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Table Of Contents
- Color User Manual
- Contents
- Color Documentation and Resources
- Color Correction Basics
- Color Correction Workflows
- Using the Color Interface
- Importing and Managing Projects and Media
- Creating and Opening Projects
- Saving Projects and Archives
- Moving Projects Between FinalCutPro and Color
- Reconforming Projects
- Importing EDLs
- Exporting EDLs
- Relinking QuickTime Media
- Importing Media Directly into The Timeline
- Compatible Media Formats
- Converting Cineon and DPX Image Sequences to QuickTime
- Importing Color Corrections
- Exporting JPEG Images
- Setup
- Monitoring
- Timeline Playback, Navigation, and Editing
- Video Scopes
- Primary In
- Secondaries
- Color FX
- Primary Out
- Managing Corrections and Grades
- The Difference Between Corrections and Grades
- Saving and Using Corrections and Grades
- Applying Saved Corrections and Grades to Shots
- Managing Grades in the Timeline
- Using the “Copy to” Buttons in the Primary Rooms
- Using the Copy Grade and Paste Grade Memory Banks
- Setting a Beauty Grade in the Timeline
- Disabling All Grades
- Managing Grades in the Shots Browser
- Using the Primary, Secondary, and Color FX Rooms Together to Manage Each Shot’s Corrections
- Keyframing
- Geometry
- Still Store
- Render Queue
- Calibrating Your Monitor
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Setting Up a Control Surface
- Index
176 Chapter 9 Primary In
Most images don’t start out with the highest contrast ratio they could have. For
example, even in well-exposed shots, videocameras often don’t record black at 0
percent, instead recording black levels at around 3–4 percent. For this reason alone,
small adjustments to lower the black point often impress without the need to do much
more. In other cases, an image that is slightly over or underexposed may appear
washed out or muddy, and simple adjustments to lower the darkest pixels in the image
and raise the brightest pixels in the image to widen the contrast ratio have an effect
similar to “wiping a layer of grime off the image,” and are often the first step in simply
optimizing a shot.
In other cases, you may choose to deliberately widen the contrast ratio even further to
make extreme changes to image contrast. This may be because the image is severely
underexposed, in which case you need to adjust the Highlight and Midtone sliders in
an effort to simply make the subjects more visible. You might also expand the contrast
ratio of an otherwise well-exposed shot to an extreme, crushing the shadows and
clipping the highlights to create an extremely high-contrast look.