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Hiya ! I'm studying color tools in an NLE now... and I'll use example from a lesson. I didn't shoot this, it's source material from a lesson.
The first lesson involved importing material into a specific color space ( rec 709 gamma 2.4 ) and doing a primary grade ( just simple adjustments of luminance values cause the original was a little flat (prores )). Looks like this after initial grade.
you see a yellow plane, blue water, and birds ( flamingos)
The next part of lessons involve more complex tools to learn, and would be called actual color correction and secondary grades plus even more grading after that.... For the purpose of teaching me the maker of tutorial gave me the above clip but the water was GREEN, so I had to turn that blue. Then I had to adjust the tonality and saturation and hue of the yellow plane to make it nicer. AND, finally, turn the birds PINK. I'm currently working on the PINK thing... cause I ran into some problem with the tutorial directions vs. my results. I'll finish it today.
The above is a keyed area, meant to separate the water from the plane and birds. A mask ( tracked) can be applied to the birds to separate them from the plane. This stuff is moving, in a clip, and the birds start out being out of frame...
Anyway, here's what I got so far.....
Now you can see more detail in the plane, the water is nice blue with some reflection of clouds in it, and the stupid birds ( they are giving me a hard time ) are flapping away being scared off by the plane engine noise.
The exact nature of the keying and details to get the best results are much more probable before upscaling. Upscaling is an interpolation technique where the computer guesses what color pixels ( by comparing a specific pixel specs with those surrounding it ) to ADD to the image, to make it larger. It adds pixels based on a math calculation basically. And is introduces less clarity by nature. It is unavoidable. The nature of the upscale is that it gets less clarity ( less sharpness ). That means the color work you do will be less exact too.
hehe.. no,, I'm saying the opposite. I think it's better to color first and then upscale. If you can avoid upscaling altogether that would be even BETTER.
There are some caveats to everything … like, for example, a typical workflow in the old days ( and today I guess ) is to edit, composite, color, mix sound, export … but things are getting easier cause new programs allow for one person to do all that stuff by themselves for simple projects. So, today I can put stuff into my timeline to edit, and immediately go to a color portion of the program and do a simple white balance correction using, say, just luminance values, and then go back to edit the stuff. Things are changing in that people used to have to send color work to another person, and sound mix, and composite work. But now we can do it all in one program. Really professional stuff still has to be done mostly the old way, but that workflow also means you wouldn't be dealing with most of the problems the people like me have ( like I didn't shoot the stuff with controlled lighting and professional actors and a sound mixer on a sound proof set, and etc. ). So for me it's kinda necessary to do some housekeeping stuff just to get to the point where I can really just edit stuff and know what I'm using is within legal limits on the scopes and the sound is OK to use and so on...
I don't upscale work but if I had to I would do that last. If after it was upscaled something changed ( tonality probably ) it could get tweaked back in color again before export.
Finished my "color tutorial from hell" today, finally. Took 4 days cause I couldn't get something to work to make those birds pink. Turns out I was using the wrong control to invert a matte. What a dope I am !
whoops… I thought you meant like 720p to 1080p
didn't realize you meant cropping the image
plus, if you are doing any chroma key or masking to denote special ranges of tonality or hue ( etc. ) … it's a lot more fun to work with slightly blurry stuff than the original !
Hey Jim, please give my cache settings a quick look see..... here: Re: Media Cache I was looking for you! My post is at the bottom. I posted a couple screen shots...
Thanks!!
Letty
interesting and good feedback all around. I sometimes work with stuff that is a bit flat even when in the right color space ( like prores or S log ) and as soon as I put clips on the timeline I quickly do a first grade ( which is just luminance values real fast, using scopes and eyeball ). Since I do that in a 'color' portion of program I consider it a part of color correction. Even though I haven't done a single thing to change any colors at this point.
So, a window that's blown out, that might make me think it would be nice to just crop that out by upscaling that portion of frame, might look nice after that initial grade of luminance values. Then there's the simple apply grade or presets or whatever that can be used by selecting ALL clips on timeline and applying that stuff.. to speed things up.
I don't upscale stuff anyway, honestly. I might put 4k in a 1080p timeline, so I CAN zoom in, but I'm not upscaling... because the 4k in the 1080p is actually DOWNSCALED.
hehe.. gets confusing.
But whatever works for you is cool ! scale away to your heart's content.. things in PPRO are so superior now with color stuff that you can probably crop and scale up from 1080 to 4k and get a beautiful product !
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