Color Correction Handbook

The colorist working in film and video is the individual responsible for breathing life into characters, bringing a mood into a scene, and making the final product polished and professional-looking. This craft is an art form that often takes years to perfect and many trial-and-error attempts at getting it right. Here to help both the newcomer and professional who needs to brush up on their skills is the first book to cover a wide variety of techniques that can be used by colorists, no matter what system they’re using. Whether you’re using a video editing package with a color correction tool built in (Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro) of a dedicated application (Apple Color, Assimilate Scratch, Baselight, or DaVinci), this book covers it all.  From the most basic methods for evaluating and correcting an overall image, to the most advanced targeted corrections and creative stylizations typically employed, you’ll find this highly organized book a solid reference that’s easy to navigate.  The accompanying DVD contains footage as well as cross-platform exercises and project files for readers to experiment with.

After reading the techniques, readers will learn to apply the methods that all of the color correction applications use, how to problem-solve and trouble-shoot, how to maximize the effectiveness of each tool that’s available, and they will discover how to creatively combine techniques and tools to accomplish the types of stylizations that colorists are often called upon to create.

Praise for Color Correction Handbook:

From Alexis Van Hurkman comes an up-to-date, most welcome, encyclopedic guide for colorists: Color CorrectionHandbook (Professional Techniques for Video and Cinema).   The breadth of this work is almost impossibly ambitious: Van Hurkman embraces all the important topics, and the liberal use of illustrated examples, with accompanying waveforms and solutions from various platforms, succeeds in providing a single reference work for the colorist at almost any level of expertise.... Colorists will find gaps in their knowledge are as well-served by this book as the aspiring colorist already under the tutelage of a master.

Ron Lingelbach
Colorist, Dolby Laboratories; Founder, TKcolorist Internet Group (TIG)



Color correction is a complex and subtle craft. The student needs to sit next to professionals on a real jobs, and ask them continuously what they just did, and why they did it. The professional rarely has the time and the patience to answer newbie questions, and the earnest scholar quickly ends up outside the grading suite, wondering sadly whether there was an easier road to knowledge.




Now, at last, there may be. Alex Van Hurkman's book comes with a DVD of example material you can load onto your color grading workstation. It covers many useful real examples, explaining what you might do to make the images look better, what is the easiest way to do it on any of the popular platforms, and even how to explain what you are doing to others. If you want to learn color correction, this book will make a difference.






Dr Richard Kirk

Colour Scientist, FilmLight Ltd

Recipient of 2010 AMPAS Scientific and Engineering Award






Van Hurkman covers the theory and the practical application of color-correction very well...it's always good to understand the theory of *why* the image looks good or bad and how it relates to photography, electronics, and physics.





I have no doubt Van Hurkman's book is as close as we're going to get to a standard textbook for the world of color correction.  If nothing else, I think it communicates the idea to neophyte filmmakers that there's far more to color-correction than just having the software or the box.  It's *experience* that makes good color -- not the system.




Highly recommended.


--Marc Wielage/Senior Colorist


Lowry Digital/Burbank