Color: Correcting and Grading in Final Cut Studio

Color: Correcting and Grading in Final Cut Studio
by Michael Wohl and David Gross
Publisher: Peachpit Press
ISBN: 978-0-321-50911-6
Price: $54.99 US, $59.99 Canada, and £39.99 UK
Page Count: 408
http://www.peachpit.com/apts.color

This is a case of “gee, I should have gone to Peachpit’s website to get more information, and get the very instructive full title, before I accepted this book for review!” I thought the book was about color correction for print–something I know enough about to keep out of trouble, but I should have known better–everyone who is not in the print industry keeps saying print is dead, and because Apple does not market an Apple-branded print product, there was little chance there would be an Apple Pro Training Series book on that subject.

Color: Correcting and Grading in Final Cut Studio, part of the Apple Pro Training Series is all about color correction and using color for artistic purposes in Final Cut Studio, Apple’s professional-grade video editing suite. It is extensively and effectively illustrated with full-color screen grabs and is written as a series of lessons:

• Working with the Color Interface
• Basic Grading
• Basic Secondary Grading
• Advanced Secondary Grading
• Grade Management
• Color Effects
• Common Recipes
• Keyframing Effects
• Recomposing and Tracking
• Primary Out and Rendering
• Alternate and Advanced Workflows
• Setting Up a Color Correction Environment

It also includes a DVD containing the source material necessary to work on the lessons in the book.

While not an expert (or even a novice, for that matter) in Final Cut Studio, I can’t say a whole lot about about the accuracy of the content, but can say that the instructional material is well-organized and each new lesson builds on the previous lesson. I can also say that while I don’t have any experience with Final Cut Studio, I understand enough about video to pick up on many of the concepts presented in this book, and can see that if I were in a position to need to do color correction or color editing with Final Cut Studio, this would certainly be the tutorial I’d go to, in order to learn the appropriate techniques.

Because this is not really a proper review, I don’t think it is appropriate to give this book a rating, except to say that video professionals who use Final Cut Studio would probably find a lot of very useful material in this book.