Color Correction can bring an entire project to the next level. From balancing shots taken under less than perfect conditions, to matching interview angles or changing the focus of a shot, grading is the time for finishing touches. Color correction can help pull the story out of the imaging by guiding the eye and muting distractions. The real power with grading can be using multiple corrections within the same shot. Warming up the window while bringing up the luminance value on the face, for instance.

A color correction session can also provide noise reduction, image blow up & repositioning, and shot stabilization. This broad toolset can also address HDR information when shooting with the RED Epic. The new RED Epic shooting in HDR can achieve amazing imagery that needs to be processed in color correction to see the full benefit of the technology. Day for Night effects can also be done in the color correction session.

We are finding that DaVinci Resolve is a step up from our Apple Color workflow. With its much broader toolset and better handling of RED RAW files. The tracker is much more robust for power windows and 32 bit float math end-to-end means great imaging. We now export an XML from FCP for conforming in Resolve. With no need to re-ingest native clips into fcp to access the RAW data. Being able to access the RED RAW files gives the most latitude of any digital format. Especially when shoot with the RED Epic with high dynamic range of up to 18 stops. Resolve lets us access both channels of the HDR image in post for amazing final results. It becomes a bit addicting and is tough to go back after working with RED footage.

 
Below is the latest version of our Color Correction Reel. Utilizing Apple Color, DaVinci Resolve and some Sapphire Plug-Ins to get some nice looks happening. The first few shots are corrected RED Digital Cinema files. Showing the before RED RAW file as it comes from the RED ONE/Epic camera, then the color corrected clip.
Source material is RED One, RED Epic HDR, HDCAM, DSLR, HDV, P2.