Color Matching

Having examined the color correction tools in depth, it’s
now time for the bread and butter work of compositing: to
match separate foreground and background elements such
that the scene appears to have been shot at once.
Although it certainly requires artistry to do well, this is
a learnable skill with measurable objective results. The
process obeys such strict rules that you can do it without
an experienced eye for color. Assuming the background
(or whatever source element you’re matching) has already
been color-graded, you even can satisfactorily complete
a shot on a monitor that is nowhere near correctly calibrated,
and the result will not even suffer from your own
color blindness, if that’s an issue.
How is that possible?
As with so much visual effects work, the answer is derived
by correctly breaking down the problem. In this case, the
job of matching one image to another obeys rules that can
be observed channel-by-channel, independent of the fi nal,
full-color result.
Of course, effective compositing is not simply a question
of making colors match; in many cases that is only the fi rst
step. You must also obey rules you will understand from
the careful observation of nature described in the previous
chapter. And even if your colors are correctly matched, if
you haven’t interpreted your edges properly (Chapter 3)
or pulled a good matte (Chapter 6), or if such essential elements
as lighting (Chapter 12), the camera view (Chapter
9), or motion (Chapter 8) are mismatched, the composite
will not succeed.
These same basic techniques will work for other situations
in which your job is to match footage precisely—for
example, color correcting a sequence to match a hero shot
(the one determined to have the right color juju), a process
also sometimes known as color timing.