Victoria Nece

Protected: Edmonson Cartoon Effect

Friday, 08. 14. 2009  –  Category: Tutorials

Jazz Up Your Footage With ‘Leave Color’

Thursday, 01. 8. 2009  –  Category: Graphics

I’m working on a set of short films to accompany a jazz concert later this month (more info when I can share it), and I’d like to show off a cool looking — yet very easy — effect we’re using. All the video is treated to give it that soft, silvery nighttime ‘jazz club’ look, with a bit stronger contrast for the performance clips. We didn’t want just straight black and white, though, so instead I’m using an oft-forgotten After Effects filter that’s been around for ages: Leave Color.

Here’s a still from the raw footage (DVCPROHD 1080i60):

And here’s the after shot, with only four very basic After Effects filters applied (click to embiggen):

I used Leave Color to keep just the blues and desaturate the rest of the image, then boosted the saturation a bit to make the remaining color really pop. After that it was just your basic Levels and a high-contrast instance of Curves.

Oh, and one extra layer on top as a vignette — a black solid with a rounded rectangle mask (double-click the mask tool to get one that fills the layer) set to subtract and heavily feathered. That’s all!

Leave Color has simple parameters but dramatic results, and is especially good as a quick trick if you need to draw a viewer’s eye to a key element of a scene. All you have to do is decide which color you want to keep. For example, say you have a shot of a bunch of people at a party, with one woman in a bright red dress. Choose that red with the eyedropper, …

Fanning the AEFlames

Friday, 04. 4. 2008  –  Category: Tutorials

New tutorial! Create gorgeous animated fractals with a FREE After Effects plugin. (AE 5.5+ required, CS3 recommended)

AEFlame seems intimidating at first, but once you learn the basics the possibilities are endless. This tutorial assumes you have decent working knowledge of After Effects.