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A Little Help With Color - Sony Vegas

Metrostar

Metrostar

Any suggestions on how to make the middle picture have a similar tint to it as the top and bottom ones. These are stills from video I shot in two different locations on different days. I am not asking for a miracle here, just a little advice and making the middle footage appear as close to the other footage. Which plug-in/filter would be the best to use? I have Sony Vegas. Thanks.

2z9b5ee.jpg
 
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3way color corrector.

Looks like you'll need to crush the shadows, and push some blue into shadows and mids, and yellow into the highlights. Pretty standard 'movie look' fare.. basically simulating golden hour.

Be gentle, a little bit of color goes a long way.

Biggest difference I see is overall brightness, the middle shot is quite a bit brighter overall than the other two. If I had to guess I'd say you shot the middle one around mid-day and the other two at dawn or dusk.

You're not going to get the sky matched, unless you pull a luma key from the blown out sky in your second shot and do a sky replacement. And you certainly won't get the snow to match either since it's basically in shadow in the first and last shots, but a highlight in the middle shot.


But yeah, crush the shadows, cool off the shadows (lift) and mids (gamma) by pushing them toward blue/cyan, and warm up the highlights (gain) just a touch pulling toward yellow/orange. Focus on making the girl look similar , and maybe add a vignette to just take the edge off the harshness of the blown out sky.

Don't push things too far trying to get them to match perfectly or it'll wind up looking overly processed and wrong, even if people can't quite put their finger on why, it'll look wrong. ;)
 
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I'd argue the hilights want the blue (snow) and the mids want the yellows (tree bark) to get the middle shot to match the colors of the other two. The rest of will's post is right on.
 
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That was my first thought as well.. in fact even had it typed that way before I hit post. But on closer examination the only real highlight in the first image is on the right side of the fence posts, and that's decidedly warmer. The snow in the first shot is in shadow.

In the second shot, the snow is the highlight, but to get the shots to "match" based on color is probably going to feel wrong since the snow isn't a highlight in the other two shots.

But I'd try it both ways and see which looks better. My eye is saying the highlights need warming, but it could be the mids, without actually playing with the color wheels, it's mostly just a guess.
 
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Hey, thanks so much guys. This is really helpful and I'll have a go at it in the next day or so. The time of day for the middle shot was actually around 4.30pm, at a high elevation. The sky was pretty close to white. Here is another still from about 20-30 minutes after the previous one. The sun came out a little:

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yeah, in that new shot, if you crush the shadows and push blue into shadows and mids and yellow/orange into the highlights it'll probably come more in line with the first and third ones in your original post.

I've got a lot of housework to do today, otherwise I'd grab those stills and play with them a bit to give you a more solid answer on what to adjust. But I think that'll get you headed in the right direction.

Keep in mind too, you're not exactly shooting for a match, just enough adjustment to make them work together more seamlessly in an edit.

Dialing down some of the blue in the other shots might help a bit too, push the lighter one further, since it'll have more data to work with, but pull the darker ones up a bit, and remove some of the blue.. If I get a chance later this evening I'll have a play with it a bit.
 
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Nice. My family hasn't seen much of me for a few days, so I probably wont really get into this until tomorrow night or Tuesday, but I will post how I got on. Thanks again.
 
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So after playing a little bit, it does actually look a little better with blue into the shadows and highlights and yellow into the mids. My first thought, and knightly's take were correct. (Always trust your gut i guess)...
 
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it is getting a lot better. Note in the first shot posted that the sky has a gradient. You may need to add one to the skies that are blown out (use a luma matte to apply to the sky without changing the values of the trees.

Compare the blues in the snow between shots. Overlay the two shots, then crop one down the middle. You'll be able to compare them directly as well. Be sure to watch your vector scope as well, you can crop to just the blue snow to see where your target is for your correction. Start with the meters and numbers until you've developed your eye more. It's a skill that needs training.
 
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Practice = training. I wasn't implying you needed paid training, just that whatever learning you can seek out... as you're currently doing. Push the wheels too far, see what it does. Present them for critique. You seem to be doing all the right things. You'll never know the questions to ask unless you do that task wrong first.

You're doing it right.
 
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