Grading in Flame

I do all my grading now in Flame. I was a Lustre colorist for years but was happy to make the jump to the Image node.
What I’m not happy with is the ability to reference a shot easily for matching purposes. And to expand on that, not having the ability to add a reference point on the scopes is a huge issue. I might have to go back to using scope box.
Anyhow, there is a comparison mode for selecting a reference and then comparing it to the current shot. It doesn’t work well. The reference is always a different size and I’m continually zooming in and zooming out of the picture. It also always blends its waveform with the current picture.
The better way for me is to take the shot I’m comparing it to, create a freeze frame on a lower track, and toggle the up down arrows to that track to see the reference while I’m grading.
Any thoughts from you graders out there? Is there a better way??

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But yeah…I used to do comparisons by toggling between the A and B playhead in Lustre, and miss the ability to do this in Flame. The new comparison tools are ok…I find side-by-side mode the least bad, but it’s not as good as being able to watch the scopes and picture while toggling between shots.

You can add a point to the scopes and parade by using the eye dropper color picker thingy. It doesn’t sample the reference buffer, but the ref does at least get overlaid onto the scopes in blue.

Yes I can see the picker on the scopes, but it doesn’t stay there when you close the picker. The ability to reference a specific color on the scopes is fleeting at best.

Sometimes I set my left viewport to storyboard mode and make the images large enough to use as a compare. You can also set in prefs to remember the last frame you were parked on when you were on that clip. If you do try this make sure to turn off the “centre storyboard” option in Tools/TL/FX preferences so that the storyboard display doesnt change on you when you move shot to shot

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Here’s a feature request I had put in last year which may be helpful:

FL-02425 - More Scopes Overlay Options for Reference Grabs

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Here’s another that I just submitted for the colour sampler, particularly having it remember its position on a per context view basis:

FI-02763 - Scopes: Colour Sampler Position saved per Context view.

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