Exercise: Color Matching.

Click on the icon for a quick preview of the exercise and the final result.

Download a Flame archive that contains the footage as well as the setups used in this exercise.
Put these files in your Flame system: for example under the /usr/tmp directory.

To learn how to load material into the Flame Library, see the exercise:
“Loading a Flame archive”
Images are subject to copyright: please read the disclaimer at the end of this tutorial.

Flame procedural effects environment is called Batch.

To access the Batch module from the Flame Desktop:
1. Select the PROCESSING tab.
2. Click on the Batch menu.
3. The cursor turns white:
Click anywhere on the Flame Desktop to access Batch.

To reset Batch and enter with an empty environment, click the batch menu and hold ALT while clicking on the Flame Desktop.

4. You are now inside Flame procedural environment where you can build complex effects by connecting multiple tools together.

To learn more about the Batch module, watch the Batch Overview, an interactive tour available under the main Overview menu of the Smoke Essentials or at the end of this exercise.

Start in Batch.
1. Drag the Library node in the Batch schematic.
2. Select Aviator_girl_front and Aviator_Girl_side and press Load.
3. Drag a Colour Warper node in the Batch schematic.
4. Connect the Aviator_Girl_front clip to the front input of the Colour Warper.
5. Connect the Aviator_Girl_side clip to the back input of the Colour Warper.

Instead of eye-matching the shots, we can use the plot and reference color pickers to display the colors in the vectorscope.

1. Select the Colour Warper node and press F4 to display the result.
2. Click Plot and Ctrl-drag a color sample in the image. The model’s forehead is a good skintone reference here. Ctrl-dragging a sample will average out the pixels.
A dot representing the colour sample appears in the Vectorscope.
3. In the view menu, switch to the back view F2. This is our reference view.
4. Click Ref. Again, Ctrl-drag to sample the same area in the reference clip.
5. Switch back to the Result view F4.
Note that in the Vectorscope, there are two dots: one for the plotted color (red), and one for the reference (yellow). To match the sampled colors, all we need to do is to line up the dots in the Vectorscope!
6. Drag the Midtones trackball while looking at the dots in the vectorscope. Line up the red dot to the yellow one.
The hue is matched.
7. Compare the original with the result by toggling F1 and F4.

To toggle between the result of a node and the Batch schematic, press ESC. You can also toggle the views using the view list located on the left bottom corner of the interface.

To display the front view, press F1. To display the result view of the selected node, press F4.

Let’s fine-tune the color match. To do this, use a split bar to view the images together.
1. Zoom out the viewer Ctrl+Spacebar drag
2. Press Ctrl+B to enable the splitter bar
3. Drag the splitter bar up. Note that you can also drag the pivot point to move it.
4. Set the reference to R:Back.
5. Increase the saturation to match the color intensity.
6. You can also increase the Gamma (the midtone luminance value) by Alt+Shift dragging the R Gamma value. Alt+Shift dragging will link the red, green and blue gamma parameters.
7. Press Ctrl+B to disable the Split Bar.
8. If you want, add an output node and process the result.

If you want to know more about the interface and the functionalities covered in this exercise, watch the following overviews:

To continue practicing with the next exercise, click on the following link: