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‌Saving and Wiping Stills in the Gallery and Timeline‌

The Gallery on the Color page provides fast access to stills that you’ve saved from various clips in the Timeline. While the dedicated Gallery page provides a more comprehensive interface for browsing presaved “looks,” as well as for importing stills from other projects, you can save, organize, and browse stills directly within the Gallery of the Color page.

Stills are saved in the DPX file format. Once you’ve saved one or more stills, you can set up split screen wipes in the Viewer, which will be mirrored to your external display.

Stills from the Gallery can be compared to the current shot, making it easier to match grades.

This section provides an abbreviated summary of still store and split screen functionality to get you started quickly.

To save a still, do one of the following:

— Choose Color > Stills > Grab Still (Option-Command-G).

— Right-click on the Viewer and choose Grab Still.

To wipe a still, do one of the following:

— Select a still in the Gallery, and click the Image Wipe button on the top Viewer toolbar.

‌— Choose Color > Stills > Play Still (Command-W), or right-click in the Viewer and choose Toggle Wipe.

— Double-click a still in the Gallery.

To adjust a wipe in the Viewer, do one of the following:

— Drag the pointer within the Viewer to move the wipe.

To customize a wipe in the Viewer:

The different wipe customization modes

Click one of the Wipe mode buttons in the Viewer toolbar. There are the following modes:

Horizontal: Lets you compare both halves of the wipe to either side of a vertical border. Dragging the pointer moves the wipe border left and right.

Vertical: Lets you compare both halves of the wipe above and below a horizontal border. Dragging the pointer moves the wipe border up and down.

Diagonal: Lets you compare both halves of the wipe via an adjustable diagonal border. Dragging the pointer repositions the wipe to the left and right. Hold the option key down and drag while moving the pointer around in a circle to rotate the border of the wipe to any angle you like.

Mix: Lets you blend both images together to compare them. Dragging the pointer controls the fade percentage from one image to the other.

Alpha: Lets you use a qualifier to define transparency in the image of the current clip while comparing it to a Gallery still used as the background. Add a node to the grade and use the qualifier to key a particular color you want to turn transparent (the green of a green screen, for example). Then, connect that node’s KEY output to the Alpha Output that appears in the Node Editor. The part of the foreground image isolated by the key becomes transparent, allowing the Gallery still in the background to show through.

This can be useful for previewing how the lighting or grade of a foreground VFX plate looks when the image is composited against a particular background image stored in the Gallery.

Difference (A/B): Lets you view only the pixels that change due to an operation on the node. For example, if you select this highlight and adjust the gain, only the pixels that the gain modified would be visible in the Viewer.

Box: Lets you view the current clip as a picture-in-picture effect against the still in the background. Dragging the pointer resizes the crop box around the outside of the reference image.

Venetian Blind: Lets you compare both images being wiped via alternating horizontal strips. Drag the pointer up or down to change the size of the alternating strips. Good for quickly comparing vertical color uniformity, focusing on color and contrast changes that occur from top to bottom.

Checkerboard: Lets you compare both images being wiped via an alternating checkerboard. Drag the mouse left or right to alternate between images by squeezing each check horizontally. Good for comparing color uniformity across the width and height of two images.

Choose one of the following from the Wipe Style submenu in the Viewer’s option menu.

— Wipe Style: Cycles among the Horizontal, Vertical, Diagonal, Mix, Alpha, Difference, Box, Venetian Blind, and Checkerboard modes.

— Invert Wipe: Reverses each half of the wipe (Option-W).

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