Is there a Pivot control in Lumetri to adjust just middle grey?

[frantick890]

I wish to move from Resolve to Premiere for my color grading beacause I edit in Premiere but there is one important feature missing or at least I can't find it in Lumetri. Pivot. The Pivot control is extremely helpful in adjusting middle grey. Exposure, blacks, shadows, whites and highlights don't address the specific area of about 40 IRE to 60 IRE while leaving the rest of the waveform uneffected. Pivot is great at just addressing brightness of flesh tones. I know I can achieve similar results by using curves but the Pivot control is very quick and simple compared to Curves. And no, I don't want to use Secondary Color Corrector to address just flesh tones for most purposes.

Is a Pivot-like function in available in Premiere/Lumetri? Thanks for your help.

[salvo34]

no.

[frantick890]

That is unfortunate.

[salvo34]

are you familiar with log on setting in resolve, which narrows the overlap of ylift, ygamma, ygain ?? Maybe there's a setting in lumetri that does something similar, though I doubt it. That might make it faster than using curves.

[frantick890]

Yes. No such setting in Lumetri I can find and still a bit fiddly in Resolve.

[salvo34]

my understanding of pivot is this, though I am an idiot and could be completely wrong.

Think of a rubber band between two fixed points ( black and white). Now grab the rubber band in the middle ( middle tone) and pull the rubber band slightly to the left ( black) or to the right (white ). If you do it gently it only effects your area of ire range... and you won't see change of left and gain on scopes... but it does in fact effect other values near the middle ( especially if you crank the pivot way up or down ).

So, that's the thing you want to find out if you can set in Lumetri.

[salvo34]

[frantick890]

I can do this with Lumetri using curves but it is time consuming. Pivot is sooo simply and easy. Premiere demi-gods please add a Pivot function to Lumetri.

[salvo34]

there's a link somewhere to make 'feature requests' but I wouldn't hold my breath.

And there's a lot of ways to do same things in both adobe and resolve. So, it's just basically 'you do what you have to do' type of thing.

Adobe is srgb based and resolve color is yrgb, totally different animals. You are in rec709 land. So, thanks for shooting and editing and telling stories and keep working !

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

Yes. If you want to adjust the mids brightness, that's blazingly simple. Go to the Color Wheels tab, and adjust the Mids Luma slider.

Neil

[salvo34]

Neil, he's talking about subtle skin tone, not midtones in general.

Do you know how he can quickly sample the skin tone and mask it and adjust just THAT range, instead of him doing curves and adding points to the range that effects the skin range ??? He just wants to work faster.

[R Neil Haugen]

From reading his full post, where he talks of the various controls and what he wants to achieve, I see a discussion of midtones. That's what he mentions is lacking.

So I answered that question.

IF he wants only skin tone changes, which is possible, then naturally that would need to be qualified somehow. Which would require either an HSL curve or HSL secondary, in either Resolve or Premiere.

Neil

[salvo34]

I was not and do not want to be critical of your responses in any way today or tomorrow or for the rest of my life. I love you. I think you are wonderful and super smart. You are a hero of mine. Please stop responding to me as if I am somehow questioning your contribution or intelligence. Please !  I'm getting really tire of defensive stuff that detracts from the posters problems ..

MY TAKE on the post is that it has to do with skin tone. So who cares ???  Let's help the poster.

[R Neil Haugen]

I wasn't attacking ... just being my normal deliberative self. I didn't see your comments as an attack either. Just a disagreement of what the OP had posted.

So ... no intention to be argumentative, just detailed explanations.

Neil

[frantick890]

I hate it when mom and dad fight, lol. Thanks the boat oh yuz. I appriciate your effort to help.

You are both sort of correct. I am looking for a quick middle grey adjustment which in effect correlates to the fleshy bits of a scene. I usually find myself lowering the Pivot point to get flesh tones a bit richer. Yes Neil, I can use Color Wheels and adjust the midtones lum slider but where the heck are the parameter numbers? Having sliders without numbers makes it very difficult to grade with consistancy. Also, it actually affects more of the waveform than I see Pivot affect. I just tried both with a chip chart. I tried Curves on the same chart as well and it doesn't take long at all befor the colors become posterized if I limit adjustment to the center of the curve.

I'm sure there are more talented people out there than me who have figured this out in Lumetri. I am just hoping the person reads this post. Thanks for your help, lads.

[salvo34]

the problem is that you know what you want, and you know what works fast (most of the time in general, using resolve and 'pivot' adjustment), and you want that in Adobe. It's not gonna happen. You already know that no matter how mom and dad fight ( I hope I'm the daddy just to be manly here ).

Good luck

🙂

[salvo34]

If you use a chart ( with specific light balance ) to get your basic cc ( like resolve or other editors)... let's say an x-rite passport video chart, and you do a quick cc using the built in mask to do that, like you really know what you're doing on a film set for lighting, then you'll find there's NOTHING like that in adobe. That would do your flesh tones etc. Then you could further adjust as you like ( including facial recognition and tracking for more subtle FACE ( skin ) adjustments around eyes, etc... you know the drill )... Neil recently claimed he could draw a mask around the chart ( same chart I just bought a few months ago ) and use 'auto color' and it fixed everything for quick CC.. Maybe try THAT as your quick solution.

I highly doubt it will work.

But you're obviously really smart and good already at what you want re: what you see and what you want to see instead... so you'll be teaching mommy and daddy in no time.

🙂

[salvo34]

you have nothing like this in adobe, and pivot isn't really the best way to fix what you want in resolve either... as you know.

This is using a chart with specific mask to match that specific chart for basic cc with control over light source and WB, like a real movie set ... not kid stuff... but everything has to be worked with... so the answer, as you found out in the beginning, is NO, THERE IS NO PIVOT ADJUSTMENT in Adobe.

[R Neil Haugen]

Yea, the lack of a number by the Color Wheels Luma slider is a pain. The engineers just reply that well, there isn't a coordinate number by the color adjustment either ... and I'm used to working on my Elements panel, which can be set to give a number readout on its internal display. So ... they could put numbers there, apparently they are available in the API.

Adjusting the pivot point changes the point that adjustments are based on. Salvo's diagrams were quite correct that way. SpeedGrade had the typical Shadow/Mids/Highs 3-way "view", but you could take each of those, and have lows/mids/uppers I guess you could say. I used that a lot ... and yes, adjusted the pivot point to get the most precise control for the image.

And yea, I was one of the very vocal ones when they deprecated then eventually ended SpeedGrade. Rather ticked off the then-product manager, rather thoroughly in fact. And I appreciate that he's been replaced by the guy that had co-created Iridas/SpeedGrade. Unfortunately, after the demise of that app. Ahh well.

Using the pivot to actually change tonal/color information is possible, but of course, can be argued. As I spend much time with colorists, I've heard this argued. But I figure if something does exactly what you want, and doesn't harm any pixels in the process, what the hay, right?  😉

We're all adults and if we wanna do something "foolish" and it just works, well, we can.

Although for what you're wanting to do, I'd probably either make a Lumetri preset, which you can of course apply to single or all selected clips, or make save the changes to a LUT, then save that such that it can be applied to the Creative tab LUT slot. I'd make it as "far" as I'd ever need, and use the 'amount' slider to determine how much change it makes. Probably this latter step, actually. Faster than applying a preset.

And would come after the basic tonal work it sounds like you're doing in the Basic tab, which is good. LUTs being known as the dumbest math out there.

Adding LUTs of course must be done outside the program/package files, in the locations in the chart below. You have to create the last pair of folders, Technical (Basic tab) and Creative. I've made icons on the desktop to go to those folders, so I can manage LUTs quickly. And I name (or rename) all LUTs I use so they come up first in the computer-ese alpha-numeric sorting.

01 A low-sat neut

01 B high-sat neut

03 A BMPCC4K film 70s soft

And so on ... two digits so I can have up to 99 major categories though I'm only using 6 at the moment. A space for visual clarity. A letter for 25 sub-categories. Then the name of the purpose for that LUT.

Neil

[frantick890]

Thanks for your insights, guys. I appreciate the effort. Yes. I use a chart for all my slog3.cine.gamut footage and can dial that in pretty well with Lumetri 1 (node 1) - white balance and exposure correction, Lumetri 2 (node 2) - my custom built LUT, then Lumertr 3 (node 3) - special things like de-noising blacks, sharpening mid and high lum, secondary selective color grading, etc.

Looks like I will be using the Mid-tone slider for quick middle grey adjustments when the fleshy bits look washed out. That seems less fiddly than Curves and gets me closer to my goal faster.

Thanks again.

I came with a question. I left with a drink in my hand.

[R Neil Haugen]

Very good process laid out there, btw ...

Neil

[Jim Curtis]

You could take a look at this third-party product.  I haven't used it yet.  You can download a demo.  Also look at their Warping Wheels product.

https://picture-instruments.com/products/index.php?id=10&back=1 

I've started a post here asking if there are any extensions or plug-ins for Pr that bring it to parity with Resolve's color capabilities, and I've done some research, and this looks the most promising.  I'd love to hear some feedback from some Resolve experts who've tried these with Pr.

I continue to mostly use Lumetri over some of the third-party color plugs I've purchased because the GPU accelleration.  Red Giant claims Colorista is accellerated, but I'm not seeing it.  In fact most of the third party effects I have in which the developers claim to be GPU accellerated still show the red needs rendering stripe in the Pr timeline.

[R Neil Haugen]

Jim,

Color Cone is quite interesting. I downloaded the sample last spring, tested a few minutes, but haven't had time to get back to it. It seems ... useful.

I've color workspaces setup for both Lumetri and Red Giant's Colorista ... simply because both can be loaded as panels. Which makes a HUGE difference in working speed, as you don't grab the effect/apply to a clip/clips then start changing. Any time the playhead is on a clip, in either Lumetri panel or Colorista panel, you can just start working with the controls. Premiere will automatically apply the effect to the clip.

I don't know if Color Cone can load as a panel ... if so, I'd get it just because additional color tools always approach things a bit differently and are therefore useful.

Neil