For the photographers out there, you’re probably familiar with Adobe Camera Raw. Others, who come from mainly a video background, maybe a bit unfamiliar with the program.
Adobe Camera Raw, or ACR as it’s commonly abbreviated in the photography/video world has recently been upgraded to support various video formats for colour correction.
ACR is easy to use and quote fast, which can save you a ton of time, if you’re looking for a fast grade on your project. Now, with that said, it will not replace a full-blown dedicated colour grading and delivery suite like DaVinci Resolve or Quantel’s Pablo, but it does the job for those quick colour grading jobs.
Vimeo user Guilio Calisse did a very useful video tutorial on how to color correct your GH4 4K footage in ACR.
GH4 4K Color Grading Tutorial – Adobe Camera Raw FOR VIDEO!! from Giulio Calisse on Vimeo.
A few things to point out and keep in mind. First off, ACR supports video in CC (Adobe Creative Cloud) only, so if you have CS5.5 or CS6, it probably won’t work. ACR works fine for stills in those versions, but not for video. It’s another good reason to upgrade to CC (note to self: time to reconsider my hesitation towards subscription based models…).
Second, Guilio points out he uses the Sharpening tool a lot for his videos. Now, depending on your shooting style and the type of footage you are grading, some footage can be softer than others.
The GH4‘s 4K footage is already sharp enough, even too sharp in some cases, so use this tool with caution, as oversharpening can make your images look very video-ish and not pleasing. Again, this depends on your preference. For example, I prefer my images from my BMPCC to have a bit of softness to it (inherent by the Super 16mm sized 1080p sensor and my older Nikon and Tokina lenses), as to emulate film stock, but that’s just me.
Let us know what you think of the tutorial above and ACR for video color correction in the comments below. Have you used it? Would you try it out, if you haven’t? We would, once we upgrade to Adobe CC… arghh… that’s a different post altogether.
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate partner and participant in B&H and Adorama Affiliate programmes, we earn a small comission from each purchase made through the affiliate links listed above at no additional cost to you.
Claim your copy of DAVINCI RESOLVE - SIMPLIFIED COURSE with 50% off! Get Instant Access!
Guess ill comment, i think i would start using it now that i have CC and pay for it every month…. moment of silence for my wallet.
….
It has always been easy to use for stills and I actually always wanted the ability to correct my “frames” like I would with a photo, and having pleasing results because honestly at the moment I do better corrections in lightroom then I would with the 3 way color wheel lol so I hope more formats and more tools will come to ACR for video.
I like Lightroom better as well for stills; I’ve used ACR only to colour BMCC Raw CinemaDNG footage, but the fact that you can do GH4 footage as well is an interesting proposal. I am still not sold on the whole CC subscription basis… but that’s where everything is going I guess.