Many years ago, I had a setup for doing printer lights in Inferno, but yeah, it predates DI, so a bit pointless these days, unless you’re Chris Nolan!
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Interesting to read these replies. Can anyone elaborate a bit on that?
A lot of people told me that nothing is a better than printer lights for natural looking results. But I also got an equal number of people telling me that even the 3 basic color wheels in any other application are technically enough, supposing you have correctly shot material.
There is no singular answer.
Printer lights can help think about which change you should make rather than randomly turning balls and seeing what happens. Also you make smaller repeated changes rather than one big one.
Also the fact that you can use them in channel solo mode or in a constant luma mode, which can be more natural. Also easy to work in subtractive mode.
I don’t think that the three wheels are enough in today’s jobs. First of all there may be four rather than three in some circumstances. But today tonal challenges, saturation, and hue/hue shots are very common and expected. The wheels are sufficient to grade a well shot film. But with today’s mix of cameras and shooting styles, as well as higher client expectations, you will need the rest too.
Can’t you just move the lift gamna gain wheels equally and simulate the steps that way?
I’m primarily an editor so my grading so far has been only with the standard tools in Premiere Pro or Media Composer.
Not counting secondary corrections, I can’t think what else might be needed for a grade.
Yes, printer lights are basically aliases for certain wheel moves, not a separate tool. They go back to simpler times on optical processes.
Having them just enables speed, discipline and consistency.
And there are other primary corrections such as various curves which are essential.
That makes sense. Thanks again for explaining that Jan.