20
The Utility Effects
As the name implies, the Utility effects are utilitarian in purpose. Nothing showy or flashy here. These effects, generally speaking, will be more useful to those in more professional work-flows, including those working with film, managing color, and using HDR color. The exception here is the Grow Bounds effect, which is useful for all After Effects users. Interesting factoid: the Utility effect category is the only effects category in After Effects that contains visual effects that all work at 32 bit (unless you count the Expression Controls; Blur & Sharpen is almost there).
The Apply Color LUT Effect
A color look-up table (often abbreviated “LUT” and pronounced phonetically as if to rhyme with “glut”) is a file used to convert a set of colors into another set of colors. This is typically used when storing color corrections for reuse or for sharing, or to bring files into compliance with known standards.
If you were working for a company doing a color grade on a complex or critical scene, it might be a good idea to store a LUT of your color adjustments so that you could apply that shift in colors at a later time. However, LUTs are a standard practice, used by most professional coloring tools. So you could not only apply them again in After Effects, but in Adobe SpeedGrade, or in a number of other professional color correction apps. Or you could pass those LUT files back to the client to store for later use, in case they wanted to get that same effect later.
As mentioned, LUTs can also bring your files into conformity with known standards. I recently worked on a project that was shot on the ARRI Alexa camera, using a flat mode called Log C. Whenever shooting with professional digital cameras, it’s always a good idea to shoot “flat,” meaning that there is plenty of room in the shadows and highlights before they blowout. This is great for post production flexibility, but producers get really nervous because it doesn’t look so great. The Log C setting on the ARRI Alexa produces especially ugly raw files, but especially beautiful files after color correction. For this project, we just quickly applied a LUT created for the ARRI Alexa Log C profile and our footage looked beautiful in an instant.
The Apply Color LUT is a simple effect, so simple in fact that there aren’t any controls. And if you don’t have a LUT to apply, there’s nothing you can do with it. Let’s see how this puppy works. Import the R3D file cigarette guy.R3D. This is a 4k raw file from the RED Scarlet camera. Drag the file to the Create a new Composition button at the bottom of the Project panel to create a new 4k comp for this file.
Figure 20.1
The original cigarette guy image. Please note that this is not a real cigarette. My mom (and my doctor) would be disappointed.
In this unprocessed image, we see this “flatness” that I was referring to earlier in this section. The shadows and highlights are washed out, and the colors really aren’t saying anything. It just looks like real life instead of a film. So let’s apply a LUT and magically fix this image.
Where My LUTs At?
In case you’re curious, I created the LUT that we’re using here in Adobe SpeedGrade. But you can also create them from right here in After Effects using Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse which ships with After Effects CS6.
Apply the Apply Color LUT effect to this layer. As soon as you do, you’ll get a browser window asking you to select a LUT file. So navigate on over to the Misc folder in the Media folder in the exercise files. There, you’ll find a LUT file called LUT for cigarette guy.look.
Figure 20.2
The image with the LUT applied.
Once you apply this effect, you’ll see the image change drastically thanks to the LUT we applied. Basically, the LUT is remap-ping all of the colors in the image to other colors. In this case, the warm shadow and darker midtone values have been remapped to cooler values and in general, saturation and redness have been removed a bit from the entire image. And all of these specific instructions were stored in the LUT.
Because this is how LUTs work (i.e., by remapping colors), they will not work the same on each image. Here, the result is pretty cool, but if you were to apply this same LUT to another clip, the results might not look so great. Hence, it’s good to either use simple LUTs (that just do basic exposure adjustments, such as with the ARRI Alexa Log C mentioned earlier) or if you’re going to do specific, more complex looks, they can work well with other clips shot with the same camera at the same location, or other shots for the same scene.
The Cineon Converter Effect
To understand the Cineon Converter effect, we first need to back up a little and look at the Cineon file format. Cineon files (CIN) are most commonly used as a file format for scanned film. Let’s say that someone has shot a movie using a film camera. This film can be taken to a production facility, where the film can be scanned and digitized. Note that the Cineon file format has been largely superseded by the DPX format, which includes additional metadata for timecode, sampling rate, etc.
Should You Use the Cineon Converter Effect?
Adobe recommends that in “most cases,” you should not use the Cineon Converter effect. You should instead convert the colors in Cineon files by using After Effects’s color management features. Among other things, this allows for better compositing with Cineon files. We’ll still cover the basics of the format and the effect here, for the sake of completeness.
Now, there are a lot of issues here with the color space of film (and the Cineon format) and the color space of video that are beyond the scope of this book. But you do need to know that CIN files have a different way of working with color than video does. CIN understands color in the logarithmic color space, while video exists in the linear color space. Or, stated more simply, the colors in Cineon files are condensed to allow a wider dynamic range. The darks in the CIN file are brighter than the original film, and the highlights appear darker than the original. This explains why Cineon files often look washed out, or blended with gray.
Note that CIN files are 10 bits of color per channel. This allows for more colors than 8 bits per channel (the After Effects default). To get the most out of the color space of Cineon files, make sure your After Effects project is in 32 bpc mode. You can put your project into 32 bpc mode by holding the Alt(Win)/Opt(Mac) key while clicking the 8 bpc button at the bottom of the Project panel. Click once to enter 16 bpc mode, then Alt/Opt click again to change your project to 32 bpc.
Import the file Cineon.cin from the Images folder in the Media folder of the exercise files if you’d like to follow along with me. I’ve also created a comp using this file, and have applied the Cineon Converter effect.
The Nature of Cineon Files
The Cineon file format is a still image format. To playback frames of Cineon files as a movie, they must be imported as an image sequence.
Figure 20.3
The Cineon.cin file, without the Cineon Converter effect.
Perhaps the most important option in this entire effect is the first property, Conversion Type. Selecting Linear to Log will take a regular file and make it more like a Cineon version. Adobe suggests that this is useful for applying to 8 bpc linear proxies so that they more fully resemble the original Cineon files. Selecting Log to Linear will convert a regular (non-Cineon) logarithmic 8 bit file for when you’re outputting to a Cineon sequence.
The remainder of the settings in this effect are almost like a mini-Levels adjustment. Note that the 10 Bit Black/White Point values are set to the correct levels for 10 bit color, by default. Highlight Rolloff controls what happens to bright highlights. Increasing this value can smooth out over exposure in the highlights.
The History of Cineon
For those of you interested in knowing the extra technical details, a brief history of the Cineon file format is presented. The Cineon file format was created by imaging giant, Kodak. Initially, the term Cineon referred to the hardware; the equipment that actually scanned the film. Manufacturing of the equipment didn’t last very long, as the hardware—and the software that went with it—was abandoned in the mid 1990’s. Although the days of the hardware were short lived, the Cineon file format persisted, and is still in use to this day.
The Color Profile Converter Effect
The Color Profile Converter effect is a renamed version of the Color Profile effect, which was used prior to After Effects CS3, when a color management system was introduced. Although the settings available in this effect are similar to the ones available in the application’s color management system, the color management settings are superior and preferable to the Color Profile Converter Effect. The color management settings are available by going to the flyout menu of the Project panel and choosing Project Settings, and then changing the Working Space to anything besides None. You choose a color profile to describe the color space of the layer, and then you choose settings to control conversion to that profile. Again, it’s typically recommended that you avoid using this effect in favor of the native color management tools in After Effects.
The Grow Bounds Effect
The Grow Bounds effect is useful for all After Effects users. It is almost like the Collapse Transformations switch for nested comps. You can use the Collapse Transformations switch to expand the boundaries of layers in nested compositions that are larger than the boundaries of the nested comp layer. Grow Bounds works in the same way, but it works on regular layers. If you’d like to follow along with the example given here, open the Grow Bounds.aep project in the Chapter 20 folder. Figure 20.4
Figure 20.4
Notice that this bar exists on a layer that has boundaries only slightly larger than the bar.
shows a simple solid layer from this project. Notice the bounding box around the layer, and how the size of the layer is only slightly larger than the solid itself.
Next, I’m going to apply the Wave Warp effect to this layer, and I’m going to take the Wave Height value to 100. This warps the solid blue bar a great deal, causing the tops and bottoms of the wave to go beyond the boundaries of the layer. This results in the pixels being cut off.
Figure 20.5
After applying the Wave Warp effect, the bar is distorted, resulting in lost pixels because they go beyond the layer’s edges.
Enter the Grow Bounds effect. The Grow Bounds effect extends the boundaries of the layer so that pixels that fall outside the layer’s boundaries are revealed. However, after applying the effect in this case, nothing appears to happen. In this instance, the problem is found in the stacking order of the effects. We must drag the Grow Bounds effect before (i.e., above, since effects are processed from top to bottom) the Wave Warp effect in the stack of effects in the Effect Controls panel. That way, the layers boundaries can “grow” before they are warped. Increase the Pixels value to determine how many pixels beyond the layer’s boundaries that pixels are allowed to extend. I took my Pixels value to 70.
You might be wondering why the Grow Bounds effect is useful, especially when compared with the Collapse Transformations switch which appears to do the same thing. For starters, Collapse
Figure 20.6
After using Grow Bounds before Wave Warp, the layer is allowed to distort beyond the boundaries of the layer.
Transformations doesn’t help in situations like those seen in Figure 20.6, where the effect causes the pixels on a layer to go beyond the layer’s boundaries. The Grow Bounds effect is useful for working with individual layers, not just compositions. For example, Grow Bounds is a very common solution when blurs or glows are applied to layers, and the boundary of the layer clips the blur or glow.
The Pixels parameter allows you precise control over how much the layer extends beyond its boundaries. And also, Collapse Transformations also changes blend modes and other properties, which you might not want changed.
The HDR Compander Effect
The purpose of the HDR Compander effect is to allow you to use 8-bit effects in a 32-bit project. The HDR Compander effect sounds technical, but it’s actually quite helpful, and easy to understand. The word compander, created in the 1930’s, is an amalgam of two words: compressor and expander. To understand why this effect is important, let’s first look at life without it.
Figure 20.7 shows the HDR.aep project from the Chapter 20 folder of the exercise files. This is a 32-bit project, and the letters are actually shape layers using HDR color (super white), which has been possible since After Effects CS4.
When browsing through effects in the Effects and Presets panel, the little number next to the plugin icon for each effect indicates the highest bit depth that the effect can process.
Figure 20.8
The numbers next to each effect indicate the bit depth, which determines the number of colors the effect can recognize.
When you use an 8-bit effect in an HDR project, the natural looking light effects are lost because the color of the layer is squished back to 8 bits. The same is true for 16-bit projects. Realistic light behavior is only possible in 32 bit. So, when we apply an 8-bit effect like CC Radial Fast Blur, for example, the power of the color is lost. This is because the color in the HDR layer was created by using super white values; values that were whiter than white. When the super white values are all smashed to 8-bit values, it all becomes the same value of white.
The HDR Compander allows us to use 8-bit effects—like CC Radial Fast Blur—and keep the color in 32-bit colors. But here’s the deal. You need to apply one instance of the HDR Compander effect before the 8-bit effect(s), and another instance of the HDR Compander effect after the 8-bit effect(s). Think of it like an HDR Compander sandwich; or rather, an 8-bit sandwich on HDR Compander bread.
Figure 20.10
The Effect Controls panel with the “HDR Com-pander sandwich.” Note that Fast Blur does not need to be part of the “sandwich” because it operates at 32 bits.
On the instance of the HDR Compander effect applied before 8- or 16-bit effects, set the Mode value to Compress Range. Set the Gain value to the highest brightness value on the layer. For this HDR layer, my red value is set to 3, so I set the Gain property to 3 as well. You can also use the Gamma property to adjust the levels and luminance a little.
Then you apply another instance of the HDR Compander effect, and stack it after all 8-bit and 16-bit effects. This time, set the Mode value to Expand Range. Set the Gain value to the same number you used for the compressing version of the HDR Compander effect. In my case, I’m going to use a Gain value of 3. When you’re done adding these instances of the HDR Compander effect, your HDR color will return.
Figure 20.11
After applying two instances of the HDR Compander effect on either side of the CC Radial Fast Blur effect.
Now, I realize these results are not without flaw. Some of the original subtle nuances are lost through this process. Although we would get much better results if all effects could process in 32 bit, this effect is a valuable workaround until that day comes.
The HDR Highlight Compression Effect
The HDR Highlight Compression effect is very simple. It compresses 32-bit color values to conform to 8-bit color values. That’s it. There is an amount slider that basically functions as a Blend with Original parameter that we see in so many other effects. But it does pay to note that the values really do become 8-bit values. If you put your cursor over super white pixels after applying this effect, you’ll see in the Info panel that 1.0 (standard white) is the brightest pixels are allowed to go.