With the transition from analog film to digital in the early 2000s came the realization that the industry needed a standardized process for handling color. On the input side, different films and digital sensors each conveyed different color properties. On the other side, outputs from on-set camera monitors to consumer laptops to gigantic theater screens all had different color production attributes, as well. The red of a lipstick seen on set, chosen for its very particular feel and resonance with other colors, might reach the viewer as an entirely different shade and so ruin the desired effect.
Similarly, that red may look different to various people in the post-production workflow, depending on their software and monitors. How they treat those colors can impact the editing of others later in the workflow process. This is why post technicians would need to get the profiles of one another’s monitors and remap colors accordingly.
Color management is a methodology for translating what the camera sees during capture to what a display can perfectly reproduce. The devil is in those "perfect reproduction" details. For better or worse, this is not the future, and we have neither flying cars nor displays able to perfectly reproduce the color gamut that modern cameras can capture. When done right, though, color management seamlessly bridges the gamut gap between those two devices.
How is this bridging done? For simplicity and speed, many workflow systems adopted 1D lookup table (LUT) color handling. A 1D LUT takes an input color value and maps it to another color value. Adobe and other post-production solutions use 1D color handling extensively, so it made sense for plugins to follow suit. (To learn more about 1D vs. 3D LUTs, we recommend this article.)
Magic Bullet Looks supports its own 1D system of color management as well as that of the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), which is built upon OpenColorIO (OCIO). OCIO is an open-source color management solution designed to ensure consistent and accurate color reproduction across different devices and applications. However, while OCIO focuses on custom color profiles and transformations, ACES is a 3D color management system. To oversimplify a bit, ACES sets the overarching color standard and defines reference color spaces (e.g., ACEScg) while OCIO provides the tools to implement and customize the color transformations required to conform to that standard. For an introductory deep dive on ACES, try this Max On Color episode.
ACES is on its way to becoming the industry standard for color management. By integrating ACES, Looks can handle your color management more intuitively and intelligently, ensuring that colors are more vibrant and accurate, potentially revealing colors previously invisible in the source material due to input limitations.
When you first enter the Designer, expect a view similar to this, perhaps without the camel:
Some observations:
The Tool Chain is empty. Only a + symbol marks where you could click to start adding tools. Clicking this will open the Tools Drawer.
As no categories have been clicked on yet, the Tool Drawer remains unfiltered and essentially shows the first bunch of all Looks presets.
The Info Bar (at top) shows that the comp preview is set to sRGB, which is usually optimal for regular PC monitor viewing. Click the Preview pull-down to expose a range of options for optimizing the display for your preview device.
Further refine your color management setup with the Project Settings pull-down (below). Having controls for both project and preview color spaces right next to each other, and aligning them in only a few clicks, is one way that Looks radically streamlines your color management experience.
As discussed earlier in this user guide, when you select a preset from the Looks Drawer, such as the Street Lights People preset shown below, the tools that comprise that look appear on the Tool Chain.
We put a lot of work and love into optimizing these presets, but don't stop believin' in your own ability to fine-tune color management even further by selecting Custom from the Project Settings menu.
(Note in the above image how we exposed the entire Project Settings bar by closing the Looks Drawer. Also, here's a handy tip: You can reset your project color settings by clicking Project Settings at the top of this pull-down menu.)
The Custom mode adds Input and Output tool icons at the beginning and end of your Tool Chain (see image above). Select either of these to open the Color Management parameters in the Controls panel. Here, you can select a variety of input, output, and display color transforms.
Preset: Select the preset for input, output, and previewing of your clips. You can also save these values as a custom preset. This is particularly useful when frequently working with the same input, output, and preset types.
Mode: Choose between two ways of handling color management.
Input: Most production is done in the sRGB or Rec. 709 color spaces since many displays can accurately reproduce these. Thus, Looks defaults to sRBG for input. That said, there are good reasons (beyond what we can cover here) why sRBG may not be an ideal source gamut, so Looks provides a host of alternatives.
Exposure: Increase or decrease your clip’s photographic exposure.
Saturation: Increase or decrease your clip’s saturation.
Output: Select the output type desired for your clip. You can convert your clip into the display space (e.g., REC 709 or sRGB), back to camera space (e.g., LogC or SLog3), or even to the working space (e.g., ACEScct, ACEScc, or ACEScg) of your preference.
Same As Input: Quickly make your output type the same as your input without having to select it manually in the Output field.
The image below shows the pull-down menu contents for the panel's Input (left) and Output (right) options. As you can see, these I/O profiles make fast yet precise control over your ACES or other post color pipelines remarkably simple.
