CoreMelt Pigment V2:
Introduction
Pigment is a set of twenty-two specialist colour correction tools, to enhance the work flow of motion graphics artists and video editors.
All plugins render using the graphics card of your computer for fastest performance and all effects can render in high precision float colour depth.
General Features
Onscreen Curves Controls:
Most color correction tools display onscreen curves controls to show visually how you are changing the RGB or Luma response curve. You can use the “onscreen” control to switch between the onscreen curves being “Always Off” , “Only When dragging” or “Always On”. Note that if you change the interface to “Standard”, then the curves will not be displayed when dragging sliders, use “Always On” to see the curves if you are using “Standard” interface controls (eg to keyframe).
Graphical Multi-sliders:
Many of the plugins in CoreMelt V2 products now use custom sliders to intuitively demonstrate exactly what the slider controls when thresholds or color based sliders are used.
These sliders allow quick setup to get the feel of creating a look for a plugin, but they cannot
currently be keyframed. If you need to keyframe these controls use the popup menu "Interface" menu to change the controls from "Custom" to "Standard" and you can then keyframe every parameter. You can hold down “ctrl” when dragging any slider to get increased input resolution.
Graphical Texture/Mask Pulldowns:
Masks or built in textures such ad the Imageflow Fx frames appear as thumbnails in the menu to allow you to select them easily. You can also add your own masks to the CoreMelt Masks menu by creating a folder in your home directory "~/Library/Application Support/ CoreMelt/V2 Vector Masks". Any PDF, AI or PNG image files placed in that directory will be available for all CoreMelt plugins to use as built in masks. You can customise other texture browsers in the same way, a full list of directories is in the full documentation.
Quick Start:
Video Filters in Final Cut Pro/Express, Motion, After Effects and Premiere Pro
- Create a new project
- Drop in the content you wish to edit.
- Bring up the "filters" panel ("Video Filters" in Final Cut)
- Browse to the "C2 Pigment - Color Tools" folder
- Drag the filter you want onto your content
- Alter the settings until you have achieved the desired result.
List of Plugins and Parameters:
Advanced Vignette:
A telecine style vignette effect with control over mask shape, style of color correction and edge blur and many built in mask shapes.
Unique Parameters:
- Vignette Amount:
- Controls the amount of darkening to apply at corners.
- Vignette Color:
- Allows you to tint corners different colors.
- Blur Mask:
- >The width of the blur to apply to the vignette mask.
- Mask Size:
- Controls the size of the vignette mask.
- Mask Shape:
- Allows you to choose different mask shapes from a pop up menu.
- Mask Center:
- Center of the vignette mask.
- Angle:
- Allows you to rotate the vignetter mask to any angle.
- Aspect:
- Controls the aspect ratio of the vignette mask.
Bleach Bypass:
Applies a high contrast, low saturation silvery look similar to a lab bleach bypass process.
Unique Parameters:
- Amount:
- Controls the overall amount of the effect.
- Contrast:
- Controls contrast adjustment.
- Red Gamma, Green Gamma, Blue Gamma:
- controls gamma adjustment applied per color channel.
Channel Swap RGB/YUV:
Swap individual RGBYUV channels to other colour spaces.
Channel Swap RGB/HSL:
Swap individual HSL channels to other colour spaces.
Color Temperature:
Allows the lows, mids and high luma ranges of the image to be adjusted between warm (red) and cool (blue).
Unique Parameters:
- Amount:
- The overall amount of the effect to apply:
- Highs Range, Lows Range:
- Controls the cut off points that the high mid and low color corrections apply to.
- Highs Temp, Mid Temp, Low Temp:
- controls pushing that range of luma values towards cool (blue) or warm (red).
Day for Night:
Color corrects the image to attempt to make day footage look like night footage. Includes contrast, black tints and black diffusion effects.
Unique Parameters:
- Contrast:
- The amount of contrast reduction to apply.
- Tint Amount:
- How much the dark and bright areas are tinted the Bright Color and Dark color.
- Bright Color, Dark Color:
- The colors to tint bright and dark areas of footage.
- Highs Range, Lows Range:
- Controls the cut off points that the high mid and low color corrections apply to.
- Lows Diffusion:
- The amount of difusion to apply to dark areas.
Flicker Tool
Allows you to remove flicker from a clip, or add flicker to a clip, based upon another clips luminance value changes.
Filmic Look:
A video to film look color correction which increases contrast range, diffuses highs and lows and tints black to attempt to simulate a cinematic look.
Unique Parameters:
- Highs Range, Lows Range:
- Controls the cut off points that the high mid and low color corrections apply to.
- Hi Diffuse, Lo Diffuse:
- Controls amount of diffusion applied to high and low luma areas.
- Highs Brightness.
- Controls flaring and diffusion of highlight portions of the image.
HSL levels and curves:
Adjust HSL and levels using multi-sliders.
Luma Levels and Curves:
Allows you to color correct an image by setting the black and white point of an image in a similar way to telecine style color correction.
- Lower White Point:
- Increase this value to lower the white point of the image having the effect of increasing white in the image.
- Raise Black Point:
- Increase this value to raise the black point of the image having the effect of increasing black in the image.
Luma S Curve:
A more precise version of Luma Levels and Curves with the ability to create an "S" curve to achieve a filmic look.
Match Grade
Allows you to pick your white point, mid point and black point, and match them to points in another clip to aid in color matching.
Negate Keep Black:
Inverts the colors in the image while keeping black areas dark. Can be useful in preparation of graphic elements for further image processing.
Unique Parameters:
- Power:
- controls the cut of point of black which is left untouched by the filter.
Night Vision:
Simulates viewing the image through night vision goggles.
Unique Parameters:
- Mult Noise:
- Amount of noise applied over image.
- Noise Scale:
- Scale of noise effect.
- Color Invert:
- Controls if colors are inverted or not.
- Display Border Overlay:
- Displays a fake “goggles border”.
- Overlay Color:
- The color of the goggles border.
- Mag Rectange Parameters:
- Enables and controls the size and style of a magnification rectangle over the goggles.
Pass Colour:
Desaturates all other colors in the image except for the selected range of color and luma values. The result is to for example only allow red tints to retain saturation while the rest of the image becomes black and white.
Unique Parameters:
- Color:
- The color to desaturate.
- Blur Color Matte:
- Amount of blur to apply to matte of area of effect.
- Soft R,G,B:
- Controls the softness applied to chroma key color selection.
- Hi, Lo, Threshold Range:
- Controls the high and low points and range of a luma key which is used to limit the range of colours the effect applies to. For example you can use this to limit the color pass to only reds within a certain range of luma values.
- Subtract Color:
- Toggle to Invert the matte of the effect which has the result of desaturating only that color instead of all other colors.
Purple Fringe Reduction:
Video shot with dark edges into a bright foreground often contains bright purple fringes around edges which can reduce the image quality. This filter can reduce this artifact considerably.
Unique Parameters:
- Fringe Color:
- The exact color of the edge flare effect that you want to minimise.
- Blur Color Matte:
- Amount of blur to apply to matte of area of effect.
- Soft R,G,B:
- Controls the softness applied to chroma key color selection.
- Show Matte:
- Shows the alpha matte which is defining the area of the effect so you can fine tune it.
RGB levels and curves:
Displays onscreen curves for RGB and levels that can be adjusted via multi-sliders.
Secondary Grader:
Allows you to perform secondary RGB colour and level edits using multi-sliders.
Secondary HSL Grader:
Allows you to perform secondary HSL colour and level edits using multi-sliders.
Sky replace:
Replaces a selected colour with a choosen colour and tints a portion of the source clip through a gradient.
Swap colorspace:
Swaps the colourspace of the source clip.
Threshold Hi Lo:
Turns the image into a black and white version with a black point equal to the low value and the white point equal to the high value. Very useful to create matte images in order to limit the effect of image filters.
Threshold HI Lo Color:
A threshold effect which cuts off the blacks and whites in the image according to the high and low values but which leaves the colors still in the image.
Tint through gradient:
Blurs a portion of the image controlled by a gradient.
Customisation Options
Mask Options
Almost every effect has a mask option that limits the range of the effect to a portion of the image. You can either use a range of built in masks or use the image well to apply your own clip as a mask. Please note that in Final Cut Studio 2, the Mask Options group only appears when the "Use Mask" checkbox is ticked.
Note, on plugins which spread out from an area and expand the image (glows and blurs) the Mask area is the source area which the glow or blur will spread out from, not the outerlimit of the effect.
- Preview Mask
- Shows the mask instead of the final output so you can adjust it precisely.
- Invert Mask
- Inverts the black and white areas of the mask, so reversing the area of the mask.
- Choose Mask
- Use this drop down menu to select one of the 24 built in mask shapes. If you select "Use Image Well" then a mask image well appears which you can drop your own mask layer into.
- Blur Mask
- Tick this to soften the edges of the mask shape.
- Blur Strength
- Amount in pixels to blur the mask shape.
- Mask Position
- Move the mask around the layer with this control
- Mask Scale
- Scale the mask in both X and Y together.
- Mask Aspect
- Adjust the aspect ratio of the mask shape to stretch it in X.
- Mask Rotation
- Angle in degrees to rotate the mask.
Common Parameters
Blur Options:
- Use Fast Blur
- Uses a gaussian blur which renders at the same speed regardless of the blur width but does not animate smoothly. If you notice any rendering artifacts or need to animate the blur width then disable this option and re-render the effect.
- Repeat Edges
- Extends the image at the edge of the screen in order to stop black coming in when blurring to edge of screen. This option slows down rendering considerably in some cases.
Hi Lo Threshold Parameters:
Many effects use a High-Low threshold effect in order to precisely control the range of luma values which an effect should be applied to. For example you can control which luma values an Optical Glow or Sparkles effect will start to apply. The low threshold value is the point below which the effect does not apply at all. The high threshold value is the point at which the effect is at maximum strength. By adjusting these parameters to match the appropriate levels in your video you can get subtle roll off effects on glows and other plugins.
Breakup Controls:
Many glow effects have an option to mix noise through the glow to generate a speckled difusion pattern. The following parameters appear when this option is ticked.
- Breakup Strength
- how much to multiply the glow by the noise.
- Breakup Scale
- The scaling of the noise pattern.
Support Options
You can post support questions to the CoreMelt user forum or use the support form on the CoreMelt website.
We recommend you use the Forms as then other users can see your questions and their answers.