Nuke Color correction vs Flame

[Keyser_Soze]

I’ve been testing Nuke for a while now and coming from Flame I’m wondering what you think about the color correction tools in Nuke? To me they “respond” and “feel” pretty clunky. Not that you don’t have control but they are sooo sensitive, you have to adjust in portions of zero zero zero zero point 4 or something like that, annoying and slow to have to be that precise all the time. And there is something else that I can’t put my finger on, it feels un-artistic, I really have to struggle to get where I want. Don’t know if it is how correction responds to interaction or if it is how the mids, hi and lows are set up (I know I can adjust that) or maybe a float thing or something else… it just feels wrong. Corrections break apart really easily. I also miss something like the color warper. Am I doing something wrong? Anyone from “Flame land” that can relate?

Cheers,
K.

[Anonymous]

It isn’t as elegant as the flame interface but here’s my suggestion that should make things much easier….

I’ll assume you’re a tablet guy since you’re coming from flame. Hold down the alt button and drag any value box in nuke and it will slide much like in flame. This will move you in .1 increments in the color tools. This is usually to high so release the drag and start again in the same box and you will now be dragging in .01 increments. Release and drag again and you will be dragging in .001 increments, so on and so fourth. The extra clicks aren’t as smooth as flame but you’ll get used to it quickly and the control they allow is probably what you were missing.

If after dragging a few times, say to increments of .0001, and you want to drag again at .01 increments you can select the 1 in the .01 value and drag and you’ll be back to get to dragging in .01 increments.

There is nothing like the color warper in nuke. But I highly recommend doing most of your work with the grade tool. It’s one of the simplest tools but one of the most powerful color tools and my favorite.

For contrast adjust the multiply and gamma, for overall color adjust the gain and for blacks adjust the lift.

[guillem ramisa]

Hello filmsoup and thank you for your reply. You are correct when you assume that i am a tablet guy and used to flames direct way of dragging values. It sure is smooth and hard to switch to other ways of working. Nuke is powerful but sometimes you can sense it somewhat technical background/history. But it is getting better though.
I already have found the way of alt-dragging values, thats the way i’ve been working but its not perfect as you describe it. I mean its backwards and slow that you have to adjust in such small values to get a usable result. I will follow your advice and explore the grade node some more but i still miss something more telecine like (color warper or similar please). It would speed things up. You can feel that the software was built for power and long term projects
and not quicker client attended sessions, well now the purpose for nuke is probably not and never will be in advertising and such but i do wish for and hope that thefoundry will not only develop and fill nuke with complicated and cool new “wow” technology but also remember to improve and and come up with new creative ways when it comes to interface design and workflow. It’s those small repetetive everday tasks that you do again and again that counts. Not if you have a fancy 3D tracker included. Well it sure is nice to have one but i would prefer to have a super robust 2d tracker instead of any 3D tracker. Of course its nice with technical progression but dont forget to improve the things that already are there. They are not perfect. I’m looking forward to the new paint and roto 🙂

[prajjwal]

Hi,

I was a FFI user for years and now a Nuke guy.

I do a lot inside the “colour pot”. (The little colour pizza next to most controls).

That way if you enlarge the control window that pops up, you get nice long sliders to play with.

Another bonus is that you can adjust, say, RGB Gain or RGB offset but with HSV controls if you want. I often crank up the saturation, play with the hue until I get the right tint, then dial the saturation down.

It’s really nice to be able to do micro tweaks to all 3 channels by only playing with the hue or saturation.

What you might be experiencing too is the switch to linear color space. “Mid-gray” is 0.18 instead of 0.5 in gamma-2.2 world. This means that curves and ranges are squeezed to the “left”. It was suggested to Foundry to offer the option of non-linear display to remap 0.18 to the middle of the range in the GUI. I don’t know if they’re going to do it.

So overall, the GUI of Nuke is not as slick as FFI, but you will get used to it pretty quickly.

Colour warper and 3d keyer are really the only things I kinda miss from FFI. But I wouldn’t trade alpha channel support in all nodes for these 2 tools. 🙂

— X

[guillem ramisa]

Filmsoup and Xavier, thank you for your replies. And yes I’m a tablet guy and used to dragging values. It’s a quick and nice way to work and – as you suggested – I’ve been using the alt-drag method and that’s fine. The problem I had with that is values have to be adjusted in really small amounts thus forcing you to click several times to get to where you want… a bit slow and tedious i think. Would be nice if it was possible to change the sliders to not be as brutal (maybe it’s possible to do with expressions/gizmos somehow). I’ll try the grade-node a bit more as you suggested.
Furthermore as Xavier mentions above it is probably something else that bugs me about the “feel” of the color corrector. It might very well be how correction works in linear space. Don’t know if it’s just me having to adapt and get used to it, but for me color correcting feels very “un-natural”. Would be nice with an option here (hope you read this theFoundry 🙂
And nice tips there using the color wheel I’ll definitely try that some more. But please please come up with new color correction tools. And that goes for all other of Nuke’s existing basic 2d-tools, don’t forget them. It’s nice with new fancy 3d stuff and motion estimation tools. But there is nothing that beats a rock solid 2d-tracker (would be interesting with something like a built in mocha here), a versatile keyer (3d-keyer, master keyer), and easy to use color correction. Stuff that you use every day. Really looking forward to the new paint/roto 🙂

Cheers,
K

[guillem ramisa]

I had a look at shake and compared how dragging and values works there and to me it feels a bit more thought out. First of all you don’t have to alt-drag, you just click in the box and drag the value…. a bit quicker. Also if you hold ctrl+shift you will increment in smaller values, that’s nice and gives you even better and more precise control. And finally values seem to be scaled to the specific node you choose. So for example if you choose a color correct node, values will increment in .01 and if you hold ctr+shift even less. But if you choose a move2d node your values will increment in whole pixels (1,2,3 etc) which makes more sense. And not only that but the distance you have to drag the mouse/pen seem to be more well balanced to the result you’d expect. And yes, alt-draqgging in Nuke will probably do roughly the same thing, I just think Shakes way felt a bit smoother and I believe it would get you to your desired end result quicker. You might say I’m stuck on small things but sometimes it’s the small things that count. So maybe it wouldn’t hurt for theFoundry to “borrow” some ideas here and there.

[Jeremy Canceko]

I couldn’t agree more with Keyser’s comments about ‘the small things’ counting. Adobe’s applications are another example of slider implementation that ‘just works’.

I’m not a Flame Op, but I heard a while back that Flame’s click-drag sliders are tablet pressure-sensitive: press harder to make larger adjustments. As a die-hard wacom devotee, this sounds like a really good, intuitive idea.

I find the 0, 0.0, 0.00, 0.000 adjustment idea quite loopy for values that involve rough adjustments across magnitudes. It’s real ‘designed by a programmer’ stuff. You do get used to working this way, but it’s pretty sub-optimal compared to programs like Shake or AE.

[filip]

I’ve been using Flame for a long long time and I love Nuke.
But I agree with the comments above. Is weird the way of dragging values
What I don’t like also in Nuke is that all the Keyers (primatte,IBK, etc) are oriented to Blue and Green screen. If you need to key and specific color not blue or green (for example you need to change the color of a t-shirt) it doesn’t work as good as in Flame.
It doesn’t have anything even close to the Color Warper.

[Author]

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