Tips and Techniques/Workflow/PreGrading FinalGrading Order
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Pre-Grading / Final Grading Order
Summary
Should we ever apply final grading directly to the plates before we composite everything?
Description
Why not to apply our final grading to the source plates before we composite everything?
It's possible to apply the same grading to all the other layers including practical elements, 3D layers, particles and so on and merge all this with no problem, isn't it?
Well, imagine you tint shadows to green, highlights to yellow and midtones to something blue with the color grading.
Let's say we apply such a grading before compositing, directly to the plates.
If you have a bright area on the background, it will be tinted to yellow then.
Now you need to put a thin black defocused object over it.
The object is tinted to green (as shadows), but becomes semi-transparent with the defocus.
When you merge it over your bright BG, the resulting color is something tinted to yellow and green, but according to our correction, midtones should be tinted to blue.
That's why it's better to apply grading afterwards, to avoid luminance ranges shift.
So, to get the correct result with proper edge colors and properly colored semi-transparent areas you need to work with completely neutral linear images with the black and white points properly set.
