Fix White Balance on Log Footage using Chromatic Adaptation

Made this on request of the DaVinci Colorists support group on Telegram, thanks guys!
0:00 The Setup
2:05 How RAW white balance works
6:15 Trying common remedies
10:00 Chromatic Adaption - The Solution

[@tedcruzinusa]

Oh my god, I'm going to jump through this internet and give you a massive hug. I shot a wedding in 10bit where I absolutely butchered the white balance in a room with incandescent lighting. Like, off by 2500 degrees bad. I was doing extensive and painstaking stuff to get the colors back to something kind of normal. Then I found this tutorial and it's as if I shot it raw. How is this not the top result for fixing white balance?

[@ComradeReptiloid]

Same here. Exclusive info here.

[@ctcwired]

Thanks so much. I'm thinking about making a follow-up that's a bit more well put together with more extreme examples, especially since I got access to a Sony Burano and can do some interesting comparisons with the RAW files. I also learned a lot more recently about camera native RGB spaces & dealing with negative pixel values. We'll see. :)

[@wxjunkie]

@@ctcwireddo it!

[@harryzhang8826]

great video tutorials about the chromatic adaptation

[@shadowgold1]

Well done 🔥

[@leiphf]

excellent video

[@JuanLuisBst]

Thanks!!!

[@countryofiremany3912]

I miss u guys

[@robmontamat6502]

thanks man! great tut! I have a question, isn't the same in the 5th example to set instead directly the "Gain WB Node" to linear? like, right clicking on it and setting gamma to linear.. as nothing else is modified I thought it'd be faster than aplying those cst nodes

[@robmontamat6502]

@@ctcwired :) great! thanks again! ;)

[@ctcwired]

As long as your "timeline colorspace" is set correctly in settings, or color management is enabled, then yes you can simply set the node to linear mode. I only broke it apart into CST nodes so the signal flow was more clear. :)

[@cody8860]

This was a brilliant tutorial. The only question I have is should this node be done before or after denoising? My approach in the past has been to convert to linear, denoise then white balance using gains.

[@ctcwired]

Good question, either might work, though if noise is a concern to the point where it's tinting the deepest shadows then it might need to be adjusted by hand anyway (perhaps with the shadow log wheels).

[@yurakononov3673]

Я первый раз про такое слышу)

[@jseamans]

In the chromatic adaptation settings, was the tint adjustment simply done by eye?

[@ctcwired]

Yeah by eye for my rushed example. In practice for color work I'd use a vectorscope or compare with whatever shots it needs to match with.

[@JimRobinson-colors]

I think that you took on presenting a great amount of information, but think that you may have lost some people in some of the information - it would be interesting to see the actual viewer data as to when exactly people exit this video. I think that would be a good indicator as to when and if you may have gone too far into the weeds. I am one of the people that appreciates that - so I wouldn't be one of those people. Years ago when I used to teach post production in a classroom, there always was something that I thought was important to teach, but had to aware of when the students started losing attention, that they kind of tune out at some point. So in your video here, great info, but for the masses my opinion is that it could be edited to not get too technical and still teach the subject - and that is an opinion. And ironically this is getting to be a long comment.
The other thing is the big pay off in the the end, that the part where you said you cheated a bit, because you knew what the original temp was and what you changed it to, is not helpful to people who have no clue of those parameters. My bet is that the people who are looking how to use Chromatic Adaptation that those two things are the part that they don't know where or how to obtain - the source might be a mystery - so saying that you kind of cheated, might not be the payoff that people will appreciate when they try this tool on unknown footage.
Just.a couple observations, I think you covered the what really well, but fell a bit short on the how.
Cheers

[@ctcwired]

I agree with your view points. This was originally something I made for a few friends in private and decided to release. I may re-make this at some point in the future with better pacing and with some better info I’ve since learned. I appreciate your comment. :)