Can Color 1.5 do more in terms of color grading than FCP7's own tools?

Dear LACPUG Members!

Many thanks in advance to anyone reading this and to anyone with any advice. I am about to finally color grade our 17 min documentary. I have it on FCP7 and converted all footage to apple pro res 422 HQ. Most footage is shot on a canon 5d mark2 and some on a panasonic gh3. I am editing on a MacBook Pro, mid 2012, with Mac OS10.8.4.

In the past I have color graded using FCPs various filters for color grading (color corrector 3 way, RGB balance, face light, Brightness/Contrast, Lyric Shadow/Highlight filter....)

QUESTION> Is it worth the trouble to learn Color 1.5? Can it do more than these color grading tools embedded within FCP7?

Many thanks!!

Kind regards,
Robert

Yes dedicated grading programs offer better tools for finishing your project. Color was a fine program, and I miss it dearly. Sadly, it is now EOL and probably not worth learning for the long term. I would suggest you take a close look at DaVinci Resolve. It has a very capable free version, and has a future, making it a far more useful time investment to learn.

yes, i agree

it is NOT worth he effort to learn Color
forget Color,
go with resolve.

however, you would need an earlier version of Resolve to work on your OS
version 11, i think.

see if you can find it,
if not i do have a copy somewhere
it'd be fairly large, around 500mb


nick

Hi Nick and VPiccin,

Thank you both for your replies and for your help.

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>I have the feeling that FCP7's own color grading tools can do just as much as color 1.5? Do you think this is true?

(Also I prefer to be able to still change shots while color grading - sometimes new ideas come. So it is easier to just stay in FCP7.)

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>So can I do more with Davinci Resolve than I can with FCP7's internal color grading tools??

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>Nick, thank you very much for your kind offer. I have OS 10.8.4 on a mid 2012 macbook pro. And I am using FCP7.0.3. It seems like I would need Davinci 9 lite, but I am having a hard time finding it. I am a bit worried whether it will work together with fcp7 etc. If you happen to have a version and think it could work, I would be interested.

Thank you both!

Best regards,
Robert

hi robert


FCP's colour tools, although workable, are pretty basic.
(there's really no good masking for power windows, and there's a lot of cross-talk between the black, mids and highs, making it harder to work with)

Color1.5 would be better
Resolve would be better still in almost very way, i think.
especially ease of use, and learning.

i haven't worked on either, but Resolve is a much more developed grading tool.
you can bounce back and forth between FCP and Resolve, but maybe not as easily as Color.
i think it's via XMLs back and forth, rather than a live-updating situation, which Color may offer,
as i say, i haven't used it

i do have Resolve version 9Lite, but Resolve 11 runs on 10.8
just a few months ago i started up Resolve 11 on an 10.8.6 MacPro,
so it works.
i suspect the later version would be better at going back and forth to FCP.
the older versions may well be available if you contact Black Magic


if you want to stay in FCP, then you could look at Magic Bullet's Colorista,
a plug in for FCP that is similar to it's own 3-Way colour corrector,
but better.


cheers,
nick

Nick-

Resolve is on my list of must-learn's. I dabbled in Color but... it went away.

Related question if slightly OT: what can you or associates who do it regularly recommend to monitor color work, if you have a budget of US 2K or less? And what is the smallest screen a boutique operator could get by with?

Best, as always.
Loren

hi Loren,
sorry i cont really answer the main part of your question,

but in terns of screen size,
you really only need small screen for yourself,
you can have a larger TV for clients.

most of the grading suites i know or that way now,
which is kind of weird, i know.



nick

Interesting topic, since I also want to learn to get better color, but learning the outdated Color seems like a daunting task. The DaVinci site only shows the most recent version, it seems. Anyone know where I can get a legacy version for my FCP 6?

Thanks,
Stefan

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