The Math of Color Grading in Nuke

In this video we’ll take a close look at the simple mathematical functions behind color grading operations in Nuke. We will only discuss operations that affect brightness, or value of an image. We’ll save the more complex discussion of color and hue for a future video. – Scene-linear and why it’s important – 1:00 – What is a linear function – 2:30 – How the Grade node works – 4:30 – Power functions and gamma – 6:40 – Adjusting exposure in stops – 10:16 – Compressing brightness with a logarithmic function – 12:10 – Taking a complement with the invert node – 24:44 – Keep your Toe under control – 25:44 – ColorCorrect – 28:18 – ColorLookup – 30:56 – What the heck is RolloffContrast useful for anyway?! – 30:31 – Histogram and why Nuke is not Photoshop – 34:48 For a more detailed look at using the Grade node, please watch Frank Reuter’s excellent presentation on Color Correction – NUKE Basic Workflows: https://vimeo.com/76514569 The Desmos plots I show in this video are available here if you would like to play around with them: Linear Equation in Slope Intercept Form: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/ibo… Slope Intercept Calculation: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/nvp… Grade Node Math: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/gq1… Power Function (Gamma): https://www.desmos.com/calculator/pcc… Log Function: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/9j1… Log2Shaper Function: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/cig… And here are some Wikipedia links for further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proport…) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complem…) And a few other links I discuss in the video: Friends don’t let friends view scene-linear imagery without an s-shaped view transform: https://cinematiccolor.org CinematicColor v2 – Common RGB Colorspaces : https://nick-shaw.github.io/cinematic… The image I am using to demonstrate scene-linear and an s-shaped view transform is available at cinematography.net here: https://www.cinematography.net/Valvul…