Color Correcting the Dragon Box - 3 Part Spectacular

[Ajay]

I like your corrections Ajay, but they look like there is too much blue in the image. The faces look more blue when they should look pinkish.

I'm honestly not surprised they look off. I'm not at home right now, so I'm confined to this shitty laptop. Don't have my calibrated monitor to work off of, I'm afraid. Sorry!

[MrWalnut4]

I like your corrections Ajay, but they look like there is too much blue in the image. The faces look more blue when they should look pinkish.

I'm honestly not surprised they look off. I'm not at home right now, so I'm confined to this shitty laptop. Don't have my calibrated monitor to work off of, I'm afraid. Sorry!

No worries, all I have to work off is a shitty laptop so I could just as easily be the wrong one!

[ect5150]

I'm honestly not surprised they look off. I'm not at home right now, so I'm confined to this shitty laptop. Don't have my calibrated monitor to work off of, I'm afraid. Sorry!

No worries, all I have to work off is a shitty laptop so I could just as easily be the wrong one!

I've become convinced the only real way to test those issues it to place a screenshot in Photoshop (or similar) and use the eye-dropper tool to analyze the color. Looking mainly at the hue values to see if you got the appropriate shade of red. Of course, then you have to decide "what is the appropriate shade of red"... that kind of thing. Your monitor / your eyes / the lighting at different times of the day seem to be able to throw off my eyes when I look them over. I've gotten to the point of using the eyedropper tool ahead of time and calculating a hue offset value... then adjust the colors by that amount. Seems to make consistent results - just my 2 cents.

[clutchins]

I said this a few posts earlier but apparently the Hong Kong VCD release of DBZ uses masters whose colors are close if not the same as the original japanese broadcast (OJB) colors. It might be worthwhile to track down that source as a possible reference.

[lansing]

Now try to match both cap to the reference above and see if you can fit both with one setting or similar.

No, I get what you're saying, but you're exaggerating.

Same adjustment layers over both images produces fine results:

After further testing with selective color in photoshop, you are indeed correct. Part 2 of Kai is fixable and there can be a constant template setting for each episode. I have changed my perception that RGB tools are the only tools that's going to work on color correcting anime, well, YUV tools are still a big no no.

I wonder what was your workflow on this, given a reference image, to match the clip exactly to the reference every time.

[Ajay]

I wonder what was your workflow on this, given a reference image, to match the clip exactly to the reference every time.

Entirely by eye. I begin with selective colour, then do a slight midtones shift into the blue afterwards if it still looks kinda green. After that, I bring the saturation up just a tiny bit since Boo Kai is very washed out, even with the tint removed. Some very, very minor level adjustments are made, too.

Hope that sorta helps!

[lansing]

I wonder what was your workflow on this, given a reference image, to match the clip exactly to the reference every time.

Entirely by eye. I begin with selective colour, then do a slight midtones shift into the blue afterwards if it still looks kinda green. After that, I bring the saturation up just a tiny bit since Boo Kai is very washed out, even with the tint removed. Some very, very minor level adjustments are made, too.

Hope that sorta helps!

I'm looking for a workflow that's systematic and follows some basic video analyze principals, such as monitoring RGB parade, keeping saturation intensity and waveform in broadcast range. I couldn't do these in photoshop and premiere doesn't have this filter.

I think I may need to get an after affect trial to see how things go.

[jjgp1112]

Another benefit of fixing the colors is actually getting some uniformity with them. Thanks to the varying conditions of the masters, you sometimes get wildly different looking stuff on the Dragon Box. These were results I got after tinkering with Gimp (caps are episodes 4, 31, and 34):

[genjosanzo8]

not bad doing the same thing on episodes will be very hard to do

[jjgp1112]

not bad doing the same thing on episodes will be very hard to do

Well, as far as removing the color casts, you have to use different color settings every episode and it's not very difficult, but for adjusting the specific hues to fix stuff like pink/red skin tones and teal skies after removing the color cast, you can apply pretty much the same settings, though if you're trying to match it to the cel scans it's a bit of a tedious process.

[genjosanzo8]

final screen of dragon ball kai color corrected

Spoiler:

[Haseowolf]

final screen of dragon ball kai color corrected *clipped images*

There's something really off about the color balance in all these. I'm not sure if the green cast was not properly removed, or if you moved the hues in the wrong direction, but something is still really off about them.

[Ajay]

final screen of dragon ball kai color corrected *clipped images*

There's something really off about the color balance in all these. I'm not sure if the green cast was not properly removed, or if you moved the hues in the wrong direction, but something is still really off about them.

Yeah, they don't look good. The green hue isn't properly removed; the skies aren't meant to be that baby blue tone. All of the whites are super blue, too, so I assume he just tint shifted the highlights.

Also, dear god, please use spoiler tags when posting that many images.

[lansing]

final screen of dragon ball kai color corrected

These corrections weren't even close.

If you haven't seen my comment earlier, don't use YUV tools for color correction, which you obviously did, they are not going to work.

[genjosanzo8]

okay i tried with wirtual dub mod filter so i haven't seen anything else....i'll try other things have you tips? logiciel or filter using for?
thanks

[lansing]

okay i tried with wirtual dub mod filter so i haven't seen anything else....i'll try other things have you tips? logiciel or filter using for?
thanks

For these dragon ball kai, the issue is not color cast. Because if you inspect the video with RGB parade, it's not showing the usual signs of color cast: there's no spike in one particular color. So an RGB curve is not going to work.

As of now, I think the most ideal way to fix this is by using a RGB based tool that can adjust each individual color, but I doubt that such thing exist yet.

As far as I know, currently there're two software that can do these individual color adjustment. There's the HSL based HSL Wheel from Colorista. I have tried version 2, it worked on some extent, but the problem is that it easily create artifacts. It's now at version 3, you can give a try to see if they improve it.

The other software that can do this is the CMYK based "selective color" plugin in After Effects. I have been fiddling around this the past few days, it works pretty well without the artifact problem of Colorista. The problem I can see right now is that it doesn't have a slider to control saturation intensity, and it's also a big hassle to monitor the changes because After Effects doesn't have RGB parade nor vectorscope. If I'm to compare my changes to the reference, I would have to screen capture my current frame as a separate image file and open it up with program that has the monitoring tools.

[genjosanzo8]

now i think this is far better with your help and the help of ashura's tutorial thanks guy .... i know it isn't perfect but i think it is far better than my blue tint old screen

[genjosanzo8]

i hesitate what is the better of this two even if it is not perfect?


or

[Ss5Troten]

i hesitate what is the better of this two even if it is not perfect?


or

I'm feeling that the top is a bit more pleasing to the eyes, the bottom looks just barely too saturated, within the blues and a little bit in the shadows. Though I'm not a professional.

[genjosanzo8]

thanks i was asking because on the episodes the black is not really black so i have try to have a white white and a black black but it feel a bit too dark so i ask for professionnal opinion