[Tig] color (was FT, that is)

[Steve Hullfish]

I don't want to speak for Patrick, but I can go through each  
paragraph in his review and address whether anything changed or not.

Workflow - Now instead of worrying about an XML export, you can  
simply hit the Send To button in FCP and Color to get the program  
"roundtripped." Obviously, since Apple now owns the app, they were  
able to solve all of the weird XML issues that Silicon Color was having.

Dedicated Interface - The Tangent Devices control panels still work  
like they did with FT. They also work with JLCooper's "Eclipse"  
control panels which I believe are cheaper (and, I think, FEEL like it.)

Secondaries - lots of them. Each one has improved HSL keying ability  
and the ability to use circles, squares and custom user shapes for  
vignetting or garbage masking. Each secondary has the ability to  
grade both inside and outside the qualified area. Secondaries provide  
full RGB control, not just "adjustments" to the qualification. You  
can use the secondaries without qualifying anything just like a  
primary color correction, so you could use them as "levels" of  
primary correction if you wanted to.

Silicon Color never had an undo ability. Now there is a single level  
of undo. Still not enough, but definitely better than none.

Nodal FX Tree - nothing's really changed except that Apple's new  
"resident colorist," Bob Sliga, created 20 pre-set "looks" to get you  
started. I wish that you could use qualifications that were already  
done in secondaries in the Color Effects room. The Color Effects room  
DOES have an HSL keyer, but you have to start from scratch again if  
you already had a key pulled in secondaries. Patrick's idea of being  
able to insert Color Effects between certain secondary corrections  
has merit. They can't do that now. Also, when you are pulling a key  
in Color Effects, the SOURCE for the effect visually is coming from  
your primary and secondary rooms, which is good, but the key itself  
is being pulled from the "base mem" position. So if you've boosted a  
certain color in secondaries, the Color Effects room SHOWS you that  
boosted color, but the key you're trying to pull is from the weaker  
color of the "naked file."

Geometry and pan and scan hasn't changed much. This allows pretty  
massive resizes with good quality. According to someone in the booth  
at NAB, the resize is no longer rendered out of Color, like it was in  
FinalTouch. Instead, the metadata for the resize effect is sent back  
to FCP and FCP now does the resize internally. I don't know if that's  
a good thing or not because I'm not familiar with resizing things in  
FCP. If the algorithm (quality) is the same for the resize in FCP, I  
guess it doesn't matter.

Telecine mindset - actually a lot of Patrick's complaints here have  
been addressed. He wanted Photoshop like Curves and he got them. He  
wanted different color spaces than RGB and he got them (though not  
CMY). Controls over what is defined as high, mid or low is not  
possible yet, but I'm guessing that that will come in the next  
release. The product manager for Color was on Avid's Symphony and  
Symphony had Curves and the ability to customize tonal range  
definitions, so it will probably be added ... not that I know  
anything for sure. Color Finesse does have the ability to do this, as  
Patrick notes. So does Avid. It's a cool thing.

Messy Bins - I agree with Patrick's assessment that these bins are  
messy and not well managed. Nothing's changed with Apple's first  
version here. Hopefully it will be addressed.

Still Store Isolation - I agree with Patrick here too. There's a  
little too much jumping back and forth to the still store room for my  
liking. I think that if you made good use of the quick key commands  
that would help. You can save a still store and enable the still  
store with a button push. And if you have the Tangent panel, you can  
use the dials at the top to position the wipe without going to the  
still store room, so there isn't a whole lot you need to go to the  
room to do really. I don't know how much Patrick knew about the  
wiping and keystrokes, so I can't say it was pilot error. Even with  
knowing about those things, there are still things you have to leave  
the grading space for to touch in the still store and then move back.  
This could be improved, but there are some pretty easy workarounds  
here. Basically, though, nothing's changed with Apple.

Give me back my real estate - Things definitely changed. You CAN  
operate on a single monitor. Also the scopes were pulled off the  
first monitor and the second monitor can either display a full screen  
image or a quad split with internal scopes and the image. I'd like to  
see the ability to see the secondary keying on the main videocard-fed  
monitor instead of the computer monitor. Basically Apple did fix  
this, though maybe not in the way Patrick would have liked.

Put limiting where it belongs - I disagree here. This is a personal  
preference. I think it's in the right spot. If you agree with  
Patrick, then nothing's changed.

Unix style navigation - this hasn't changed. I agree with Patrick.  
It's ugly and "uncomfortable."

Long Saves - I haven't worked on long projects with FinalTouch.  
Patrick's probably right. I don't know if this has changed, but it  
may have since Apple has the kinds of resources to fix something like  
this. Basically, I don't know.

Tripping up the round trip - This has been fixed since Patrick wrote  
his review. It simply works. Though I didn't have time to check the  
file naming problem. That is a HUGE issue.

The owners manual has been taken care of. I personally spoke to the  
author who has written about color correction for Apple before. The  
new documentation is over 320 pages on just Color. One previous FT  
user who got a "seed" copy of Color said he cried when he read the  
manual. It was so beautiful. Even after a year of using the app, he  
said that the manual showed him many things that he did not know the  
application could do. So Apple fixed that.

The "version" of the application is highly subjective. I would  
basically agree with Patrick, but claiming that certain stability or  
user features should be in an application at a specific number of  
version is like saying that an amplifier should have a specific db  
output at a certain number on the dial. Versioning is all about  
marketing and legalities and has little to do with one person's  
vision of where a "2.0" product should be.

Additional comments - Apple added a cool 3D vectorscope. Serious  
colorists may consider it a toy, but I think it's cool that you can  
see luminance now in a vectorscope. You can also see the actual  
pixels that are being qualified in a key using the 3D vectorscope.

You can see specific values for pixels since Apple released Color.  
You can actually save three different pixels' values on each shot and  
they update as you grade or even as you scrub through the shot.

Steve Hullfish
color correction author/on-line editor/producer
>>
>> http://www.fini.tv/articles/inside_ft_1.html
>
> Interesting read.  The obvious question is... "What's changed since
> you wrote your article?"