The Look Suite

Trying out Magic Bullet for FCP... Any idea how this thing works? Do you still need to use 3 way color corrector on top of the look suite? And is it possible to angle/adjust the gradient? I'm trying to fill in some color on the sky...

Looks Suite is a combination of 4 apps (Looks / Frames / Colorista / Instant HD). Looks is one of them. This is NOT a "Color Corrector"...it is a Color Grading system. It isn't your average plug-in. When you add it to a clip and select "Edit", Looks is launched in it's own full findow. There is an interactive help system within the app to guide you when you roll over anything in the app.

...and yes...it is possible to angle and adjust any gradient using the on-screen overlay. In the Tool Drawer on the right, go under "Matte" tools, select Gradient by double-clicking it to add it to the Tool Chain on the bottom of the window. Click the Gradient box and you will see a yellow dotted line with crosshairs on the top & bottom. Grab the cross hair & slide it left or right to angle the gradient or drag it away from the clip top & bottom to broaden the gradient. If you want to save the look with settings, go up to "File/Save Look As" and name it.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Always good to pick up something new. Think this is what i find myself seeing... [www.lafcpug.org]

That is waaaaaay old. THIS is what you will see:

[www.kenstone.net]

You do get the Misfire plug-ins with the new Looks Suite though and everything is now optimized for the new machines, OS & FCP (& After Effects). This is my favorite plug-in set along side the Trapcode Suite.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Ah... Egad. The gradient of this version doesn't seem to have any controls beyond size, amount and color.

thats a good looking suite. i have a instant hd demo but i find that nattress conversion tools work best for me.
But this looks suite might be more useful than fx factory for getting video yo pop.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

magic bullet looks (and the looks suite for that matter) is a tool that id suggest everyone here get. it pays for itself in one use.

I've been playing with the "Looks" trial. Although Color seems a bit more powerful, Looks seems WAY easier to get a handle on. For day to day work, where time is money, it seems Looks is worth the price.

I'm wondering if any who's proficient at both can share their thoughts though.

looks isnt a color correcting/grading tool - well, i guess it could be used as one. but its intent is an effects tool.

trying to compare "color" and "looks" is a mistake in my opinion.

Color Grading:
Color grading is the process of altering and enhancing the color of a motion picture or television image, either electronically, photo-chemically or digitally.

Color Correcting:
To alter the overall quality of the light measured on a scale known as color temperature.

What is a Look?: Traditionally achieved with filters, filming techniques or chemical processes, a "look" was any treatment applied to film stock to lend it a color, appearance, or mood. With digital editing, many more sophisticated effects are now possible. Often referred to as color correction, the process is similar to working in a virtual darkroom. Ordinary footage can be made to look like old films or TV, colors can be adjusted to turn a daytime shoot into film noir, and camera tricks can be simulated digitally.

Yes, Looks is a grading tool...not so much a color corrector. Looks Builder (the app itself) is exactly what it says...a Looks Builder. You use a multitude of tools and preset editable looks to grade your footage and save your looks for other projects. It is more powerful than you think especially in After Effects where you can use Looks on an Adjustment Layer with masks and grade separate areas of a scene. That's why Colorista comes in the Looks Suite along side of Looks...they compliment each other - not compete with each other.

Color, Colorista and FCP'd 3-Way CC tool are color correctors

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Joe, you are forcing those definitions to fit your argument.

Both terms "color grading" and "color correction" have now been stretched to the point where it's hard to define where "grading" ends and "FX" begins. Your long statement concerning "what is a look" could be simplified by just saying that a "look" is what you get after the "grading".

The term "color correction" should really be dropped for a more aptly descriptive term. Nearly every discussion involving color correction is not about making a shot look "correct" or accurate to the original scene but involves changing a shot to get a creative "look" that is substantially different from what was shot.

I disagree. So there.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

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Joe, you are forcing those definitions to fit your argument.

No, I am not "forcing" anything...just trying to clarify the 3 terms. The definition of "Look" was taken from the Magic Bullet website.

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The term "color correction" should really be dropped for a more aptly descriptive term.

I agree. A "look" is a combination of color grading & FX. What I use Color Correction for is to fix a lousy shoot like if a cameraman forgets to white balance from indoor to outdoor, uses a ridiculous filter color that has to be removed, bumping up color & contrast overall and matching skin tones from one shot to the next. It is not used as a "mood setter" or a "look builder". It's a First Aid Kit.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Hmm... I disagree with dropping the term "color correction". Changing colors to achieve an effect isn't always what you do in color correcting. The first thing that's always done in color correcting, is to prep the shot up- adjust blacks, whites, mids to make sure the footage is properly exposed the way you want it to, then the right amount of saturation and then fine tune colors to match shots before and after. Only after the footage looks "right", then u can start tweaking it for an effect. Footage from location is rarely perfect. You need to color correct to match every shot, lower super white values, etc. When you're talking about "color correcting", since when do you say "silk filter with a sepia tone"?

On the other hand, when people are talking about drastically changing the feel of the shot, they shouldn't be using the term color correction. You an alter colors to create an effect, but it's a different step. Usually I'll run a rough treatment of that in the offline. However, I very rarely will color correct in the offline, unless the footage is so badly off whack (a day shot in the middle of a night scene), and a rough color correcting will allow a much better understanding of the shot.

Grading on the other hand, isn't about matching the quality of light on set throughout every shot. That would be 'correcting'.

Also, you could say that we should drop the terms "offline" and "online" editing. But then, today they are actually more descriptive terms than literal. Offline editing involves mainly content building and story flow. Online editing involves setting up the footage for the highest possible quality output, fine tuning everything but the cuts. We can also say that we don't exactly know when offline and online starts and stops, especially since footage is at online quality, and you do get occasional changes all the way up to the online editor, but the focus of the stage is what we're talking about.

Where I am, we mostly call the last steps "finishing". You can finish in your desktop editor or in a Flame suite. Whatever suites the project. The terms offline and online are used less and less.

audio mixing, assembly, color correction, mastering. Yep. Finishing editors.

"Finishing" is used everywhere. I haven't "offlined" anything in years. I capture & work with full rez all the time. Drive space is much more plentiful than it used to be.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

"The finishing editor"? "Da Finisher" No offense, but I see it as stages, and that's how i learnt it. Finishing sounds cooler than "onlining", but being called "the Finisher" sounds a little like a wrestler.

Hmm, I asked people's thoughts about a plug-in and discussion on semantics breaks out.

Me? I want clients to be happy even if they ask me to film something with video (ugh!).

One might even call the first step color balance rather than "color correct." You'd want shots to come from the same "starting point" so the "Looks" match. If you use Warm Cards to white balance, nothing is "correct" from the get go. Enough of that.

IMHO although Apple Color is certainly more powerful than Looks (and costs $400 less since you already got it!!!) but Looks can get you to many places (Looks) faster and easier than Color . . . maybe. That's part of what I'd like people's opinions on. There are no "correct" answers of course.

The only downsides I see with Magic Bullet Looks is:
It doesn't have Live preview to see what's happening on something other than your computer monitor.
It's not keyframable. Their Power Masks seem awkward compared to what I'd expect if I were keyframing a Power Mask over a face or product shot (etc) in a Color Correction errr Color Grading suite.
OTOH, apparently some like the fact that Looks actually uses a shot from the source to preview the "Looks" as opposed to a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge Color uses.

Regardless of what you call the tomato or potato, I'd like to know what you think of the updside/downside of Looks vs Color.

Hmm... In a couple of weeks, i'll get to go on Color. Whoopee! Tell u about it then. Which are the cooler color grading plug-ins? I might go for a Looks upgrade, and see if it's possible to get in Looks Suite.

You can't monitor out while the App is open, but if you click OK and go back out to FCP / After Effects, your NTSC / client output monitor will show the effect.

You hit on the 2 things I requested when we were BETA testing this...live monitoring and keyframable parameters within the app. I was told the next version these things will be possible.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I believe I saw someone from RedGiant state those two features would be in the next version. Actually I'd add maybe a multipoint matte to the simple circle/ellipse square/rectangle shape. I'm also wondering if there needs to be a way to handle secondary color correction better but at that point I'm asking it to "knock Color out of the box."

IMHO, I think that all plugins that open in fcp should use the same path as fcp for previewable realtime output.

Even apple has not thought of this for fcs 1&2. If i am in fcp and i round trip to live type or color or motion, If i am set to firewire out any app that i open at least thru plug-in or round trip should attach its output to the fcp fw out.

It would seem easy to me to ad code that tells fcp to tell the opening plug or app to use my(fcp) path for realtime preview out put.

It seems like common sense to me.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"