Selfmasked FX?

[ThomasT]

Hi,

I have a composition like this:

1. a layer with image sequence (e.g. dpx) and some FX (denoise, curves etc.)
2. serveral adjustment layers with masks to correct parst of the image or use gradients.

Now you see an image. I want to use this image, including all corrections so far to move on.
I want to color the shadows red. (just to make it clear) I use the hue/saturation-FX.
But all of the image is now red. I need a mask, to just select the shadows.

In davinci resolve you can use color selectors. I miss this in AE.

Is there a way to do this?

Currently I use two compositions. One for correcting an preparing the footage. And then one for coloring where comp1 is source and mask.

Thomas

[Mylenium]

And what exactly is the problem? Nothing stops you from pre-composing your stuff and applying additional effects on the different instances/ duplicates to extract mattes. That aside, your whole workflow simply sounds awful. If you need such stuff, create the mattes before any corrections using the plain source footage to prevent degradation and get access to the original full fidelity channel information. If you place more effort on actually structuring your project rather than dumping everything in one comp right away, then none of this is any problem, even if AE doesn't offer the convenience of a simple color range limiter in most effects. then again of course you could spend money e.g. on Boris Continuum where this is common in many effects. It all depends...

Mylenium

[ThomasT]

This doubles the number of my compositions.

>create the mattes before any corrections

What? Of course this cannot work. E.g. when brighten the right side, the mask would be too dark, when using the orgfootage.
And what degeneration? I'm woking with 16 or 32 bit projects. Using 10bit dpx from raw footage. There is no degeneration!
There is nowhere, even not in the camera some kind of lostful compression or degeneration. Not even a  RGB->YUV conversion.

[Dave_LaRonde]

Um, how do you measure the time you've been an Effects user?   In years?  Months?  Weeks?  Days?

[ThomasT]

One year.

[Szalam]

Synthetic Aperture's Color Finesse (which comes with AE) can do secondary color correction like you describe.

Otherwise, you can do luma keying and use that luma key as a track matte for an adjustment layer.

[ThomasT]

>Synthetic Aperture's Color Finesse (which comes with AE)

I will look for it and try it.

>Otherwise, you can do luma keying and use that luma key as a track matte for an adjustment layer.

and what image do I use for luma key?

[Szalam]

A copy of your footage would work. Just throw another copy on the timeline, apply the Extract keying effect and voila!

[ThomasT]

No, it wouldn't. And that the reason for my question.

The original footage is highly processed. Darker here, brighter there. A lot of animated mask in the adjustment layer. Think, I'm correcting bad lighting.
And the luminance dependend fx should be of couse dependend of this corrected footage.

Let me explain:

Say I want to make shadow brown, highlights blue and keep midtones as they are. For instance the faces.
On both sides of my images there a person. One person on the right side, one on the left.
The left side is overexposed because a spot stands here. The head is bright and the trousers brigher, so they fall into midtones.
The person on the right is underexposed. Hair is darker and trousers are in the deep shadows.

So we have in the uncorrected version:
Left: shoes - midrange, trousers - brighter midrange, face - bright, hair - very bright.
Right: shoes - black, trousers - dark shadows, face - darker midrange, hair - midrange

Now I correct this. Both sides are now nearly equal in brigthness. (and raw material has that dynamic to do this! There are infomations in the shadows and the brightes lights are not clipped.)

Now I want to color the shadows brown and the highlights blue.
What I want is: brown shoes, little less brown trousers, natural face, bluish highlights in the hair (->backlight)

If I would use the original footage to apply the selective color correction/colorisation I would get
black or blue trousers on the left, bluish face and total blue highlights, but the right person would have brown trousers, a brownish face and a natual blond hair.

Thats a totally different and inacceptable result.

Thomas

[Szalam]

Oh, I understand. Then, yes, you'll need to precompose and use the precomp for that.

Or use Color Finesse or a third party color grading tool like the Magic Bullet Suite that has more secondary correction options.

[Bob Currier]

An advantage of using Color Finesse is that you can define what is a shadow, what is a highlight, and what is a midtone. That might give you more control over the correction as each CF control can be applied independently to shadow, midtone, or highlight.

Use the "Luma Ranges" control to defined shadow and highlight levels; midtones are everything else.

Yes, I might be biased, but I think it would be a good fit for what you're trying to do, at least if I understand correctly.

Bob Currier

Synthetic Aperture

[Roei Tzoref]

in addition to color finesse, you can also use Lumetri which is a native effect in Ae since CC 2015. it has secondary color correction tools which are similar to the ones in Premiere. How To: Using Lumetri Color’s HSL Secondary controls in Premiere Pro CC | Creative Cloud blog by Ado...

although bare in mind it does have its limitations: Limitations in the Lumetri Color Panel - PremierePro.net

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Tom,

How did you end up solving your color issues? Please let us know for the benefit of the community.

Thanks,

Kevin