X-Rite i1Photo Pro 2 calibrates your Mac, PC, tablet, scanner and RGB printer

Most users in the creative industry know they should regularly calibrate and profile their monitor for colour-critical work, but there’s more to colour accuracy than keeping your monitor in shape colour-wise. If you’re going to be printing or projecting your photos, art or videos, you’d better calibrate the output equipment as well. In fact, if you want to be absolutely certain colours will be accurately rendered from input to output, you will need to calibrate — or at least profile — cameras, scanners, monitors, printers and projectors. There’s only one affordable option that is accurate enough: the Red Dot Award winning X-Rite i1Pro 2 and I had the chance to test the Photo version.

Luxi for All turns iPad into incident light meter

The Luxi for All is a light meter accessory for smartphone and tablet light metering apps. It turns the camera of your mobile device into an incident light meter.

The Cine Meter II app is a viable light meter replacement

Light meters are expensive but you’re bound to have an iPhone or iPad. What has one to do with the other? Simply this: some people develop cheap light meter apps and the nec plus ultra of those apps must be Cine Meter II by Adam Wilt. I’ve tested Cine Meter II as a reflective and an incident meter.

basICColor print 5: automated, high-end profiling

In addition to new profiling algorithms, basICColor’s professional profiling software basICColor print now also directly connects to basICColor catch, the measuring software. In addition, it automatically corrects measurement data, lets you load custom illuminants for spectral profiling and delivers new gamut mapping strategies for perceptual rendering intent.

Professional colour grading in Final Cut Pro X with Color Finale Pro

Not every colourist wants to use a separate application to quickly but professionally colour grade his footage. Why should they if you can colour grade right from within Final Cut Pro X? With Color Finale Pro, the standards are high and the level of professionalism you can attain, competes with dedicated colour grading software.

Professional colour grading in FCPX with Color Finale Pro

Not every colourist wants to use a separate application to quickly but professionally colour grade his footage. Why should they if you can colour grade right from within Final Cut Pro X? With Color Finale Pro, the standards are high and the level of professionalism you can attain, competes with dedicated colour grading software.

More than just a LUT loader for Final Cut Pro X: LUTx

There are quite some LUT utilities for Final Cut Pro X, but Roger Bolton from Coremelt succeeded in developing a plug-in that gives you more than just a LUT loading mechanism. LUTx delivers a LUT browser, various fine-tuning features, masking capabilities and, for the Look LUT effect, the unique ability to apply your LUT to a specific luma range. The LUTx plug-in has four effects in all.

What is HDR video and why is it important?

With Atomos announcing their Flame series of video monitors/recorders at NAB 2016, HDR is the talk of the town. Most photographers, be it professional or amateur, will know what the acronym HDR stands for: high dynamic range. Dynamic range is defined as the ratio of the largest value of a signal to the lowest measurable value. The dynamic range of luminance in real-world scenes can be 100,000 : 1, while our computer screen or TV set is limited by technology to a ratio of 400 : 1 or even less. With HDR rendering, bright things can be really bright, dark things can be really dark, and details can be seen in both.

Xe8472 colour correction plug-in keeps apples green and strawberries red

Instead of painstakingly white balancing your footage, you can also make it approximately right and let Xe8472 take care of the rest. Lemke Software’s FxFactory plug-in with the mysterious name Xe8472 is based on the colour constancy concept and claims to automatically correct the colour of your footage, but does it?

ScopeBox serves parades, histograms and video scopes to your NLE or compositing app

ScopeBox displays video scopes, regardless of whether your clip is processed with EditReady — before you transcode them — or Final Cut Pro X, Premiere Pro and other apps. It does so via ScopeLink, a clever system that allows ScopeBox to integrate with a slew of supported applications, including SpeedGrade, various versions of After Effects, Prelude and Pomfort Silverstack. In addition, ScopeBox provides scopes for live sources such as BlackMagic Design and Aja input equipment, and for movie clips stored on your disk(s).