Easy fix for tricky exposure?

Hi guys,

I have a clip of someone talking who's wearing a baseball cap. For the most part the lighting is fine, but at times he turns his head and then the sun shines into his face and when it does, the cheeks are overly bright, compared to the eyes which are covered by the cap shade.

A reflector was used, so the eyes are not too dark, but I wonder if you had some ideas for an inexperienced editor like me to somewhat reduce the brightness on the cheeks.

Thanks,
Stefan

--
macpro 2x3 ghz dual core intel, 10.6.8, FCS 2

Are the highlights completely blown out, or is there some information left in those hot spots? It will mean the difference between trying to bring them closer to "normal" vs. just trying to knock them down a bit.

Without seeing the footage it's hard to say if it will even work, but you could try a mask that is tracked to the hot spots and see if you can take down the highlights a bit. You could do this in Apple Color, Motion and After Effects -- and it will take time to do it. You could also try one of the skin smoothing plugins in FCP but I'm not sure if that would even help.

Good luck!

JVK

_______________________________________
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You can also try something like Lyric Media's Shadow-Highlight, which clamps down only on a certain range of highlights. Of course, a professional colorist would be able to tackle this issue much more effectively.


www.derekmok.com

John K Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Are the highlights completely blown out, or is
> there some information left in those hot spots? It
> will mean the difference between trying to bring
> them closer to "normal" vs. just trying to knock
> them down a bit.
>
> Without seeing the footage it's hard to say if it
> will even work, but you could try a mask that is
> tracked to the hot spots and see if you can take
> down the highlights a bit. You could do this in
> Apple Color, Motion and After Effects -- and it
> will take time to do it. You could also try one of
> the skin smoothing plugins in FCP but I'm not sure
> if that would even help.
>
> Good luck!
>
> JVK

It doesn't look blown out to me, just too much difference of light across the face. The idea of creating animated masks sounds pretty daunting to me. What's the skin smoothing thing called. Is that part of the standard suite?

Thanks,
Stefan

--
macpro 2x3 ghz dual core intel, 10.6.8, FCS 2

derekmok Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You can also try something like Lyric Media's
> Shadow-Highlight, which clamps down only on a
> certain range of highlights. Of course, a
> professional colorist would be able to tackle this
> issue much more effectively.


That site appears to be offline right now. I'll try again tomorrow, but I just doddled around with Captain's blowout fixer and I'm actually getting quite promising results with that. Turns out that indeed the red channel is blown out in parts and can be nicely reconstructed. It will take a bit of fiddling but not too bad. Much better already!

Thanks,
Stefan

--
macpro 2x3 ghz dual core intel, 10.6.8, FCS 2

What's the skin smoothing thing called. Is
> that part of the standard suite?
>
No, it's usually a third-party plugin. Look at Red Giant 's Cosmo: [www.redgiant.com]

or try using Limit Effect in the Apple 3-Way Color Corrector to zero in on the hot spots only, and then bring them down a bit.

search for tutorials on "Secondary Color Correction in FCP" and you'l find info on using it.


nick

Ok, so the Shadow-Highlight plug-in is a cool find, but doesn't seem to help in this case, but between that FCP clamping thing and the Blowout fixer I can improve the footage quite a bit. The Cosmo stuff looks fabulous, but I don't feel like investing any more money into FCP6 ;-)

Thanks much,
Stefan

--
macpro 2x3 ghz dual core intel, 10.6.8, FCS 2

If the shot is a tripod lockdown and clamp filters aren't available, try a garbage matte [Effects>Video Filters>4 Point or 8-point Garbage Matte] built over the sunlit region on a dupe of the clip placed on V2 over the original, and regulate the intensity by lowering the white values on the matted clip. Now, I did this on a massively blown out region of an interview clip, with practically no detail left, and flesh tone changes when the subject moves a hand into the sunlit region, but it's brief, and drawing attention away from the brightness was all I could do on this really bad clip.

- Loren

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Thanks Loren,

it is a tripod shot, but unfortunately the talent moves around a lot, so it would be too complicated for me to track the affected area. Nevertheless, really great tips here! Always great to be able to pull out something on the next occasion where something else fails.

Stefan

--
macpro 2x3 ghz dual core intel, 10.6.8, FCS 2