PS or AE or Nuke for post ?

[Fibonacci]

Hey folks,

I'm just wondering which solution should be the better for post...

This time I'd used the PS...but now...I think that's simply not enough. I mean...for the extremely photo-realistic result.

Is there anybody out there with any experience about the 3-Way Color Correction ? Or any good tutors for this method ?

I have heard the AE with Looks and Colorist should be the best combination...of-course you have to now the real tint for the shadows and highlights in the real life. Observing. :) 
 
Thanks anyway and keep rendering!

[Captain Obvious]

I use NukeX, but honestly, its colour tools are a bit lacking. The CC / grading workflow in Nuke is designed for one thing and one thing only: matching plates. If you're not comfortable with colour math and writing expression nodes, then Nuke is probably not the tool for you. Also, it's pricey as hell (I think it's $8k for NukeX). However, if you are comfortable with writing expressions and such... it's a pretty good choice.


However, it's really not an either-or sort of situation. If you need to bash stuff together for comping purposes, then there literally is no better tool than Photoshop. Destructive workflows are, well, destructive, but they're also way faster. That's why it's sometimes faster to model in MODO, sometimes faster in Houdini: destructive vs nondestructive/procedural is a matter of what sort of task you need to perform.


After Effects is decent enough I guess, but it's honestly pretty slow when working on high-res floating point imagery. It does have some pretty good grading tools though.

[Fibonacci]

Hello Captain,

Thanks your reply!

Well...now I've searching which one should be better solution for me and for my post.
And I find something about the 32 bit Flot EXR. If I'd good interpreted, the problem with the PS there is not able to handle correctly the LWF opposite the AE. But with the CS6...maybe it's now okey with LWF...I don't know yet.

With the Nuke your right I throw away, the scripting is not mine tool.

In the AE you have to get the Color Correction/grading, because there's handle correctly the 32 Float and - I think - it's important to achieve the high quality post. Basically I just trying to get the correct workflow for myself. Now it's looks like the good way shows me the AE...with Looks and Colorist.

[Captain Obvious]

If you want to do 32-bit floating point compositing, the two best choices are Fusion and Nuke. Nuke is more popular these days and used by most of the film and advertising industries, but Fusion is much cheaper and actually really good as well. If you search compositing artist job listings, there are way more studios asking for Nuke knowledge, but most of the skills are pretty transferable.

After Effects probably does the job ok-ish, but the main issue with it is that it was never designed for 32-bit workflows, really. Many of the tools and filters only work in low dynamic range.

[Fibonacci]

Well, I see. Thanks your comment !

I'm thought about the Nuke ofcourse, but now the Colorist job...hmmm beautyful ! And to the start the Red Giant Looks and Colorist should be enought (?). Lights and colors, midtowns, shadows and colors...waveform, vectorscope. etc.

I knows the Nuke is the best solution for compositing...but for the Color Correction and for the colorist's job ?
Basicly there is the DaVinci Resolve, but...the Red Giant's plugins looks to achieve result too it...I don't know...
I really thinks if I have any experience in any great program, let it be Nuke, Fusion, AE or Composite is "enougth" for compositing...but how's about the colors and contrasts ?

[Adanmq]

Hi.

Captain Obvius already give you a very good answer to your question.

I´m using Nuke and AE. For me Nuke is much more clean and fast. But its not made for Color Correction, like Captain pointed before, the Grading tools are made to match plates. This dosn´t mean you can´t Color Correct in Nuke, but its not so intuitive.

I recomend you to learn the basics instead of the concrete tools like Colorista or magic bullet. You can make anything using really simple tools if you know how. Nuke have all you need to make almost anything, but sometimes its not so easy. It´s not the tool, it´s the person who makes the diference.

If you are looking for an all in-one-solution, AE its more easy and have a lot of plugins to complete it. U can make simple compositions, grade and make cool motion graphics.
If you need to make heavy compositions (Some compositions are really dificult in AE), or you plan to work 32b go for Nuke/Fusion if you can aford it.
And if you only have to Grade something, go for scratch/Davinci.



PD: please Excuse mi bad English.

[Fibonacci]

Thank you guys !