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Author Topic: Best Color correction software for film photographers.  (Read 1558 times)

Superka

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Best Color correction software for film photographers.
« on: November 16, 2013, 10:04:53 am »

Hello! I want to tell you about great alternative to Photoshop as a photo processing tool - compositing cinema software. It may be particularly interesting for film photographer, HDR shooters, and for digital photographers who use Photoshop, besides RAW-converters. I'll tell you about this kind of pipeline on the example of Eyeon Fusion. It may be not the best but I'm used to it and ideologicaly compositing software are all the same. Foundry Nuke seems to be the best and most popular.

What are the advantages on compositing tools?



1. 2D Parametric Node interface.
All of the tools are special operators, called "nodes"  -  and each project is organized in the form of a flow chart (composition), consisting of the nodes and connections between them. It is extremely simple, logical and convenient . You can easily create a branches from any of the nodes - thus creating different versions of processing image. No need in Photoshop Actions - you can post-process all files in the folder as if it were siquence, you can copy your flow (or part of it) and paste to another composition. Nodes can be copied as instance - when the original and copy affects each other.
Each composition is 2D interface, while Adobe software is all 1D - using layers. 1D is tooo restrictive.

2. Non-distractive software.
 You don't do anything with your original images - they are just loaded via Loader node. Results are saved via Saver node.

3. Small files size.
 As compositing software creates parametric flowchart and do not contain any images inside composition. Typical file sizes are 30KB, rarely up 500KB. You do know how quickly grows file sizes in Photoshop when using layers.

4. Autosave each minute.
Small file sizes makes autosave unnoticeable.

5.   8,10,16,32 bits per channel are fully supported. Flow-point formats (HDRs) are of course supported too.

6. Fantastic color correction instruments. And fantastic other tools.



Just have a look at Color curves node (CCv). All points of curve are Besier-type. This is much more precise, stable and convinient. Photoshop have Smooth-type points which are awful.
In Fusion you can zoom to any part of curve for fine tune. This is extremely important when working with color negative scans.
Those, who creates HDR images would love that the upper-right point is not restricted by X=1, Y=1 brightness, and you can easily recover overbright parts.

7. Handle huge files.
I shoot 6x17 panoramas. Scan reversal and negative on Hasselblad X5 in Scandig studio (filmscanner.info). Each file is 22000x8000 16bit and take 1GB of disk space. No problems with Fusion!
For speed and convenience I place Resize node after loader, reduce the size to 10%, then place color correction tools, and before pressing RENDER, turn Resize node off, and turn off nodes display in viewing windows. Render time for my huge files is about 20sec (Intel Quad 2.66Ghz, 8GB of RAM).

There is also an opportunity to pre-render any composition part and save it as Disk Cache. But! Once I had a BUG, when I have deleted Disc Cache via Fusion (I kept cashes in the same folder as my scans), and Fusion deleted all the files in the folder, including my original scans! WOW! Luckily I had a backup. Read-only attribute is a good idea to put on scan files. Not to place cache in the same folder. Do not use cache - unlikely you'll need this feature ever. But I had to warn you about this bug.



Ok. That was basic "Pros".

Now  "Cons"
Not good for retouching - such as brushes painting and dust removing. You should do this in Photoshop.
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