making red hair "more red"

Oyyyy. So a bunch of red haired actresses were shot and the client feels like their red hair isn't "red enough and that they look brunette." It iis actually important to the story that they have red hair. I've bumped up the saturation a lot which helps, but is there anything else I can do? I know there's the limit effect in color correction but I've never really played with it much. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

If you bump the saturation their skin tone is going to start getting wonky too - that's the biggest problem with anything red. Your best bet without going to roto and a lot of time and money is to use secondary colour correction to select just the tones of the hair, then adjust them.

The basic principle is explained here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Instead of making everything else black and white, just choose the colour you want and adjust that. As I said, it won't be great, because skin tone is so close to the tones you will be selecting.

Of course money and time and a good roto artist is the proper solution.

HOW red? Using COLOR you can really control a lot of things. Make the hair redder but leave the skin tones close to untouched. But that takes skill, something I am JUST starting to figure out. This is a job for a COLORIST! or you can do some vignetting (in color) and track that...again, time consuming and takes a bit of skill.


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Yeah...a Colorist should handle this. I was just commissioned to change the color of a golfer's shirt and nothing else. I used the 3-Way CC'er in FCP adjusting the range. The FCP manual does a nice job explaining the 3-Way CC'er. You have to tweak & play.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

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mattsilfen
Oyyyy. So a bunch of red haired actresses were shot and the client feels like their red hair isn't "red enough and that they look brunette."

I agree, in FCP the easiest is the 3-Way CC filter.

I have a lot of experience with color correcting red hair. However, because I don't have a broadcast monitor, I have to burn a DVD and look at the results on my TV set and on my computer monitor. Sometimes despite all the efforts of trying to restore the color of a redhead's hair, the results aren't acceptable.

If the scenes in question show a number of actresses with red hair, you might suggest that they reshoot the scene and bring a hair stylist and have all their hair colored the same way -- or differently if that's what's required -- strawberry red, chestnut red, golden red, etc. Of course, lighting is very important. Make sure the white light is on their faces only. Then you can have some red-gelled light from above hitting just their hair -- flag them or bounce the light from behind, etc.

But if that's not possible -- to reshoot -- then play around with masking and compositing a layer of red over their hair. I like to use the gamma filter when working on one area of the image. I'm not an expert at this, but I've gotten some good results this way. The hardest for me is painting each frame separately or using tracking....

Thanks everyone for all your help. This is a music video and it's A LOT to CC for the hair and reshooting is certainly not an option. I've talked to the producer about hiring a professional colorist to fix this but that's up to the client. My own personal opinion is that all these girls clearly have red hair...but I'm not the one paying for this. You know how that goes...

What makes it stand out is that there's one girl who has a much brighter-shade-of-red compared to the other girls around her, so they all look brunette in comparison. Sheeesh...

I second Color. The keyer in Color is a lot better than the one in FCP. Frankly, i won't even touch the one in FCP.

>What makes it stand out is that there's one girl who has a much brighter-shade-of-red compared
>to the other girls around her, so they all look brunette in comparison.

There's a start. You could tone down the one with the brightest/most saturated hair color, then either tip the 3 way towards red slightly (if it doesn't cause the skin tones or certain objects to look unnatural, or increase the saturation. But i'm not looking at the shot. If you can upload a still (tga or tiff), we could take a look at it.



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reshooting is certainly not an option

Since your question has already been answered, I'll just get this on the record: Reshooting is always an option. It's usually an inconvenient option; sometimes it's an expensive option. But it's always at least an option, and sometimes it's the best option.

Yes it is an option...but advising someone to re-shoot when it can be fixed in post is not practical advise. If it CAN'T BE FIXED, then the only 2 options left are re-shoot or cut the scene.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Joe,

You're right. It IS an option. Just not the option they're gonna want to hear