Creating the mood and coherent sensibility by using the color palette is known as color grading. Colour grading is adjusting the image in specific ways to create a stylistic effect. For example ‘crushing’ the blacks of an image to make it feel contemporary, or taking the matched shots from a camera and tracking and lightening main characters face so that they stand out.
Grading of the plate is a process where the film scans are color graded to the look
wanted by the movie directors for their projects. Usually, these color grades are finished
by using a LUT which is used in order to enhance the mood of the videos. For example,
for getting a look of danger or horror a Dark LUT is used, where as that used for a happy
occasion is usually brighter. After the process of color grading the output is used for
plate preparation i.e., main look of the shot which is going to be carried forward in
Compositing.
The Main task of this was to color grade the dragon in such a way that it will match the background and merge it together. ‘As if it was one’ was the motive for this project. In this area, usually the best technique that we can use is, gaining the information of the color (blacks and the whites). Through analyzing this, we can match the color the object by grading it according to the background.
In the grade node we have to match the blacks and white. For doing this we have to do the following:
- Pick the darkest color of the Dragon so that we can change it accordingly.
- After picking the dark point, we have to lift it up according to that of the back ground. For doing this we have to pick the dark color of the background. (It has to be done the the lift setting)
- Similarly, we have to pick color for white point and gain, but over here we have to get the brightest part of both. As this is going too set the overall mood/theme of the Dragon.
(Please refer to the node below)
I have done similar technique for other project (Refer to the images below). This techniques work the best for getting faster result and correcting the colors to get the best result.