Not sure what I’m doing…

It trully looks amazing!

I am digging it, and I am also glad the modifications solved the issue.

You might also be interested in Fujifilm Fortia 50. Super saturated and punchy film simulation. Seems like your style :D

Check out the blog

https://www.veresdenialex.com/post/fuji-fortia-50-film-simulation

also, whenever you need help, we can book a private session, no problem

www.veresdenialex.com

Want to learn Color Grading and how to make cool LUTs & Powergrades? Book a course with me and get it Done easily with no hassle!

Glad the answer was useful, and I wish you a lovely day!

Cya :D

I looked into Fuji Fortia to and you're right, it seems like my style, I'm going to look into it more.

Last night, I watched your YouTube video where you explain the components of the picture profile more.

As I understand it, Gamma is like a Curves arc, controlling dynamic range with blacks on one side and highlights (whites) on the other.

There are multiples of Color Modes with the profiles used for film being more unsaturated and easier to color grade in post.

Black Gamma affects your blacks.

Knee, I'm not sure about other, other than this is the point with the arc starts to flatten out.

Saturation is self-explanatory.

Color Phase and Color Depth affect the colors and their hue.

Detail is the sharpness around images; bring that down for a more film like look.

The other stuff like Crispning and the stuff on that menu, I don't know.

What I'd like is if I found a movie or a film sample that looked vintage or from the 50s or was a color profile like Classic Chrome, I'd like to establish a process to duplicate it as best I could, similar to what you and I did with the Velvia modifications.

I thought, my short-lived aha moment, would be to take a color calibration chart, set my camera with a baseline white balance, exposure and ISO. Then as I make changes to the picture profile, I would take a picture, systematically going through every setting, then moving to the computer, taking an eye-dropper to each picture's main colors: black, white, mid-grey, red, yellow, and blue and develop a database so that given a picture you want to match, you apply the eye dropper to the vintage pictures and you do basically a color vlookup to figure out what settings to apply.

I said my aha moment was short-lived when I realized these combinations were in the millions. So, surely there's a way to narrow all of this down. I thought I'd walk you through my mental process, you could see my commitment, where I'm getting to wrong, and we can talk about how to get it right, which includes your one-on-one session.

Let me know your thoughts, as always I'm eager to hear.

Postscript:

Oh...you talk about the color temperatures and pushing the overall hues to warm or cool. Why don't you make these adjustments in color phase / color depth?

I noticed one of your videos showed the pre-color grading on the Vektro, Ektar, Blue Velvet etc. I'm trying to create those color filmic looks out of camera. Is it possible or is it unspoken you have to apply LUTs after the fact? I know if I apply a Velvia LUT to the pictures I showed you earlier this week, they look terrible. Which is actually good, because the photos out of camera are "done".

So last question, and something I'd want to know in a lesson...how do you know when you're done and you've achieved your look? It's hard to take a picture of a 2023 Ford SUV and realize you've caught the look of Asteroid City.

As always, I'm humbled and grateful to you.

James

Color Modes are actually different color spaces, rec709, Cinema, Bt.2020. Each has a smaller or wider color gamut, meaning more or less colors can be prepresented. Each color mode have different characteristics and different ways of representing color.

Lower saturation doesn't equal easier to grade. The traditional way was to shoot log, which is super desaturated and low saturation, while that offers most flexibility in post, it offten proves to be time consuming and more complicated, hence why why use baked in picture profiles, which come closer to the final look, and eventually need small tweaks in contrast and color to get the final image.

Also log and 8bit does not work well. With these film recipes you get better color and noise ratio even when shooting Log compared to the basic Sony picture profiles, which is another advantage. Everything I've done for youtube so far is shot in 8bit to proove a point.

I know you hoped for a simple step by step answer on how to replicate a film look, but it's not an easy process, hence the reason why this whole project took more than 2 years and I still keep on updating the recipes when i feel there is soem space for improvement.

After all you need to experiment a lot with the picture profiles. The whole process of color matching is a lot more complicated than using a eye dropper, because we don't have tools like HuevsHue inside the picture profile menu. The only tools we have, are Kelvin, Color Filter, Color Modes, Color Phase and Color Depth. After many trial and error, you'll find these combined can balance out colors and shift hues to a certain limit.

This makes it a lot more complicated, because you cannot choose an individual hue and shift it to your liking like in lightroom, capture one or any editing software. You need to subtly shift the whole image in different direction, and with the combined settings from all mentioned above, you will shift the colors inside the camera. The kelvin shift the colors the most obviously, pushing all the hues in different areas, and if you understand how that works, you can actually shift colors and then balanced them out with the color filter.

After working so much with sony's picture profiles, most of the times I know from the top of my head which settings would work best to replicate a certain look, or if it's even possible to replicate it. But I am also applying years of color grading knowledge to get to the final result, and it's a back n forth process where I keep returning to old profiles to readjust them once I learn something new.

So definitely it's not a 'A to B' process. It's 'A to B to C..to D' and so on, learning & perfecting each recipe.

Answering the following question.

''you talk about the color temperatures and pushing the overall hues to warm or cool. Why don't you make these adjustments in color phase / color depth?''

Color Phase and color depth will not influence the temperature of the image, it will only shift colors in a certain direction and adjust the brightness of each color channel, meaning your image will still be predominantly warm but with different hues and with lighter or darker colors.

Color depth influences the brigthness of individual color channel. In some ocassions in can actually shift colors, I havve some theories I am still not 100% sure why, but I believe it's because the way the sensor interprets color in relation to exposure and I will probably make a video about it as soon as I find out.

But in most cases it will not shift colors, only the brightness of each.

One more way of influencing colors, is using the Color modes, each having a different color science.

I would gladly explain in more depth, but we need atleast 1 hour to cover the surface.

We should have 1-2 sessions, so we have time to talk about the process. I will show you my way of doing it. Of course, it would still require you to experiment on your own and put in practice the theory.