[Liverpool] Advice on colour correcting scuba diving images and videos

[Alex Lennon]

On 27/08/2018 17:30, Andrew Back via Liverpool wrote:
>
> I can confirm DaVinci Resolve is great for colour correction, which is 
> its primary function and the addition of an NLE came much later in its 
> history. You do need a half-decent GPU, though.
>
> Helps if you shoot in log format, which looks washed out unprocessed, 
> but preserves all the dynamic range in the sensor, rather than 
> processing on-camera to make it look "normal". That way you have more 
> to play with when correcting in post. The setting is sometimes 
> labelled "film".
>
> Getting a base correction is much easier if you have a shot of a 
> colourchecker card, as there is a tool in Resolve where you just drag 
> a grid over the frame, click a button and the process is automated. 
> There is an auto colour correction function that attempts it without 
> this, but results can be highly variable. Not sure if anyone does 
> underwater ones!
>
> Mastering colour correction is a real skill / art form, but with a bit 
> of reading up and a basic understanding of what to look out for when 
> fiddling with lift, gamma and gain etc. — mainly losing details in 
> shadows, mid or highlights, else just looking in some way pretty 
> bizarre — you can often get some good improvements without having to 
> learn all the various tools and complex multi-node corrections.
>
> Resolve is not F/OSS, obviously, but gratis and this is not bad 
> considering it seemingly once cost something like $15-20K/seat.
>
> Could be worth a look at OpenCine, but last time I checked it was very 
> much an early alpha.
>
> https://wiki.apertus.org/index.php/OpenCine
>
> Cheers,
>

Really useful thanks Andrew. I might take a colourchecker card 
underwater to see what happens. Can you point me to where I would obtain 
one?

Cheers!

Alex