November 3, 2010

White balance + more with Color Finesse

Update: a one-click solution is now offered by Francois Tarlier, ft-Auto White Balance.

@AdobeAE shares an AE forum post where Bob Currier explains how to auto white-balance using a new feature of Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse in After Effects CS5:

The "Auto Color" button in Color Finesse (included with AE) will correct white-balance errors. The correction is based on the current frame, so choose an "average" frame to white balance to. To do white balance it's really simple: Apply Color Finesse to a layer. In the effect controls window, click the "Auto Color" button. You're done.

Obviously there's a lot more to Color Finesse, but despite its depth, it's pretty simple for doing simple things. (Note that Auto Color is new to Color Finesse 3 and CS5.) There's a list of training resources at http://www.synthetic-ap.com/support/kb/420301.html.


The Synthetic Aperture training resources page lists almost every resource mentioned here previously. There may be a few extra details in AE Help (10.0.1 update info) plus there's a win in Grading with Color Wheels, a roundup of color correction approaches by Oliver Peters. Here's Chris Meyers on CF in CS5:


Update: There's a 3.03 update to CF ("LE" version for CS5), plus Andrew Devis has tutorials on primary and secondary color correction using CF.

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