Exercise: Color Matching.
Click on the icon for a quick preview of the exercise and the final result.

Download an archive that contains the footage as well as the setups used in this exercise.
Put these files in your Flame system: for example under the /usr/tmp directory.

To learn how to load material into the Flame Library, see the exercise:
“Loading an archive”
Images are subject to copyright: please read the disclaimer at the end of this tutorial.

Start in Batch.
1. Drag the Library node in the Batch schematic.
2. Select Aviator_girl_front and Aviator_Girl_side and press Load.
3. Drag a Colour Warper node in the Batch schematic.
4. Connect the Aviator_Girl_front clip to the front input of the Colour Warper.
5. Connect the Aviator_Girl_side clip to the back input of the Colour Warper.

Instead of eye-matching the shots, we can use the plot and reference color pickers to display the colors in the vectorscope.

1. Select the Colour Warper node and press F4 to display the result.
2. Click Plot and Ctrl-drag a color sample in the image. The model’s forehead is a good skintone reference here. Ctrl-dragging a sample will average out the pixels.
A dot representing the colour sample appears in the Vectorscope.
3. In the view menu, switch to the back view F2. This is our reference view.
4. Click Ref. Again, Ctrl-drag to sample the same area in the reference clip.
5. Switch back to the Result view F4.
Note that in the Vectorscope, there are two dots: one for the plotted color (red), and one for the reference (yellow). To match the sampled colors, all we need to do is to line up the dots in the Vectorscope!
6. Drag the Midtones trackball while looking at the dots in the vectorscope. Line up the red dot to the yellow one.
The hue is matched.
7. Compare the original with the result by toggling F1 and F4.

Let’s fine-tune the color match. To do this, use a split bar to view the images together.
1. Zoom out the viewer Ctrl+Spacebar drag
2. Press Ctrl+B to enable the splitter bar
3. Drag the splitter bar up. Note that you can also drag the pivot point to move it.
4. Set the reference to R:Back.
5. Increase the saturation to match the color intensity.
6. You can also increase the Gamma (the midtone luminance value) by Alt+Shift dragging the R Gamma value. Alt+Shift dragging will link the red, green and blue gamma parameters.
7. Press Ctrl+B to disable the Split Bar.
8. If you want, add an output node and process the result.