Video Apex Bookshelf

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Free Cinematic Presets!

After the release of my last tutorial, I thought I'd create a few (five) sneak peek free cinematic presets that will apply an overall look to any of your digital video. These are very high in quality, and will work on just about anything. They are a preview to a part of a collection that I'm currently producing.

I thought it would be fun to demonstrate these to you using the newly-released trailer for Quantum of Solace. Here we have a shot of Bond and Felix speaking in a pub (below), the first image is obviously our plain shot taken straight from the trailer, and the following five each have a look applied. Note that these are all at full strength though...when you use these I recommend applying them to an adjustment layer, and bringing the opacity down a bit, just to mix the look back in with the original image. I also suggest you correct the black and white points of your images before applying these as I demonstrated in my tutorial Creating Digital Cinema, although it's not necessary.

I was careful not to clip any values - white, black, red, green, or blue, which is why many are accomplished using a curves effect, and the rest use levels, pulled in the opposite direction, so they don't clip.

Here's the link to download them, simply unzip the file and place them in your presets folder of the After Effects directory on your hard drive:

Grant_Swanson_Presets.zip

Here's an example of the looks:

Notice how skin tones stay relatively normal on all of these. Here's a little hint for you: if you are out looking to purchase a preset collection or maybe even a plugin, check to be sure that the looks you are buying don't destroy skin tones. Here is an extremely popular preset applied to the same image as mine, except skin tones weren't taken into consideration, and, well, you can see for yourself...
Not to mention we've carelessly clipped both white and black values, creating an amateur and accidental look.

Have fun!

NOTE: If you cannot see all of the images try refreshing your page.

32 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh...my...goodness. Thank you so much! You're my ae hero!

Anonymous said...

thanks tons.

Anonymous said...

looks very great thank you .

Danran said...

Just played around with them on some footage I had lying around... look great. Thanks!

Pato Veloso said...

Good work!!!
Thanks for sharing!

Unknown said...

thank you, apprecieted.

Isaakovich said...

Thanks for the presets and your tutorials man! Awesome stuff!

Nice library in your store, i'm really going for the cinematography ones!

Anonymous said...

Where did you get a clean plate from a movie that has not been released yet???

Anonymous said...

Great work!

Just wanted you to know that you are AMAZING!haha!

Keep it up! Looking forward to more posts from you!

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to say thanks for the tips and tutorials. I appreciate the time and effort! Goodluck in all that you do.

Anonymous said...

Really great. Thanks.

Also great tutorials on Creative Cow.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant. Thanks

POV said...

Many thanks Grant! Awesome stuff!

Anonymous said...

MAN wow ty

.wuiky said...

Hello, congratulations! I love ur work, but I have some trouble watching ur tutorials completely by creativecow links. Do you have them zipped? Can u send them to my email? I can watch it, but at the middle of the tutorial, it finish and I have been trying and nothing happends =(... my email is pawawis@hotmail.com, the tutorial I was watching its called "Creating Digital Cinema".. Thanks!!

Grant Swanson said...

.wuiky–

This would be a problem you might want to talk to the folks at Creative Cow about, I don't have control over their setup. Other that updating your version of Flash, and perhaps refreshing the page, I don't know what could be going wrong; they play perfectly fine when I watch them.

The files would be very large for e–mail...Try talking to them first, perhaps leave a comment about the problem on the tutorial page, and see what happens. Let me know how it works out.

Hope this helps,
—Grant

Anonymous said...

Thank you, sir. This will be well used...tks for the hints!

Pustulio said...

thanks! dude! this is a lot of help!

Anonymous said...

I cannot believe my good luck! I am working on a project right now and went on line looking for a way to affect the color on this video and lo and behold! There is your post! This is EXACTLY what I needed. Maybe I should go out and buy a lottery ticket next....

I have a quick question for you (or any other creative guru out there): this video of a 16 year old equestrian and her horse. There is this beautiful tight shot of her face and she has a teeeeeny bit of acne bumps on her face. Is there any trick to obscure or minimze this or smooth out her complexion for this one shot? It doesn't bother me... but I remember being a 16 year old girl and trust me, she'll be mortified.
If you do have any advice, thanks in advice. At any rate, THANKS for the presets!

Anonymous said...

Excuse me... this is my first foray onto someone's blog....

I don't think included my e-mail in that last post about the 16 year old horseback rider.... and I don't even know if this is the correct thing to do but....

If anyone out there does have some wisdom on this issue, my e-mail address is mwalsh@waterfordprod.com.

I have signed up for your RSS feeds, so hopefully, I will get better at this....

Anonymous said...

Hi there Grant You are such a great teacher and sound kinda young as well you are very concise in your explanations but If you could just slow down your speech just a little
that would be great I had to listen to your web address 4 times to get it all
if you listen to Andrew Kramer at videocopilot.net and include his style and direction I think you will have a great e business he has a great model for it
as do you, your downloads are wonderful.
if you go to art beats and see there tuts by the British guy he's great as well you have helped alot of people keep up the unselfish work kit rogers creatve director las vegas www.christoperrogersinc .com

Andrew Landry said...

These presets are amazing! I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the presets you've made, but these are tremendously useful. Thanks!

Capitão Caverna said...

Thanks a lot!
I´m using your presets in Brazil
massacoletiva.blogspot.com

NNW Filmes said...

That´s Simply AWESOME!

Thanks a lot man....
I also would thk U, for dedicate your time, for to do this video and this presets for us....

Anonymous said...

Awesome! Thanks so much for hooking these up for us.

Craigery said...

Wow! Thanks so much!!

Peter said...

Thanks my friend!!! It's really amazing and easy to use!!

cialis said...

In principle, a good happen, support the views of the author

Nintendo Station said...

Thanx!

Nintendo Station said...

Thanx!

ANIRUDH BHARDWAJ said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MR.Sharma said...

IS it possible in after effect cs6 .. m trying to add but not working .. please help ..