FCP Grading Filters – Desaturation & Levels (non-intuitive but useful)

The real image manipulation happens with the desaturation and level filters. Desaturation affects the richness of colors and level (via a un-intutive set of controls) will adjust the black point, white point and distribution of brightness across the whole image. The settings of these filters will depend on the scene and the camera you have.Set Desaturate to -50. This will boost the colors just a tad. Adjust to taste. Set the level controls as follows: input = 0 input tolerance = 100 gamma = 1 output = 50 ouput tolerance = 80 Ken Stone agrees the Levels filter is non intuitive:[http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_image_control.html ] <<< The Levels filter is supposed to be a more advanced version of the Brightness/Contrast filter, offering separate controls over highlight, midtone and shadow areas. In addition this filter offers the choice of working the image in RGB mode or any one color channel independently, Red, Green or Blue.However this filter is poorly implemented and is clumsy at best. It has five slider controls; input, Input Tolerance are used to lighten the image. The Gamma slider controls the midtone areas and Output and Output Tolerance used to darken the image. What makes this filter so difficult to understand and use is the fact that the filter opens with the default settings of the Input Tolerance and Output Tolerances sliders set at 100. With these two settings at 100 neither the Input Slider nor Output sliders work. It is necessary to lower either the Input or Output Tolerance sliders then start adjusting the Input or Output sliders. The real problem is that the highlight and shadow areas have two sliders each for control. Photoshop has a Levels filter but it is a different animal. Levels in Photoshop also has a ‘Histogram’ which gives a graphic display of all the pixels in the image based on their brightness values. The ‘Histogram’ display is essential to setting levels but the Levels filter in FCP has no ‘Histogram’. To be honest the Levels filter in FCP does not work for me at all – I just don’t get it. The Proc Amp filter does basically the same thing and works well. If you want to play with this filter I suggest that you set either Input or Output to a setting of 20 then start lowering the Tolerance filter down from 100. As you lower the Tolerance settings more effect will be applied. If anyone can offer any insight into this filter I would love to hear about it. >>> 

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