Dark clip, made visible

I don't remember how I did it, just messing around. I had this clip of a person talking with two bright computer screens behind him. I was not paying attention to the camera, and the iris closed a little too much because of the two bright screens behind the person.

But in FCP I did something to the colors . . it was too long ago and I don't remember what I did to make it look better than it did. I messed with the colors, and a little with the brightness. But I was hoping somebody could give me a more reliable, stable way of always being able to correct a dark image other than just messing with everything I can to get it to look good.

Danka,
Adam

3-way color corrector. Drop it onto the clip and raise the Mids.

Check out a free plugin called "ShadowHighlight" from Lyric: [www.lyric.com]. There is a version for FCP 3.x as well as 4.x.

Scott

<<<3-way color corrector.>>>

Or, if you run out of zot with that, Video Filters, Image Control, Levels and change the gamma. That will give you mid gray control different from the one you get in the 3-Way.

Koz

In your case, you should also use Color Corrector to dip the highlights. Brightening up the mids and the blacks will easily produce that ugly "haze" you get when you try to brighten dark video. But in your case, the highlights from the screens make the mids and blacks seem darker than they are.

There is no one "correct" way to lighten up an underlit image; you have to respond to the situation. But Color Corrector (I'm not a big fan of Color Corrector 3-way -- I like numeric values), Brightness & Contrast and Gamma Correction are standard. Gamma Correction is especially great -- it tends to perform the brightening job without producing too much haze.

<<<Brightness & Contrast and Gamma Correction are standard.>>>

Close.

The three Way Corrector middle gray control doesn't follow the gamma characteristic. It just moves the grays around.

VideoFilters, ImageControl, Levels, Gamma actually does follow the Gamma characteristic and is the one that FCP uses when it screws up the brightness on imported and exported stills.

VideoFilters, ImageControl, GammaCorrection follows the gamma characteristics, too, but it uses superwhite as a reference instead of regular video white. It's pretty much useless as far as I can tell.


Too much information.......

Koz

I can always count on finding the right answer when I spend my time on this forum. Thanks Scott you saved my bacon on this filter and it was a free download to boot!!! A quick application on my clip and it looks like it'll work just like I want it to!
Rich