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??
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
Here’s a feature request I had put in last year which may be helpful:
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.
A few years later, how is color grading inside Flame?
I recently started an internship in a post house using Flame for all operations and I’m curious to know.
I’m keen to move into color grading as well and I thought Lustre would be the obvious choice. But now I’m not so sure considering Autodesk isn’t going to develop it anymore…
https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/tsarticles/ts/4Hi229Ngl8G3u03cMfInGj.html
Have all Lustre’s tools been carried over? Can you now color grade a production start to finish in Flame?
Lustre is dead. We used it for about 10 years, and were gently prodded into moving our grading over to Flame 3 or 4 years ago by the dev team. Flame grading is less performant on the same hardware than Lustre was, but fast enough and way more flexible/powerful. I’ve graded an indie film, a couple of Super Bowl spots, and a shit ton of regular spots in Flame with no problem.
Same caveats to the Image node as before.
Difficult to use the dropper on multiple shots.
Difficult to compare Lift Gamma Gain at the same time, each one affects the other.
Noe great for realtime previews, most playbacks of a timeline in realtime will need rendering.
There are other issues.
Would I go back to Lustre. No. Would I like to see improvements in the Image node? YES.
I never had the pleasure of Lustre, which sounded like a fantastic app. I did grade on Mistika for a few years, which seems to have some of the same parts.
However, the Flame tool set is comprehensive. Some of it is not well documented, and it takes a while to find all the gems and get your workflow down. It does work very well though.
Performance (this one project in another thread notwithstanding) has not been a problem on my end and I get realtime playback without issues. Didn’t need to pre-render yet.
And yes, there are quite a few improvements I’d love to see in the Image node, primarily around keying and more flexible selectives, and integrating some of the newer color tools, like the Resolve color warp. Doesn’t have to be the same UI, but essentially a take on a two dimensional (L + S combined curve).
Oh God this is a huge gripe for me. The scopes are almost perfect, but I would love it if the color picker could also sample/plot from the reference image, and remember where it was from shot to shot so I can match skin tones when the talent is moving around without having to repo my shot inside Image with a Front/Matte/Offset matchbox. We’re stuck on an ancient version of Flame otherwise I’d be beating the drum about improving the picker.
Yes, the picker not working on the reference is a drag.
For scopes, do highly recommend getting a copy of OmniScope for your setup. So much more comprehensive.
Top row: false color, rgb parade
Bottom row: HML vector, skin overlay, neutral, CIE, L/S, and diamond
You can draw circle on the image and all scopes will display just that area.
The new neutral scope, while really simple, is a helpful and useful. It’s white where the the color are neutral, and red where there’s a color bias. You can adjust the threshold.
Okay, so it seems Flame has really replaced Lustre.
I’ve heard people praising how printer lights work in Lustre and I was wondering if that toolset can be used in Master Grade too.
That’s great! Looks like I have work to do. Thanks Jan!
I do all my grading in Flame but have never used printer lights. Any chance you could do a short demo on a real world shot?
You don’t actually need them. It’s a leftover from a legacy technology. When printing film, the rgb lights were actually shone through film thus making overall corrections.
I have used them, especially in Lustre. I often base correct using the slider instead of the wheel, which let’s you make adjustments on specific RGB levels. Printer lights work similarly but with hotkeys instead.
Can be very useful.
Many years ago, when scanning and shooting film it was a good way to get an idea of how a production was being color timed in the lab.
If you needed your main title to match the rest of the movie, the lab would tell you the printer lights and you could set up a kind of viewing environment, so that any material that you scanned would match back after you shot your film from flame.
It’s a pretty rigid consensual agreement between the post/VFX firm and the lab.
It’s almost entirely irrelevant now.
Like an antique car - horribly unmanageable for day to day but beautiful and elegant for its time.