In Depth Articles (52 Tutorials)
In Depth: Skin Retouching Part 5: Some New Tools and Tutorials
March 2, 2016
Since I started this series, there have been a couple of new tools on the market for skin touch-up and smoothing, as well as a couple of useful tutorials on the topic. I’ll talk about Sheffield Makeup Artist III, which came out in February, and Boris Continuum Complete Beauty Studio.
In Depth: Repairing Damaged Pixels
November 12, 2015
Dead pixels, stuck pixels, bad pixel, burnt pixels, hot pixels… there are lots of types of damaged pixels and they’re annoying. Here are several ways you can repair them.
In Depth: Transitions, Part 2: The Swish Pan
November 12, 2015
The swish pan is known by many monikers: whip pan, roll pan, swipe pan, flick pan, zip pan, and whoosh are just a few. Get ready for some fun examples, instructions on how to create this cool transition, plug-ins to make the job fast and easy, and tips on improving your transitions.
In Depth: Skin Retouching Part 4: DaVinci Resolve
November 12, 2015
Making skin tones appear natural, yet attractive, in color graded footage can be intimidating to the inexperienced. Here are some tutorials and articles focused on working with skin tones with Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve, including smoothing and cosmetic color grading.
In Depth: Scanimate Animation System #TBT
February 26, 2015
At Half Rez in Chicago last November, Nick Campbell of Greyscalegorilla took us on a historical journey to the birth of television motion graphics with Scanimate. I had seen the retro-futuristic Scanimate animation throughout my childhood on shows like Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, but I never realized what this analog wizardry was. If you’re over 35 years old, you have certainly seen Scanimate animation content on TV. Today I’ll explain Scanimate and show you lots of fun examples.
In Depth: Transitions: Part 1: Basic Editing Terminology and A Brief History of Transitions
February 18, 2015
There are so many types of transitions, and in this series I’ll focus on several of them. From the simple dissolve to the swish pans to shatter effects, we’ll dive into the history of transitions with lots of examples. The goal of this series is to increase your editing vocabulary and entertain you, while showing you what is possible. And of course, I’ll show you some fun plug-ins for your favorite NLE.
In Depth: Spill Suppression on Keyed Footage
February 9, 2015
Spill is the colored light reflected from your background and onto your actor. Spill can show up on light colored clothing or hair, on shiny or reflective elements, around the edge of footage, and it can be a big problem! It can be very easy to fix, or difficult on finely detailed, extremely reflective or semi-transparent areas. Here are some methods of fixing spill.
In Depth: Skin Retouching Part 3: More Plug-ins + Tutorials
January 27, 2015
Welcome to the final installment of this series on skin retouching. I’ve already covered loads of plug-ins available for After Effects and a few NLEs, linked to lots of tutorials and given you several tips on how to touch up skin, keeping your actor as natural looking as possible. This article includes even more plug-ins and some recent tutorials for all sorts of compositors and editing tools.
In Depth: Skin Retouching Part 2: The Plug-ins
August 18, 2014
Need to touch up your actor’s complexion quickly and easily? There are a lot of plug-ins on the market that can help you with this task. I’ll cover the big players and a few new to the market: Digital Anarchy Beauty Box, GenArts Sapphire S_Beauty, FXHOME HitFilm, the recently released Imagenomic Portraiture for video, the brand-spanking new Dashwood Smooth Skin. Red Giant Cosmo and Colorista II are also on the agenda.
In Depth: Skin Retouching and Digital Makeup, Part 1
July 25, 2014
Do you need to make some small fixes to the skin of your actor, like fixing a blemish or blotchiness? Here’s part 1 of a 2 part series on Skin Retouching and Digital Makeup to get you started!
In Depth: Color Correction vs Color Grading
April 1, 2014
I’ve heard the terms Color Correction and Color Grading used interchangeably but they are not the same things. I’ll explain the difference, show you some tools to fix and tweak color, point you to a few tutorials, give you some side by side examples and breakdowns. Finally I’ll link you to some free tools you can use for color correction or grading.
In Depth: Optimizing After Effects for the Best Performance
February 4, 2014
If you've been using Adobe After Effects since early versions, as I have, you are familiar with the idea of optimizing your machine and settings for premium performance. Here are some tips and resources to help you create the fastest and most solid After Effects you can. If you don't have a big budget for optimizing your system, where do you put the money for upgrades? That's for you to decide, but here are some suggestions on how to optimize what you have, and about other ways to optimize. If this article can't help you with the speed of After Effects, it will hopefully explain why things aren't running as fast as you would like them to.
In Depth: Plug-ins Adobe After Effects CC and Premiere Pro CC
February 4, 2014
Here’s an ongoing list of plug-in compatibility and other information that you need to know about plug-ins in the new CC video apps.
In Depth: Keying: Introduction & Frequently Asked Questions about Shooting Greenscreen
February 4, 2014
Keying is part technical skill, part patience, and part sorcery. This series will take you through different areas of keying, not so much to teach you step by step, but to talk about some of the problems you’ll run into and how to fix them.
In Depth: Keying: Pre-Processing Greenscreen Footage for Keying
February 4, 2014
If your greenscreen footage didn’t turn out as perfectly as you had hoped, here are some things that you can do to fix problems and not create new ones.