKS 🙏 !!
Gerald I hope you know how much value you provide to thousands of people around the world. Keep doing what you're doing man the production value and succinct delivery are top notch 👍
A tip for the curves window, you should click on the three dot options menu for the curves and enable Editable Splines! Every point on the curves will have a handle for moving splines and its so much easier to control your curve. I usually enable the editable splines and then only push and pull the handles for the end points on the curve
So much value on this videos man, you don't just throw what to do at us, you show us with graphs and exemples and that makes a HUGE difference. I learn what I'm doing and why. Hands on my favorite channel
this must be the fifth time I watch this video in the past few months, since I found Gerald Undone here on TH-cam, and I still could leran something new. You're freacking brilliant, man!
So, the way I've been grading Slog3 with some success, is grabbing the top of the curves on each side and using the scopes to stretch out the white and black points to 100 and 0 in Rec709 respectively. Then I go and start adding in the actual curve points, which gives me the tonality but also allows me to preserve a lot of the data that Slog3 footage is using. Usually creating an exponential (reverse log) curve to counteract the actual log curve, which seems to "linearise" it fairly well. - Petros
This is the reason I tell people don’t just buy Luts because of how it looks I bought luts before and it looked better when I graded the footage myself I would rather buy your luts because you know the little tedious details that can maximize your footage great video 👍🏼
some luts are good, they are created from scratch and you can just apply it everytime, some are just made by hippies who adds contrast and saturation with bunch of color wheels.
Seems I have made every mistake! Best tutorial yet, most of the TH-camrs are doing the just add contrast... as of late I only was playing with curves. You really helped make it an exact science. Thanks!
I can't tell you how much this helped. I feel like I've been living in the dark ages until now. If you were teaching at a university I'd do a second bachelor and attend every lesson from start to finish!
I just posted my first-ever color graded short film piece using the Panasonic S1 with the V-Log kit and I had some difficulties achieving a balanced color style within that footage. Thank you for helping a beginner like myself understand these color values and equations I will be taking these into my next practice piece thank you, Gerald you are the best! :)
I owe a lot of my filmmaking skills and knowledge to TH-cam community, but there’s so much misinformation out there about how to shoot and grade log. This video is by far the most accurate I’ve seen on this topic. Now that 10 bit has become almost universal, there really isn’t much benefit to ettr, which introduces severe issues in post such as exposure consistency and plastic highlight. Log is not exactly designed for very quick workflow. Taking time to nail exposure according to manufacturers’ data sheet, then correcting later with official lut on GH5 and a7iii has given me far superior image and less grading time than when I was ettr-ing with leeming lut(although slog3 exposed correctly on a7iii made denoising absolutely necessary thanks to its 8-bit footage). BTW, why do people keep bragging about how they color correct without a lut as if it’s a more manly thing to do? Shooting log without using official lut is like buying a house and refusing to use the proper door for entrance. Jumping over the window every time might work for individuals but it certainly wasn’t the intension of the architect.
Gerald! This video is amazing. Thank you! One request as a followup to this, or for future videos. I was super excited when you said you were going to show a more "real world" application of this correction method if you don't have the chart, but then you went and continued to use the chart with the easy to follow "X". Yes, I can memorize your curve guide based on exposure but it would be (have been) much more helpful to see the process of correcting an actual clip of real-world footage without the "X" pattern and seeing how you apply these methods in that scenario. Anyway, thank you again for your fantastic work!
Extremely helpful video. At first, I just slapped on a LUT and that was it. But these extra steps makes footage look so much better. It's like night and day.
Thanks so much! I’d been struggling for years with the curves. All the tutorials say to make an S curve. Since I ETTR, it didn’t work. I tried your ‘inverted log curve’ today, works perfectly. And so quickly, too! 👍
Now this is the kind of breakdowns i like, with factual info and not just opinions. I think something to add would be that some Log LUTS seem to affect the hue/saturation of each color independently which would be a complete guessing game to recreate without a color checker. So, yeah, just use the manufacturer's lut or one from a trustworthy third party. Learned a ton of golden nuggets from this, thanks Gerald!
I think your video is very helpful for understanding the way contrast works and how you want a 2.4 gamma (which looks straight line in a rec.709 waveform) around your 18% grey. For those who want to stick to their telecine style color grading workflow, this is a great explanation. I only wish you had adjusted the exposure differently at 27:15. Your LUT expects a specific log format and by applying a custom curve, you change how the luminance values are distributed. The proper way to adjust exposure on a log image is to change the offset, since adding in log is the same as multiplying in linear (offset vs gain).
Good point. I'm not sure how to do that in Premiere though. I was trying to only use tools available in all NLEs. Do you know if Premiere has a similar function to offset?
@@geraldundone I took a quick look and all i could find is the red, green and blue offset using the ASC CDL effect. Unfortunately, that method is very unintuitive and hard to fine adjust. I'd suggest replicating the offset with the curves tool. Essentially, an offset is shifting the curve up or down but keeping it parallel. This worked great!
Halfway through the video and I have to say, this is an awesome explanation. As someone who has experience in photography, but is just getting into video, knowing those concepts are really helpful!
Excellent video and explanation Gerald! I learned a lot... and now I understand why so many people avoid LOG like the plague.. it's because they don't understand it. This vid is a "must watch" for anyone who grades LOG.
This was extremely helpful. Completely made digital color correction make sense. I never really understood what was happening by changing settings, but this clarifies the process.
Super valuable information! I've been mislead by the "adjust contrast and saturation" tutorials in the past. Glad to know why I am using log luts - and what to do if I didn't have one
More like this one - at first I thought that this would be too basic - however, you expanded my knowledge of using test charts thoroughly. I use several test charts and have be not using them to their full potential. Thanks.
As an aspiring colorist I appreciate the depth you went into and that you’re comparing to scopes, not relying on your eyes. Why not use a color space transform instead of curves adjustments for the initial contrast correction?
I’m a slow learner Gerald ...and I think the fog may be starting to clear. Always enjoy your upbeat, patient and hardworking approach to this stuff. (Btw ...my A7s iii is due in Nov sometime ...per Camera Canada) I’ll keep hacking away at the learning curve - Thank you!
Color grading is such a finicky and time-consuming process for me, it seems like I can take my time, try to get it right, then make one mistake and the whole thing is ruined. Thanks for the video, I took a few things away from it!
One of the best internet tutorials I have seen regardless of topic! Relevant content, well explained and without repetition. I use the Leaming LUT , but one take from this was that even if you don't use that color checker, a general good way to correct over/under exposure seems to be using the curves (a single point in the middle and adjust to taste)
I simply cannot thank you enough for all your helpful videos, I already learned so much from your channel. You really hit the perfect ratio between going into detail and the "why" behind things without making them too hard to understand for a beginner like me. Thank you!
This was incredibly helpful. I’ve been crushing skin tones in SLog2 and trying to figure it out for so long. First actual technical explanation that I can use to do it right. I watched maybe 10 others who by this knowledge, were just breaking their footage from the start. Thanks!
This was hugely helpful. I understood none of it. Which shows me how much further I have to go... which is great! I'm taking a Davinci Color grading course right now, and this was way more helpful to showing me in what order and why things are done rather than just how to do them.
I don't even do video, but I could follow along with what you were saying. Incredible content. I enjoy your enthusiasm and how you present the content.
Thanks Gerald, this was really informative and I appreciate the thorough explanation. I will be paying way more attention to my curves from now on. I especially like when you talked about the range of tonalities across the face. I definitely have found that LUTs tend to crush the highlights together, and curves are a great way to bring that back.
THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. Did I say thank you? 99% of people shooting log and not using a corrective lut end-up with crap images. Hopefully some of them will see this and at least use a purpose-built curve to normalize their image before further grading. btw, thank you.
so incredibly helpful!! You really gave me a better understanding of what's happening when I apply the technical LUT and how to fix it if I miss exposure! Thanks!
See I should have watched all the way through. I could not for the life of me figure out why I had no contrast in my skintones and it was all just milky white even if I brought them down. I was even bringing my total exposure down and jacking the tonality all over the place to try and compensate but nothing was working. It just finally clicked for me and I thank you for going into that. Slog is scary but now I feel like I have a grasp on it
🤯 being a novice at this stuff, I just shot all in flat and log profiles. This very comprehensive (not so) deep dive will help a lot! This is great, keep em coming 👍
Very helpful to see what actually happens with the colours when you use the standard controls on log. Would be nice if you could talk about the in-built function of Resolve where you can choose your Gamma and Color Gamut and what happens to the image when you grade it then.
it was actually nice to see you using DaVinci. I downloaded it but seemed a bit too much, at first. Starting to understand how it might be the better color grading program. It's amazing how you can turn me into, even more of a nerd about this stuff. The complement is, that you take the mundane and hard to understand stuff (not much experience with picture profiles) and make them seem easier to understand and not so complicated anymore. Thanks!
Hi, I'm Gerald Undone and I'm two stops happier today.
okay thats gold
This was EXTREMELY helpful. When you said “why does my video suck after adding just contrast and saturation” I was like “lol thats me”. Thanks again and hope to see more videos geared towards beginners :)
Absolutely, lol that's me too! HAHAHAA
I would like to extend my gratitude to Gerald's mother. Thank you for bringing your son into this world and raising him to be the wonderful person that he is!
Not just the mother but also the father 😂
Hi Gerald, just so you're aware "middle grey" for Rec.709 is defined in the ITU-R BT.709 spec as 40.9% - this is why slog3 has you target 41% and their Rec.709 LUT keeps middle grey there as it is technically correct for Rec.709 (so not the "50%" you seem to target in this video). There are other things including the usage of the term "linear" in this context that may confuse newcomers, but overall good attempt to help that audience learn. - Hook (Blackmagic Design)
Yes, I'm confused about "linear" - linear in a perceptually uniform encoding, or linear light intensity?
Edit: I have some understanding now - log encoding is a simple form of data compression, and it's basically the same type of dynamic range bit depth "companding" that's been used for computer displays & image encoding for decades. It appears that for video, log recording is a relatively simple dynamic range companding, that broadly encodes in a perceptually uniform manner, and omits the subsequent stages of image "enhancement" - the enhancement is left up to the user, and that's referred to as "grading". I assume that the reason we need different log encoding codecs is because, being an imperfect ("lossy") encoding, different codecs will be more appropriate for different material & intended viewing devices & conditions. For even more flexibility, that's why we have the option to record fully raw video.
Lawnmower guy lowered the greens too much. I'll leave.
Nothing like a good demon LUT!
😂😂😂
You came to mind when Gerald was talking about the red tones in the beginning :D
Hahaha good one
This should be the "Intro" video to every color grading course. In less than a half hour, you clearly explain what's important to starting a grade and where to take it from there. Thanks so much.
It's very difficult to find people (TH-camrs especially) who really know -from a technical standpoint- what they are talking about and are actually technically competent, considering most only give generic and basic information to try and sell tremendous LUTS. I think it's safe to say your videos are contributing to school a new generation of more competent videographers. Thank you. ❤️
This video is more than how to handle LOG. It’s an explanation for why using the Tone Curve is always more nuanced than using Contrast sliders. Entirely applicable to photography as well.
I'm guilty of having done the "just add contrast and saturation" to Log footage and now I know! Clearly where you expose your footage is key. So useful, especially as I have to match a lot of cameras in upcoming work.
I learned about some things I didn’t know existed in this video. It’s a lot more helpful when you share more than just “change the saturation and contrast”. Most people don’t explain WHY certain things matter, so thank you.
Whenever I'm feeling cocky and arrogant and thinking I'm a genius, I watch a GU video and it pumps me full of perspective. I understood about 30% of this, but I enjoyed it. This will be a good video to watch every six months or so... Each time it will (well SHOULD) make more sense.
"I'm Gerald Undone and my beginner level is your expert level." Thank you for these detailed color grading videos!
You've demystified LINEAR and LOG workflows for me, and now I understand what those manufacturer's LUT are for. Thank you.
@Gerald: Since you're working in Resolve, it would be good to also mention its "Color Space Transform" function (which can be either globally applied in the project settings or applied as an effect to a node). It does all that a LUT or ACES DIT can do and more, i.e. translating most common log formats into the most common color spaces like Rec709, sRGB, Rec2020 etc.
But even more importantly, it can apply Tone Mapping to automatically correct exposure and avoid clipping of under- or overexposed Log-material during the transformation. It also features gamut mapping to make colors that are outside the range of the target color space fit that color space without bleeding out.
On top of that, since it acts as a mathematical function while a LUT just a color allocation table (that in most cases reduces color resolution), "Color Space Transform" is non-destructive. As a result, contrast boosts done after "Color Space Transform" are much less likely to result in clipping or color banding than contrast boosts done after a LUT.
Ah, i see you're a man of culture as well
Florian Cramer This is a very good point, and also worth mentioning that it is becoming the standard for delivering projects to companies like Netflix. Using Colour Space Transforms is a very good way of delivering multiple deliverables for example a HDR Rec 2020 PQ and an SDR Rec. 1886 2.4 gamma whilst using the same standard. The problem with the described workflow in this video is that you have to essentially regrade for any deliverable you do. Software like Resolve and the lesser known Baselight are perfect examples of professional tools which provide the ability to do exactly this. By using colour space transforms you allows for the ability to grade in an abstracted sense where all of your corrections are applied before the “tone curve” in a colourspace which is the same size if not larger than the original capture gamut. @Gerald it would be good to see a video on ACES/RED IPP2/ARRI ALF type workflows.
My big issue is that I’m using a camera that is unsupported by CST. I would definitely still like work arounds for this as a result.
@@JeremiahBostwick Which camera do you use?
@@flcrn Z Cam E2-F6.
As a musician and sound design guy, its funny how all the sliders and panels remind me of musical EQs, multiband-compressors, etc. I think its a lot easier to understand what’s happening to a picture with a bit of that sound engineer knowledge.
Fantastic work! And all available with a click 🤩 Thank you!!
I’d really enjoy seeing you apply this to actual footage. There can sometimes be a disconnect when charts are used exclusively.
Minor tweaks are not that noticeable (esp on 8-bit monitors) and then it becomes opinion - the colors look "good enough to me" or I think LUT #1 is better than LUT #3 maybe like flying a plane in fog or at night - you are flying off the instruments your maintaining altitude and avoiding objects not necessarily flying the most efficient route or providing the smoothest ride and definitely avoiding flying by site or feel.
GU's dashboard just shows where things are supposed to be regardless of whether it "matters". Take cam A and cam B and match their colors... ok here's the results. Finally, on TH-cam there's no shortage of color grading 'Fails' to make a "how not to grade" guide.
I learned way too much from this
Gerald, I don't know whether to thank you or curse you. I thank you for showing why my colors didn't feel 100% correct when using HLG3, but I curse you for making me want to regrade all of my old videos to cure the problem. Agh! Wonderful video as always.
Holy shit, this video literally changed my entire grading process. The "X" demonstration was incredibly eye opening. I was having a really difficult time trying to grade some low light log footage, kept getting too noisy or not looking quite right. The curves totally solved the issue. Thanks for this.
I've been dabbling in and out of video work for a few years and am constantly coming back to your videos to learn more. This video is several years old, and I am still using it to gain knowledge on what I am looking at on resolve and how to get technically great results and then use my creative touch as a final grade. Thank you for the way you speak about such complicated topics!
That's very informative and i wouldn't listen to anyone but you for such technical topics, however i would have loved a "real life" demonstration just so we can see how all this applies on, let's say...outdoor lit skin etc. I understand that those color patch are essentially doing the job and every situation and shot are different but..i think a real life demonstration would have been a good help. Thanks for all your work man !
Just got an R5, and you have helped me understand how to grade footage and use curves CORRECTLY. I was over here thinking that my camera was broken because my footage was so grainy, but it turns out I just didn't understand how to use curves.
This is the video I've been waiting for you to make.
Picked up a 6400 just to piss around with log and hlg.
I swear you and Waqas Qazi are the two most knowledgable colorists on youtube. i've learned SO MUCH from watching both of your guy's videos.
A thousand blessings on you and yours for generations to come. A seminal lecture. Thank you.
Not dealing with manually linearizing LOG and HLG and accurate colors is a great reason to just apply the Leeming LUT first and then tweak to taste. Great video and clear examples.
Oh wow. Thanks buddy. I had serious issues grading my C200 raw footage. You paved the way. Pulled out my color chart, followed you directions and "boom!" my raw footage is now usable. Very useful. Thanks again. :-)
I like this follow-up video. In a past video comparing Sony picture profiles, you said in passing "If you want Alexa colors, you may have to mess with luminance." I actually took that advice and experimented with color depth for my SLOG-2 footage and increased the saturation considerably in camera and I found that my corrections in Resolve were more predictable and closer to real life - requiring less effort. That relationship between luminance of a color and our perceived impression of saturation and contrast is incredible. You proved that here, too. Love your help guiding some experimentation!
I haven't started the video yet but i know that this is something that i was waiting for someone to upload. Almost everyone kn youtube tends to grade log footage incorrectly! Which is just annoying. Thanks for the video
THANK YOU for making videos like this. I'm an experienced stills photographer planning to film my first movie sometime next year, and I've avoided jumping into color grading and LUTs and picture profiles because it seemed so daunting. I use a lesser program to Resolve to edit what I do now, again, because while I know Resolve is better, the learning curve seems/feels so much steeper. For the last month, I've been watching your videos like crazy, shooting test footage, and dipping my toe in the water with all of these things. You have made it so much easier and so much more approachable. I would STILL be avoiding it if not for videos like this.
I know Gerald's channel has been growing steadily, which I'm happy about, but I'm blown away that he doesn't already have a million+ subscribers. I can't imagine my educational journey in cinematography without Gerald's channel.
I have literally learned more in the last few months watching your videos Gerald, than in the last few years of film courses! 👍🏻 Thank you!
When it comes to reviews it's you and Dustin Abbott. Hands down.. You are the best!
This was SOOO helpful. I am (or shall I now say "was") totally guilty of correcting C-Log footage with just contrast and saturation. INVALUABLE INFORMATION GERALD THANKS 🙏 !!
The smartest guy with the best delivery on You Tube! Its beyond me why this man hasn't got 1 million subscribers yet.
People prefer to follow wound-up equipment cheerleaders who specialize in self-promotion.
Gerald I hope you know how much value you provide to thousands of people around the world. Keep doing what you're doing man the production value and succinct delivery are top notch 👍
A tip for the curves window, you should click on the three dot options menu for the curves and enable Editable Splines! Every point on the curves will have a handle for moving splines and its so much easier to control your curve. I usually enable the editable splines and then only push and pull the handles for the end points on the curve
Been watching endless videos on LOG and this is by far the best. Really helped me understand how LOG works. 👍🏻
So much value on this videos man, you don't just throw what to do at us, you show us with graphs and exemples and that makes a HUGE difference. I learn what I'm doing and why. Hands on my favorite channel
this must be the fifth time I watch this video in the past few months, since I found Gerald Undone here on TH-cam, and I still could leran something new. You're freacking brilliant, man!
Guys, we're lucky that we're getting such information for free.
Thanks Gerald.
So, the way I've been grading Slog3 with some success, is grabbing the top of the curves on each side and using the scopes to stretch out the white and black points to 100 and 0 in Rec709 respectively. Then I go and start adding in the actual curve points, which gives me the tonality but also allows me to preserve a lot of the data that Slog3 footage is using. Usually creating an exponential (reverse log) curve to counteract the actual log curve, which seems to "linearise" it fairly well. - Petros
This is the reason I tell people don’t just buy Luts because of how it looks I bought luts before and it looked better when I graded the footage myself I would rather buy your luts because you know the little tedious details that can maximize your footage great video 👍🏼
some luts are good, they are created from scratch and you can just apply it everytime, some are just made by hippies who adds contrast and saturation with bunch of color wheels.
Faris Radzuan yea smh anything for money and it hurts the creators who actually know how to make a lut from scratch
Seems I have made every mistake! Best tutorial yet, most of the TH-camrs are doing the just add contrast... as of late I only was playing with curves. You really helped make it an exact science. Thanks!
I can't tell you how much this helped. I feel like I've been living in the dark ages until now. If you were teaching at a university I'd do a second bachelor and attend every lesson from start to finish!
I just posted my first-ever color graded short film piece using the Panasonic S1 with the V-Log kit and I had some difficulties achieving a balanced color style within that footage. Thank you for helping a beginner like myself understand these color values and equations I will be taking these into my next practice piece thank you, Gerald you are the best! :)
I owe a lot of my filmmaking skills and knowledge to TH-cam community, but there’s so much misinformation out there about how to shoot and grade log. This video is by far the most accurate I’ve seen on this topic. Now that 10 bit has become almost universal, there really isn’t much benefit to ettr, which introduces severe issues in post such as exposure consistency and plastic highlight. Log is not exactly designed for very quick workflow. Taking time to nail exposure according to manufacturers’ data sheet, then correcting later with official lut on GH5 and a7iii has given me far superior image and less grading time than when I was ettr-ing with leeming lut(although slog3 exposed correctly on a7iii made denoising absolutely necessary thanks to its 8-bit footage). BTW, why do people keep bragging about how they color correct without a lut as if it’s a more manly thing to do? Shooting log without using official lut is like buying a house and refusing to use the proper door for entrance. Jumping over the window every time might work for individuals but it certainly wasn’t the intension of the architect.
Gerald! This video is amazing. Thank you! One request as a followup to this, or for future videos. I was super excited when you said you were going to show a more "real world" application of this correction method if you don't have the chart, but then you went and continued to use the chart with the easy to follow "X". Yes, I can memorize your curve guide based on exposure but it would be (have been) much more helpful to see the process of correcting an actual clip of real-world footage without the "X" pattern and seeing how you apply these methods in that scenario. Anyway, thank you again for your fantastic work!
Man the amount of information i've gained in these 28 mins is insane. i mean i practically feel like a pro in color science now lol. Amazing work.
Extremely helpful video. At first, I just slapped on a LUT and that was it. But these extra steps makes footage look so much better. It's like night and day.
This explains why my skin tones looked so compressed and I couldn't get them right. Thanks Gerald!
the amount of value you provide is actually ridiculous. Thanks for all your hard work, man.
Thanks so much! I’d been struggling for years with the curves. All the tutorials say to make an S curve. Since I ETTR, it didn’t work. I tried your ‘inverted log curve’ today, works perfectly. And so quickly, too! 👍
Thank you. I finally understand how log video needs to be graded. This video made it click for me.
Now this is the kind of breakdowns i like, with factual info and not just opinions. I think something to add would be that some Log LUTS seem to affect the hue/saturation of each color independently which would be a complete guessing game to recreate without a color checker. So, yeah, just use the manufacturer's lut or one from a trustworthy third party.
Learned a ton of golden nuggets from this, thanks Gerald!
This was my old question in my mind but I have no one to ask this. Gerald Undone is great indeed.
I think your video is very helpful for understanding the way contrast works and how you want a 2.4 gamma (which looks straight line in a rec.709 waveform) around your 18% grey. For those who want to stick to their telecine style color grading workflow, this is a great explanation. I only wish you had adjusted the exposure differently at 27:15. Your LUT expects a specific log format and by applying a custom curve, you change how the luminance values are distributed. The proper way to adjust exposure on a log image is to change the offset, since adding in log is the same as multiplying in linear (offset vs gain).
Good point. I'm not sure how to do that in Premiere though. I was trying to only use tools available in all NLEs. Do you know if Premiere has a similar function to offset?
@@geraldundone I took a quick look and all i could find is the red, green and blue offset using the ASC CDL effect. Unfortunately, that method is very unintuitive and hard to fine adjust.
I'd suggest replicating the offset with the curves tool. Essentially, an offset is shifting the curve up or down but keeping it parallel. This worked great!
Halfway through the video and I have to say, this is an awesome explanation. As someone who has experience in photography, but is just getting into video, knowing those concepts are really helpful!
Excellent video and explanation Gerald! I learned a lot... and now I understand why so many people avoid LOG like the plague.. it's because they don't understand it. This vid is a "must watch" for anyone who grades LOG.
Gerald is a treasure. We need to protect this guy at all costs.
This was extremely helpful. Completely made digital color correction make sense. I never really understood what was happening by changing settings, but this clarifies the process.
This issue has been stumping me. I got to the point where I was thinking I should just shoot with no color profiles. Thanks for explaining this!
Super valuable information! I've been mislead by the "adjust contrast and saturation" tutorials in the past. Glad to know why I am using log luts - and what to do if I didn't have one
Educating is a skill, you have a fantastic ability to communicate/teach complex info in an entertaining and engaging way. thank you for all your work.
More like this one - at first I thought that this would be too basic - however, you expanded my knowledge of using test charts thoroughly. I use several test charts and have be not using them to their full potential. Thanks.
Love the physical point to the shadows ! Nice touch of connecting with the viewer
As an aspiring colorist I appreciate the depth you went into and that you’re comparing to scopes, not relying on your eyes. Why not use a color space transform instead of curves adjustments for the initial contrast correction?
That was the suggestion of the highlighted comment above
I’m a slow learner Gerald ...and I think the fog may be starting to clear. Always enjoy your upbeat, patient and hardworking approach to this stuff. (Btw ...my A7s iii is due in Nov sometime ...per Camera Canada) I’ll keep hacking away at the learning curve - Thank you!
Man, so grateful you made this video. It opens eyes and tells technical details in most and best compact form!
Hi, I'm Gerald Undone and my NLE has Auto-save disabled.
When the pretty girl says she likes boys who take risks
BADASS
Color grading is such a finicky and time-consuming process for me, it seems like I can take my time, try to get it right, then make one mistake and the whole thing is ruined. Thanks for the video, I took a few things away from it!
always helpful! don't get carried away by time limit, go for 2 hours if you want
I was just about to grade log for the first time ever for a big project today, started my morning with this. Thanks a ton homie
Thank you Gerald ! Your channel is probably the best content we can find on TH-cam ! Cheers from France !
One of the best internet tutorials I have seen regardless of topic! Relevant content, well explained and without repetition. I use the Leaming LUT , but one take from this was that even if you don't use that color checker, a general good way to correct over/under exposure seems to be using the curves (a single point in the middle and adjust to taste)
I simply cannot thank you enough for all your helpful videos, I already learned so much from your channel. You really hit the perfect ratio between going into detail and the "why" behind things without making them too hard to understand for a beginner like me. Thank you!
Gerald “definitely smarter than Jesse Driftwood” Undone.
Haha. Oh, Jesse. 🤓😜🙏
maybe... but does he drive a bongo?
Learn twice as much from this channel than school on certain topics. Keep up the great work!!
This was incredibly helpful. I’ve been crushing skin tones in SLog2 and trying to figure it out for so long. First actual technical explanation that I can use to do it right. I watched maybe 10 others who by this knowledge, were just breaking their footage from the start. Thanks!
This was hugely helpful. I understood none of it. Which shows me how much further I have to go... which is great! I'm taking a Davinci Color grading course right now, and this was way more helpful to showing me in what order and why things are done rather than just how to do them.
I don't even do video, but I could follow along with what you were saying. Incredible content. I enjoy your enthusiasm and how you present the content.
Man this video is pure gold! The way you simplify very complex concepts by giving us practical knowledge is mind blowing. Thank you!
This is so useful. It's so hard to find in depth technical information about color. Amazing video!
Gerald! I hate it when you read my mind (last time was HDMI cables), this is exactly what I need NOW!!!!!!
Love from Sweden!!!
Great simple description. I'm about to go back to LOG footage after only shooting RAW. This explains some of my past issues for sure.
Thanks Gerald, this was really informative and I appreciate the thorough explanation. I will be paying way more attention to my curves from now on. I especially like when you talked about the range of tonalities across the face. I definitely have found that LUTs tend to crush the highlights together, and curves are a great way to bring that back.
How does someone get so good at this? He has such a deep technical knowledge.
THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. Did I say thank you? 99% of people shooting log and not using a corrective lut end-up with crap images. Hopefully some of them will see this and at least use a purpose-built curve to normalize their image before further grading. btw, thank you.
so incredibly helpful!! You really gave me a better understanding of what's happening when I apply the technical LUT and how to fix it if I miss exposure! Thanks!
Another brilliantly technical explanation to a question that lingered in the back of my mind. Thanks!
See I should have watched all the way through. I could not for the life of me figure out why I had no contrast in my skintones and it was all just milky white even if I brought them down. I was even bringing my total exposure down and jacking the tonality all over the place to try and compensate but nothing was working. It just finally clicked for me and I thank you for going into that. Slog is scary but now I feel like I have a grasp on it
This may be the most valuable grading video I've found in.. many years
🤯 being a novice at this stuff, I just shot all in flat and log profiles. This very comprehensive (not so) deep dive will help a lot! This is great, keep em coming 👍
Beginners shouldn't shoot log
rsmith02 i for one probably shouldn’t have. Than again: I now have a perfect challenge to tackle in this weird time 🤪
Yeah I went to college.
Undone University. Seriously though you’re super thorough and a good teacher.
Very helpful to see what actually happens with the colours when you use the standard controls on log. Would be nice if you could talk about the in-built function of Resolve where you can choose your Gamma and Color Gamut and what happens to the image when you grade it then.
it was actually nice to see you using DaVinci. I downloaded it but seemed a bit too much, at first. Starting to understand how it might be the better color grading program. It's amazing how you can turn me into, even more of a nerd about this stuff. The complement is, that you take the mundane and hard to understand stuff (not much experience with picture profiles) and make them seem easier to understand and not so complicated anymore. Thanks!
Fantastic video! Thank you so much! Would it be possible to make something like this showing us how to do the best we can with this in Premiere?
Yes, thanks for this very good video. Please tell us if there is an equivalent to the pivot in Premiere?
Great video! Seeing it on the color chart was actually very helpful. I (Nikki) appreciate your explainer videos sooo much. Thanks.
Didn't expect to see one of the sailing channels I watch commenting on the filming channels I watch! Cool stuff!
This might be one of the most useful video editing videos on youtube
When he talks about being "stuck in 10 bit"
I'm over here living that 8 bit life
I hear ya brotha. We'll get those two-bits sometime.
I have 14 bit here
just take it bit by bit
@@aldoushuxley6255 Oy! haha
Stuck in A7 land.