Color Correction Handbook: Professional Techniques for Video and Cinema, Second Edition

Introduction

Color is life, for a world without colors appears to us as dead. Colors are primordial ideas, children of the aboriginal colorless light and its counterpart, colorless darkness. As flame begets light, so light engenders colors. Colors are the children of light, and light is their mother. Light, that first phenomenon of the world, reveals to us the spirit and living soul of the world through colors.

—Johannes Itten (1888–1967)

This book is intended for developing colorists who aspire to master the art and engineering of serious color grading. It incorporates information and techniques that I’ve found useful during my career as a colorist of narrative and documentary projects. It has also provided me with an excellent excuse to delve ...