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Magic Bullet Colorista User Guide
Magic Bullet Colorista User Guide
User Guide
Magic Bullet Colorista User Guide
© 2006 Red Giant Software LLC. All Rights Reserved.
This manual is provided under license from Red Giant Software and
is provided for personal use only. The content in this manual may be
updated at any time without notice to the user. Red Giant Software
LLC assumes no liability for inaccuracies or omissions.
The contents of this user guide may not be reproduced, stored or
reprinted in other printed or electronic forms without the express
written consent of Red Giant Software, LLC.
The images and artwork in the manual are protected by copyright
law. The unauthorized use of any media may be a violation of the
rights of the owner.
Trademarks: Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects are registered
trademarks of Adobe, Inc. in the United States and other coun-
tries. Apple Mac OS X and Final Cut Pro are registered trademarks
of Apple Computer, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
Windows and Microsoft are either registered trademarks or trade-
marks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other
countries. Avid, Avid Xpress, and Media Composer are registered
trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. Magic Bullet is a trademark of
Red Giant Software, LLC. All other products and name brands are
trademarks of their respective holders.
www.redgiantsoftware.com
Product Installation.........................................................4
Welcome............................................................................................ 4
Installation.......................................................................................... 4
Activation........................................................................................... 4
Support.............................................................................................. 4
Magic Bullet Colorista Basics............................................5
Introduction........................................................................................ 5
System Requirements........................................................................... 5
Rendering........................................................................................... 5
Colorista User Interface...................................................7
Correction Basics................................................................................ 7
Lift/Gamma/Gain................................................................................ 7
Controls............................................................................................. 8
Dot Motion......................................................................................... 8
Luminance Changes............................................................................. 9
Float-based Imaging.............................................................................. 9
White Balance..................................................................................... 9
Saturation........................................................................................... 9
Exposure.......................................................................................... 10
Power Mask..................................................................11
Basic Masking................................................................................... 11
Mask Shape and Size......................................................................... 11
View Mode........................................................................................ 11
Invert Mask....................................................................................... 12
Draw Outline..................................................................................... 12
Top Point.......................................................................................... 13
Bottom Point..................................................................................... 13
Radius............................................................................................. 13
Feathering........................................................................................ 13
Feather Size...................................................................................... 13
Application Specifics......................................................15
After Effects...................................................................................... 15
Premiere Pro.................................................................................... 17
Final Cut Pro 5.1.2............................................................................ 21
White Balance................................................................................... 21
Animation Issues............................................................................... 21
Motion............................................................................................. 25
White Balance................................................................................... 25
Lift/Gamma/Gain Sliders................................................................... 25
Avid systems..................................................................................... 29
White Balance................................................................................... 29
Animation Issues............................................................................... 29
Overlay Control.................................................................................. 29
Known Issues................................................................34
Product Installation
Welcome Magic Bullet Colorista from Red Giant Software is a new plug-in
designed for compositing and editing hosts that run on Mac OS X®
(10.4 and later) and Windows® XP (Home and Pro editions) plat-
forms. Magic Bullet Colorista is designed as a primary color cor-
rection tool that offers floating-point-based image processing, color
balance, saturation, and animated masking. Colorista paired with
Magic Bullet Look Suite can color correct and finish any project.
Activation The final installation step before using Magic Bullet Colorista is
entering your serial number into the registration dialog which will
appear the first time you access Colorista. YOU MUST ENTER A SE-
RIAL NUMBER TO USE COLORISTA. You will receive a confirmation
email after your purchase that contains your serial number, or you
can find it inside the inside cover of the Magic Bullet Colorista box.
The serial number for Magic Bullet Colorista appears in the follow-
ing format:
The activation code is a series of 20 digits. You must enter all digits
to complete the activation.
Support Product support is available to registered customers only. You can
register with Red Giant Software by opening your web browser and
using the following URL: www.redgiantsoftware.com/register.html.
The best way to reach support is through our website. Navigate to
http://www.rgsupportzone.com and click on the Ask a Question
link on the main page.
the color of the shadows, midtones and highlights for your image.
The wheels are arranged in a triangle, with Lift on the left, Gain on
the right and Gamma in the top middle position. Each wheel has two
controls: a color offset control shown by the dot in the center and a
luma control in the middle of the gradient band on the right of each
wheel.
closer to black and white. Raising the value of the slider adds color
intensity and causes your image’s color to become more bold. Raise
this too much, and colors can become pure and artificial-looking.
Exposure Exposure raises or lowers the exposure of an image after the Lift,
Gamma, Gain and Saturation operations. The exposure control
works just like exposure compensation on a camera, with the slider
calibrated in f-stops. Setting the exposure value to +1 or -1 will raise
the exposure by 1 stop or lower it by 1 stop, making the overall im-
age brighter or darker. You can dial in small increments of exposure
compensation by using decimal values. A value of .25 or .333 will
correspond to a 1/4 stop or 1/3 stop exposure change. You can
dial in any decimal value between -4 and +4, but typically, small val-
ues will allow you to brighten or darken your image in a natural way.
Exposure is good for setting the overall brightness of the image.
You can use the Maser Gain control to similar effect, but you may
already have used it to set white balance. Use Exposure when you
just want to add a bit of exposure compensation after adjusting the
other controls.
Power Mask
Basic Masking The Power Mask is a set of options for isolating the color correc-
tion that you make to a specific area in your image. Using a mask
for color correction is sometimes called secondary color correction.
The Power Mask offers two basic shapes (a rectangle or ellipse that
is defined by two points on the image) and a radius that defines the
width of the shape. Further controls let you set the Feather Size
and Bias or allow you to invert the masked area.
The Apply View Mode with overlay control showing the mask area
Invert Mask The Power Mask can either change the image inside the shape area
or just outside the shape area. By default, the Invert Mask switch
is off and color changes only happen inside the mask. Selecting the
Invert Mask switch will cause the color change to happen outside
the mask, effectively using the mask to protect the shape area.
Draw Outline The Draw Outline switch lets you remove the yellow outline that
shows the mask area in the Comp or Canvas window to allow you to
see the mask edge more easily. This switch is not available in Final
Cut Pro.
Top Point The Top Point control is a simple point parameter that lets you
control where the top of the mask is drawn. You can alter the point
value numerically or by clicking and dragging in the Comp or Canvas
window of the host application. You will typically use the point overlay
in the preview area to adjust the top point visually. You would only
need to use the numerical controls in rare cases when you wish to
constrain movement of the mask to a single axis.
Bottom Point The Bottom Point control works exactly like Top Point but will
change where the bottom of the mask is drawn. The Top and Bot-
tom Point controls can be reversed. There is no limitation on where
these points can be placed, and the “Top” and “Bottom” designa-
tions are only a convenience to describe where you can find their
on-screen controls in the preview window of your host application.
Radius The Radius control lets you set the width of the Power Mask shape.
The Radius is a value that represents half the width of the shape as
is calibrated as a percentage of the target video clip.
For example: A Radius value of 20 applied to a DV clip will yield a
shape that is 40% of the frame width (288 pixels) wide, while the
same value when the mask is applied to an HD clip that is 1280
pixels wide will result in a mask that is 512 pixels wide. The maxi-
mum value is 100, which would result in a mask that is twice the
width of the target frame size—more than enough for any selective
adjustment.
Feathering The rectangle or elliptical mask shape can be softened using the
Feather controls. Feather Size sets the amount of softness at the
edge of the mask shape, while the Feather Bias controls the cen-
ter point of the feather falloff, letting you adjust the softness to lie
more inside or outside of the mask edge. These two controls let you
achieve a soft-edged mask that will blend the color correction seam-
lessly into your image.
Feather Size Like the Radius control, Feather Size is based on a percentage of
the mask size. This makes it different from most feather controls
because the feather is not based in pixels. Because the feather
size depends on the mask size, the feather width will increase and
decrease with the overall shape of the mask. This is useful when
tracking a shape that is coming toward the camera. For example,
you could use a Power Mask on an actor’s face as the actor walks
toward the camera. With this behavior, the mask shape gives you a
very small feather when the shape is small, but as the actor moves
closer to the camera, you could adjust the mask shape to match
The Feather Bias control set to -100 (left), 0 (center), +100 (right)
Application Specifics
This section will cover the specifics of using Colorista in each of its
host applications, including After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut
Pro, Motion and Avid systems.
After Effects
Magic Bullet Colorista appears under the Magic Bullet category in
the Effects menu. The following is a quick sequence for using Magic
Bullet Colorista on a clip to set color balance and exposure in After
Effects. All of the controls are the same as those described above.
Getting Started The following are step-by-step instructions for applying Colorista to
a clip and setting white balance, lift, gamma, gain and saturation in
After Effects.
Drag and drop the clip onto the Create New Comp button in After Effects
3. Apply Colorista to the clip by choosing the plug-in from Effects >
Magic Bullet > Colorista. Next, choose Effects > Color Correc-
tion > Levels to add a Levels plug-in after Colorista. You will not
use this tool for color correction, but the histogram display in
the plug-in will show the mapping of brightness values, which is
a useful reference as you correct color.
The flower image before (left) and after (right) white balance step
5. Next, you will notice that the image is rather dark and that the
histogram shows a lot of dark values. Because there are a lot of
black pixels in the image already, we don’t need to alter the Lift
luma levels for this image.
6. The dark image could use a bit of brightening. This could be ac-
complished by increasing the Gain luma control, but we will dial
more brightness using the Exposure control because it is more
convenient to work numerically. Click on the Exposure numerical
readout and change it from a value of 0.00 to 0.25. This will
increase the brightness by 1/4 of a stop.
7. The image still seems dark in the shadows, so let’s just drag
the Gamma luma slider up to make the image brighter. You only
need to drag it up by about ten degrees to get brighter mid-
tones.
Premiere Pro
The Magic Bullet Colorista plug-in appears under the Magic Bullet
category in the Effects palette. The following is a quick sequence
for using Magic Bullet Colorista on a clip to set color balance and
exposure in Premiere Pro. All of the controls are the same as those
described above.
Getting Started The following are step-by-step instructions for applying Colorista to
a clip and setting white balance, lift, gamma, gain and saturation in
Premiere Pro.
2. Drag and drop the clip onto the Timeline at time 0:00:00.00.
3. Apply Colorista to the clip by choosing the plug-in from the Ef-
fects palette under the Magic Bullet category and dropping the
Effect onto the clip in the Timeline. Then double-click the Flower
Defocus clip to bring up the Colorista controls in the Effect Con-
trols palette.
4. Click the White Balance eye dropper on the white flower petals
in the foreground. Depending on the pixel you choose, the Gain
wheel will move toward a bright pale orange color, eliminating
the blue color cast from the flower footage.
The flower image before (left) and after (right) white balance step
5. You may need to balance the colors slightly. Make a new Refer-
ence display (Sequence Preview > Reference) and look at the
top of the RGB Parade display. When the three colored areas
have the same peak level, the white flower will look white.
In the RGB Parade display before adjustment (left), the red peak levels are
much lower than the green and blue. After adjusting white balance, the peak
levels (right) are nearly equal.
7. The image still seems dark in the shadows, so let’s just drag
the Gamma luma slider up to make the image brighter. You only
need to drag it up by about ten degrees to get brighter mid-
tones.
Getting Started The following are step-by-step instructions for applying Colorista to
a clip and setting white balance, lift, gamma, gain and saturation in
Final Cut Pro.
3. Apply Colorista to the clip by choosing the plug-in from the Ef-
fects palette under the Magic Bullet category and dropping the
Effect onto the clip in the Timeline. Then double-click the Flower
Defocus clip to bring up the Colorista controls in the Effects
Controls palette.
5. Depending on the pixel you choose, the Gain wheel will move
toward a bright pale orange color, eliminating the blue color cast
from the flower footage.
The flower image before (left) and after (right) white balance step
6. You may need to balance the colors slightly. Open the Video
Scopes Tool (Tools > Video Scopes) and look at the top of the
Parade display. When the three colored areas have the same
peak level, the white flower will look white.
In the RGB Parade display before adjustment (left), the red peak levels are
much lower than the green and blue. After adjusting white balance, the peak
levels (right) are nearly equal.
8. The image still seems dark in the shadows, so let’s just drag
the Gamma luma slider up to make the image brighter. You only
need to drag it up by about ten degrees to get brighter mid-
tones.
Motion
Colorista for Motion runs as a native FX Plug in version 2.1.2. This
plug-in version will not run in earlier versions of Motion because of
changes introduced with the Intel version of Final Cut Studio. The
plug-in is shipped as a dual binary, with support for both PowerPC
and Intel-based Mac systems.
Getting Started The following are step-by-step instructions for applying Colorista to a
clip and setting white balance, Lift, Gamma, Gain, and Saturation in
Apple Motion.
focus.mov file and then drag and drop the file into the project
window.
2. Drag and drop the clip onto the project window.
3. Apply Colorista to the clip by choosing the plug-in from the Li-
brary palette under the Magic Bullet category and dropping the
Effect onto the clip in the Preview window.
Magic Bullet Colorista effect show in the Library tab of the Library palette
4. With the clip selected, click the Inspector tab to reveal the
Colorista controls. Motion lets you change the parameter values
during playback, so feel free to experiment with the color wheels
while you play back your footage.
6. Depending on the pixel you choose, the Gain wheel will move
toward a bright pale orange color, eliminating the blue color cast
from the flower footage.
The flower image before (left) and after (right) a white balance step
8. The image still seems dark in the shadows, so let’s just drag
the Gamma luma slider up to make the image brighter. You only
need to drag it up by about ten degrees to get brighter mid-
tones.
Avid systems
Magic Bullet Colorista runs as an AVX 1.5 Plug-in that supports the
latest versions of Avid systems, including Xpress Pro 5.5.x, 5.6.x
and Media Composer 5.5.x and Media Composer Software. This
plug-in version only runs in the latest version of the applications at
this time. You will not be able to run this plug-in in earlier versions
of Avid systems on Mac OS X. The Colorista plug-in is shipped for
both Mac OS X and Windows systems, but it does not support Intel-
based Mac systems at this time.
The Overlay switch engaged in the Colorista controls in the effect editor
You can also move the overlay to a different position by simply click-
ing and dragging the gray area surrounding the color wheels.
Click and drag in the gray area around the color wheels to move the overlay
Getting Started The following are step-by-step instructions for applying Colorista to
a clip and setting white balance, lift, gamma, gain and saturation in
Avid Xpress Pro 5.5.
3. Apply Colorista to the clip by choosing the plug-in from the Ef-
fects palette under the Magic Bullet category and dropping the
Effect onto the clip in the Timeline. Change to Effect Editor mode
by clicking the shortcut in the Timeline.
4. Click and drag in the color swatch in the Effect Editor palette to
sample for white balance. Then drag over the flower to select a
white color you want to balance.
Click the white swatch to select a color in the Colorista effect editor
5. Depending on the pixel you choose, the Gain wheel will move
toward a bright pale orange color, eliminating the blue color cast
from the flower footage.
The flower image before (left) and after (right) a white balance step
7. The image still seems dark in the shadows, so let’s just drag
the Gamma luma slider up to make the image brighter. You only
need to drag it up by about ten degrees to get brighter mid-
tones.
ration value from 0 to 5. This will add some pop to the green
leaves and apples in the background.
Known Issues
There are several problems that you may encounter that do not
change the render quality of the Colorista plug-in, but may cause
slight error in the user interface. The following are a list of prob-
lems and workarounds wherever possible.
Premiere Pro In Premiere Pro, occasionally the mask point control appears
unexpectedly in the Lift/Gamma/Gain custom control area. This
is a known issue with Premiere Pro and plug-ins with custom user
interface elements and one or more point controls. If you move the
point control in the custom control area, then you could cause the
user interface to stop responding. To minimize this problem, simply
avoid moving the point control widget that appears in the Colorista
user interface.
Motion In Motion, Colorista cannot update custom color wheels during an
animation, so the color wheel may show a completely different color
than the expected one if you have animated from one hue to anoth-
er. The numeric readouts in the Lift, Gamma, and Gain sections still
animate and render correctly, but the custom user interface can
get out of sync with the numeric readout.
Final Cut Pro In Final Cut Pro, the Top Point and Bottom Point controls by default
are set to 0,0. This is caused by a limitation in the point control API
for FX Plug plug-ins. You can reposition either point by clicking the
standard cross-hair control in the Colorista controls in the Filters
tab and then clicking anywhere in the Canvas window. This will
change the point and update the mask shape.