11 Aug 2011

Grading and Colour Correction

The use of highend compositing software always includes being able to use the inbuilt sophisticated colour correction tools. Many live action composites require sometimes quite dramatic or enhanced colour, contrast and brightness settings. The range of looks and effects are very great and a lot of real atmosphere can be generated.

here are a few selected examples from across a broad range I've worked on at Liquid TV and SquareZero. Click pics to enlarge.

Retouched Models

click for images for higher resolution.
exercise in speed retouching - taking 20 minutes - that is quite slow by professional retoucher standards but I do not have warper plug  ins on my PS - using only Liquify and clone tool etc.

Face 'cleaned up' ie polished smooth and slapped in digital makeup. About half hour's work.

Fashion showcase

I have made some simple Photoshop exercises by seeing how fast I can produce some typical retouching, clean up and showcasing images.

Simple background removal and then removal of the dummy also. About 14 minutes - in high rez.

Removal of dummy and background. Made up back of collar.

Cut out from model and adding of fake inside area around collar area


Parallax Scrolling ( for game or animation backrounds )




Parallax view with complex multiple layers of 2d art. If scrolling / panning left to right, the layers at the back would move slower than the ones nearer the front. In this case the setup is for a zoom through the images not a pan or scroll. You can tell this because the panels are all the same width ( see below )



A simpler depth layout. The background sky would not move at all . The foreground palm trees would pass by soonest. The foreground elements have to be longer than the back ones as when scrolling they move faster past the camera.

This is a four level depth environment I made - the front layer was even longer but I cropped it. the back layer represents the widest camera framing. When layers are moving this scene gets a real feeling of depth. This is a concept for an iPhone game app background - the scrolling backgrounds being relatively easy to program and giving a great sense of depth to the game occurring in the foreground.