[Tig] color

[Steve Hullfish]

Wow. That is a VERY unfair characterization of what happened.

Apple offered Bob Sliga a job and he took it. How is that "running?"  
Also, he asked - arguably - the finest, most "senior" member of  
Chicago's color correction community to step in for him at Columbia  
and he did. Pete Jannotta, who many in Chicago respect and admire, is  
now the new color correction teacher at Columbia. Bob helped to  
arrange that transition and the students were not left "hanging." I  
did not receive information about this transaction from Bob, but from  
Pete.

I can certainly understand that FinalTouch was not right for your  
purposes. There have certainly been changes in their software under  
Apple even though Apple has only owned the product for three months.

By my account, the changes are:
XML import and export has been fixed. A simple press of the "Send To"  
button gets tracks (up to 100) back and forth seamlessly.
They finally added an undo button, though it's only 1 level back.
They deliver 20 preset looks in the Color Effects room. This is a  
small addition that probably wouldn't be used by most experienced  
colorists, but if you're trying to figure out how the effects "tree"  
works, then the preset looks can be deconstructed as a kind of  
educational tool
They finally have documentation. That's a biggie. I understand it's  
over 300 pages now.
Each individual secondary (of 8) can now be copied individually (plus  
primaries of course) to selected clips,
The addition of Curves. Many experienced colorists "pooh pooh" this  
tool, but I find it very powerful, and I noticed it as an added  
feature on the Resolve among others.
Interesting 3D vectorscope. I haven't played with it much, but you  
can view hue, chroma and luminance in this scope. I understand that  
it is similar to a scope in Flame.
They've moved the scopes off the main screen UI so if you have  
hardware scopes, you don't have to display them at all.
They've added the ability to check the specific numerical values of a  
pixel.

Things that definitely still need to be fixed:
Ability to monitor audio
improved realtime performance
inclusion of transitions
ability to change only luminance channel
simplify the UI (make it less Unix-like)
revise the HSL controls so that they center on the control point. Now  
it's hard to select cyan because it's at one end of the spectrum.
there are certainly others but I am not really in a position to know  
what everyone would like fixed about the software

I doubt that Bob had any incorrect information about FinalTouch. He  
may have had a "spin" on the information, as any demo guy would, but  
you may have had a "spin" on it as well, or, since there was a  
complete lack of documentation with the product and the product was  
evolving rapidly from point release to point release, it may have  
been your information that was incorrect. I remember the thread  
vaguely, so I couldn't fault either of you with having the facts  
wrong from memory.

Steve Hullfish
producer/color correction author
Chicago



On Apr 25, 2007, at 7:14 PM, Sean McKee wrote:
>
> I had posted my thoughts on Color when it was Final Touch back in  
> Sept 2005, after demoing it for a while. We ended up buying a  
> Resolve. Although it got heated for a moment the Silicon Color  
> owner not liking the fact that I didn't give a glowing review,  
> there was some good technical points mentioned. Not much has  
> changed since, and this thread can be looked up in the archives.
>
> I do remember hearing that the colorist/demo artist from Chicago  
> that was challenging me here with incorrect information about Final  
> Touch ended up going to work for Apple when they bought FInal  
> Touch, and he was also a teacher at Columbia College and quit his  
> job mid-semester to run to Apple and leave the students hanging.
>
> Sean McKee
> Screen Time Images