White balance picker. Anyone try it?

And if so, does it work as well as described? Here's the link

www.cineflare.com/white-balancer/


it sounds great. I often wonder why it's a standard feature in all still image raw converters, including Apple's Aperture, and Photoshop, and yet it's missing from FCPX.

OK, attempting to break the record for answering my own question... bought it, tried it, really quick test, and it seems to work well. There are a few controls with it and so far, I'm a happy camper.

Should add I have no connection in any way except as a user.

If I hit any problems tomorrow, I'll mention them.

Glad to know it works. Might give it a try. While I am a big fan of FCPX, the auto balance tools are pretty lousy. I don't even bother with them as a starting point for correcting/grading a shot. (On the plus side, the auto noise reduction and hum tools work halfway decently).

Yeah, I agree, Screendor. Auto WB in FCPX is next to useless. So far this is working well. You can sample from a few places til you get the balance almost right then use the fine tuning red, yellow, blue and green controls as required.

stewpid wrote: Auto WB in FCPX is next to useless.

Technically there is no automatic white balance in FCP X at all. There is a auto color corrector, but it isn't a "white balance" tool. It effects hue, saturation, and contrast, which is way more than you'd do for real white balance.

Yep, for the life of me I can't figure out why there is no white balance tool in FCP X. Very silly oversight, IMHO.

Fill out the feedback page, cause $50 is way, way, way too much for a simple white balance tool.

Can anyone get the demo video for this thing to play? I've tried both Safari and Firefox and I can't get any videos on that site to play at all.

Hi Ben

The link I posted works OK. I tried it just now in Firefox and Safari.

I agree, the price would be steep for a WB only tool but this actually has a few more goodies attached. The contrast, shadow fill, gamma, fine-tune color tools, etc, are all really effective and useful.

I'll repeat, I have no connection but when I see something I think is useful, I like to support it.

And another repetition: (and agreeing with you Ben) it probably is simple to make a WB only tool - so why hasn't someone done it?

Well I usually use the white balancer in the camera or... in a grading program like DaVinci Resolve and REDCINE-X PRO.

Well I usually use the white balancer in the camera or... in a grading program like DaVinci Resolve and REDCINE-X PRO.

Agreed, all useful tools. I guess it depends a lot on the type of filming you do.

Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to find time to do individual WB in camera when I'm recording a theatre dress rehearsal, or a live concert. There can sometimes be lighting changes, BIG ones, every few seconds. Imagine me asking for everything to stop while I focus on this white bit of paper... Won't be a second, thousands in the audience, hang on famous performers... have to do this 'cause it's so much trouble to click the mouse when I'm editing...

And even sometimes if I'm doing an industrial shoot, the same light changing problems can occur.

Re Resolve: I do this round-tripping XML saga when I have the time, but sometimes clients don't give me that luxury. Some of the younger ones tend to want finished work at the speed of dailies. And don't get me started on trying to get acceptable skin tones with Red... we don't do knocking copy on this forum.

Obviously, just my opinion. Everyone has their priorities but for me a WB picker is a great addition.

I am experimetning with this tool, simply great

I dropped them a note yesterday about not being able to read the pages and videos. Today it is working. Still, I think it's a tad pricey for simple white balancing. The other tools are in the existing CC tools. Just my 2 cents. Apple really should give us back the white balance tool, period.

Totally agree, Ben. It is pricey. Trouble is, for me being able to get a good starting point for grading quickly, ie, a farily accurate WB at the click of the mouse, was so useful it was a no brainer. And it does work.

And totally agree, what's so hard about dropping in a simple WB tool? Are you listening, Apple? (Yes, have sent them a request. But I don't think I have much clout with Apple. Everything I've requested has been ignored. You just have to accept your place in the world...)

The FCP dev team a list of some odd 300+ things to do. Some things will get done quickly, some will have to wait. They can only write so many features at a time.

That said, the more folks all filling out the feedback page requesting the same specific feature, the closer it will come to moving up in priority.

But White Balance, that's just so basic...

Yet I can't ignore that the FCP dev team works very, very hard to make things happen. And I suspect are under stress fighting bad decisions from higher ups. But that's just my opinion based on no evidence but what I've seen happen the past couple of years.

Has anyone tried Hy-Color?

It has the color balance feature and it's $25.

I may get it sooner or later but would like to hear what others think first

Hey guys thanks for speaking so highly about White Balancer. I was a little reluctant about putting the price at $49. But considering how valuable that picker tool is and the other tools that come with it, and comparing it to some other plugins in that price range that do much less, I still went for that price. It has so far been the most successful product on our site so I know this has been a much needed tool out there.

The hy-color plugin looks great too. I have no idea how he did that green reducer magic switch, but it's spot on and a pretty great value in and of itself.

Thanks again for the support guys!

pollux wrote: Has anyone tried Hy-Color?

It has the color balance feature and it's $25.

I may get it sooner or later but would like to hear what others think first

Hello

I purchased Hy-Color when it came out, and can attest to it's greatness. I has been very helpful on a number of occasions and is well worth a buy. ( i must say i was surprised how inexpensive the plugin is in ratio to it's functionality...this would be called a no-brainer in my books). As an additional bonus, version 1.5 arrived quite recently with even more greatness in the functionality realm.

At the time that i purchased Hy-Color, I was demoing a number of big name plugins, but in the end i found that Hy-Color fit my needs very nicely. A lot of happy campers to be found here:

www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/news/992-hy-fx-...-for-final-cut-pro-x

Regards

Krzysztof