Color Correction: Apple VS Red Giant

What we are really getting at here is, you can color correct in most of your editing or post applications. What about rich color styles? Vignettes? Two programs side by side; Apple’s Color and Red Giant’s Looks.

First I think it has a lot to do with what your project involves, the medium in which it will be played and what your turn around time is. Why is this important? Well, from the very start, FCP and Color is heavily geared toward broadcast quality and standards where AE and Looks can achieve the same things, it’s not what I would personally use to produce edits in broadcast quality. That also depends on if you are doing animations of course.

Apple Color:
Maybe this will be a quick decision for or against for you; it’s a node based program. Some people have a real hard time wrapping their heads around nodes. No worries, it doesn’t make you stupid, it’s just not your style. I like how clean the interface is and how easy it is to move through an almost predefined workflow. I would have to say that ‘Color’ is especially good for getting all your clips similar in brightness and contrast. In that sense Color is much more robust and high end than Looks. Again, this isn’t necessarily what I wanted to write about. It’s the presets and how much can you edit them. There are some to play with but not many. In conclusion, color is made for the really hands on and tweaking types. I think if you have time to do some really ‘original’ styling, Color would be the best choice.

Red Giant Looks:
Here is a program where first looks will really pull you in. This is one of the most easy to use, powerful and aesthetically appealing video applications I have ever seen. I am not talking about an interface that is ‘dummy’ friendly. I feel like this is the photoshop for the video people. It renders quickly, you can interact with your clip easily while manipulating the presets (comes with 100 looks), and I’d have to say that if you need to stylize something quickly and still be amazed by the look, this is the pick for you. I took some pretty boring footage and made it look like an artistic masterpiece. I’d highly recommend this to wedding and documentary videographers.

I am going to post the specs on both later. Thanks for listening and I welcome your thoughts on this matter.