Color grading and retouching video in Lightroom

I've been trying to find a way to use the very powerful Lightroom develop module for retouching videos. LR 4 allows to adjust some parameters such as color temperature, exposure or saturation, all of them available in the Library module. But you can do that inside fcpx.

After reading a post in prolost that i didn't understand too much, it tried to apply the concept:

1-Open your video in Photoshop CS6
2-Export>Render Video as an image sequence
3-Open your frames in Lighroom 4 or Camera Raw.
4-Now that they are single pictures, you can use the develop module. Retouch using highlights, clarity, vignettes, grain, chromatic aberration corrections...
5-Export your images to a folder that contains only that images.
6-Back in PS, click Open, choose the first exported image and check the "open as image sequence" box.
7-Now you have your video back, retouched in a photo way
8-Render your video.

Not very fast, but with some tricky footage you can do amazing things that can take a lot of time also inside fcpx, even using powerful plugins. And if you are a photographer like me, you'll find retouching in LR much easier than fcpx.

As said in the Prolost Blog, using lightroom is very handy also to match colors between different shots, because you have the grid.

Hope this help many people.
Maybe LR 5 will do this as a new feature? It would be great!

hate to say it. you might as well just use DaVinci. If you are serious.

I've been using the free version of Davinci. Couldn't find a similar highlights or clarity controls, for example. The new LR develop module is pretty unique. My DSLRs tend to blown out highlights, so i use the Technicolor cinestyle profile, which is very flat. "Color grading" (a little old fashion term) can be difficult for photographers whith software like Davinci, Color or Colorista. The controls inside these programs were made in the analog era, to retouch film, that has more dynamic range than digital video. Of course they were also used for hd video, coming from camcorders. And simply because PS or LR didn't exist. I believe that with the irruption of HDSLRs, photo and video are converging in a common area. If LR 5 allows to control video files in the future, i think that many people will turn into it. LR is a "serious" tool. But is in its first stepts in video. Just as fcpx when it appeared.

I have to respectfully disagree with you there. "Color Grading" is not an outdated term. "Color Timing" perhaps, but not "grading". The controls in Resolve are also not outdated. The controls you need are there, just not always obvious. Serious color grading takes a lot of education and time. Working with video is extremely different than working with still images.

DaVinci can do it, but you need to really learn the app properly. I highly recommend the Ripple Training video course. Alexis Van Hurkman is the top color grading trainer on the market today, and a fantastic teacher. If you're that serious about color grading video, his "Color Correction Handbook" is the bible. DaVinci will do what you need and more.

Now y'all can start flaming me.

BenB wrote: I have to respectfully disagree with you there. "Color Grading" is not an outdated term. "Color Timing" perhaps, but not "grading". The controls in Resolve are also not outdated. The controls you need are there, just not always obvious. Serious color grading takes a lot of education and time. Working with video is extremely different than working with still images.

DaVinci can do it, but you need to really learn the app properly. I highly recommend the Ripple Training video course. Alexis Van Hurkman is the top color grading trainer on the market today, and a fantastic teacher. If you're that serious about color grading video, his "Color Correction Handbook" is the bible. DaVinci will do what you need and more.

Now y'all can start flaming me.

Agree 100 procent.
Buy the ripple training. It's very inexpensive, and clocking in at Around 8 hours, very troughout.

DaVinci is a great program and your remarks about that it's from a analog period etc are just off-base.
I'm a 25 year old guy raised with Digital video and I think color and DaVinci are easier to understand then lightroom. It's just what you are used to.
(Not knocking Lightroom, btw)

The Ripple Training is dirt cheap, IMHO. For a very professionally done training course, covering the entire application, by the best in the business, geared towards working professionals, it is dirt cheap. Complex apps require more training. Try learning 3D modeling from scratch. HA! There's a challenge!

I can't see Aperture or Lighroom ever becoming video editors. Apples to onions.

I know, I know. At the end I'm not that serious. I was sharing a workaround that can be nice for photographers. Maybe Stu Maschwitz is a little more serious than me, where I got the idea from.

Now y'all can start flaming me

What is a nice talk to have, is this idea of video being "extremely different" from stills. 24, 25 or 30 fps mean stills per second, and in fact, what you are "color grading" are stills, not interlaced video. The idea of video vs stills are out of date to me. The reason that different programs where used separately was that you need much more power, graphics and ram for video than stills. This frontier has been passed. I'm editing progressive 1920x1080 video in a notebook. Tell me if that was possible 10 years ago. Of course that under professional workflows DaVinci will be the choice. But for me, doing commercial video as a freelance videographer, could be a better and more intuitive option to work with the sliders of Lightroom. At the end LR and Davinci do more or less the same, just the tools are different.

There was no HD video 10 years ago. And many of us still work with interlaced video (better for fast motion subjects like sports, and mandatory for broadcast).

Ben - actually you could buy the Kona HD card ten years ago, so yes there was HD. (Editor)

Now you mention that current color grading tools are not based on digital media. But they actually are. Analog color grading involved "timing" how long each piece of celluloid film was exposed to specific types of lights and chemicals to get the looks we needed. This does not in anyway translate directly into computer grading.

The grading tools we have now were in deed developed for digital media. Nothing about it is really out of date.

Broadcast still uses interlaced, especially for sports as it handles motion MUCH better than progressive images. Video/film/broadcast is additive color versus photography which is subtractive color. Two different color wheels to work with. Photos are printed to paper, video is broadcast or printed to film or digitally projected (another version of broadcasting as NAB states now).

No, video and photography are not the same on a professional and engineering level at all. Apples to onions.

BenB wrote:

Very different, apples to onions. Video is not just a ton of photos shown very fast. Photos are subtractive color. Video is additive color. Lots of major technical differences. Lightroom/Aperture and Resolve are far from being the same thing, unless you really over simplify the engineering behind film/broadcast into a catch phrase.

Both video and stills are additive color when watched on a screen. Subtractive color refers to printed images, which reflect light instead of emit.
Progressive video IS just a ton of photos shown very fast. Usually taken at 1/30 of a second to get a more fluid perception of movement, avoiding the staccato effect when using faster speeds. I don't see the technical differences.

Interlaced video is, of course, a different thing. Apples to onions, as you say.

I don't see what the real need to go out to Photoshop or Lightroom or Aperture at all if you know the tools well.

You don't need to go! It's just me showing a different way to do the same. Also I can say You don't need fcpx to edit wonderful pieces of video, you can do it in Premiere Pro CS4, if you know the tools well.

That said, and ref to video plugins, I don't find any of them as powerful as LR develop module. But that is probably because I'm photographer. I love detail, texture, deep blacks, and wide tonal range. That's why I never was interested in video until the irruption of HDSLRs. I know that for broadcasting and sports, these traditional camcorders are still needed, but it's a pain to my eyes to watch the footage they produce! That's why nobody make films with camcorders, but many are doing it with HDSLRs, RED, BlackMagic and others.

Well, this discussion went far away from my post! Ha.
Thanks anyway to read my boring conclusions!
Happy year to everybody

"when shown on a screen" but not in the software! Lightroom and Aperture at set up for subtractive color.

And yes, some films have and are done with video cameras. There have always been high end video cameras that rival even today's DSLRs.

For lower end work, what you suggest can be fun. But for higher end work, no, not at all.

Happy New Year.

See you in the next battle field my friend, next year!
Best,

Pablo

as an observant reader of this board (as a hobbyist I have little to contribute), I remember well this story:

www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/tutorials/821-c...-pro-x-with-aperture

same process:
use image sequences to emulate 'stills'.

What's so interesting in your debate with Ben is:
engineering vs. usage

the knobs&sliders in 'print'-tools are for many users more … familiar.
(although none of these instagram-kiddies do know, why for example an 'unsharp mask' gives a sharper impression :lol: you have to be my age to remember developing-baths and repro-cams). Nobody is interested in, wether a vignette gets 'multiplied' or 'added' to the pixels - just do it!

From my 'illiterate' POV, the interesting question is:

(Technicolor not meant here in engineer's sense!)

I remember well the first NLEs in the 90ies, 40min storage proxies on Mac Quadras and on screen vertical bands of film = Moviola wanna-be

Meanwhile we reached skimmers and gestures and secondary storyline and …
No more Steenbeck metaphors, a UI of its own - faster and somehow 'better'.

There will always be 'gurus' knowing, how to calculate an effect (antique versions of Photoshop allowed to insert matrixes as filters - does it still?).

But I'm pretty sure, sliders with 'older', 'vibrant' or 'nicer' :blink: will soon replace the colour-wheels. hey, FCPX' colour-bar already does!

happy movie making!

Interesting discussion on the various ways you can come at color correction.

Some might find this helpful...

vimeo.com/55139561

I think I must be backwards. I'm getting great results including Motion 5 and FCPX in my photo editing workflow, I just wish they integrated with iPhoto as external editors.

TrixTrax9000 thanks for sharing. Also you can find some great free (and paid) tutorials at
www.colorgradingcentral.com/
Many of them dedicated specifically for grading in fcpx.

To quote Alexis Van Hurkman from his Resolve 9 video course (I'm going through it now, it goes faster than you think), There is no right way to do this, you simply find the workflow that works for you and use it.

a still from a movie