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Legend
July 27, 2019
Question

Upscale first, then colorize? OR Colorize first, then upscale?

  • July 27, 2019
  • 5 replies
  • 4930 views

It's the chicken or the egg....  but....

What do you think should be applied first ?

Color or Upscale?

Thanks!

Letty

This topic has been closed for replies.

5 replies

Kevin-Monahan
Community Manager
Community Manager
August 12, 2019

More of a discussion, so I unmarked it as an actual question.


Kevin

Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio
Legend
July 27, 2019

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 !

Legend
July 27, 2019

My habit is to do all the editing before any color work.  Upscaling would be part of editing.

Letty2019Author
Legend
July 29, 2019

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

R Neil Haugen
Legend
July 27, 2019

Upscale. Always.

That way you'll only be seeing the parts that are being used, won't waste time on or be influenced by the excluded material.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
Legend
July 27, 2019

whoops… I thought you meant like 720p to 1080p

didn't realize you meant cropping the image

Legend
July 27, 2019

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 !

Legend
July 27, 2019

in the film biz the crew is usually given food at their call time... let's say it's 5am, so the caterer would be serving breakfast burritos, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, etc.  There's always eggs of some sort.

However, for later call times, like say 1pm, or 5pm, there would be stuff like hamburgers, chicken, breakfast burritos, and so on.

No matter what, there is always chicken of some sort. for later calls.

This fact of life prompted one funny crew member to make a few jokes.

Q: what came first, the chicken or the Egg ?

A: depends on your call time

Q: why did the chicken cross the road ?

A: company move

( a company move is when you move from one location to another ).

Anyway, color first then upscale

Letty2019Author
Legend
July 29, 2019

Funny !

any particular reason why to color first, then upscale?

Thanks

Legend
July 30, 2019

Wow, that now that's a reply.

So if I understand you right....  I should upscale first then colorize?


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 !