Powerful, professional color correction right where you want it

Colorista II brings the power of high-end color systems to your desktop. For the first time, you can perform professional color grading in your favorite editing applications and move between them with consistent, quality results. Colorista's easy-to-use interface is equally good for quick adjustments on a deadline or finessing your footage without limitations. Use the 3-Way Wheels for easy adjustment of balance and luminance; a powerful new Keyer for precision editing; and Power Masks to isolate an area for perfect finishing. Whether you are a color expert or an aspiring colorist, Colorista II will redefine how filmmakers everywhere do color correction.

Magic Bullet Colorista II runs in a variety of host applications.

• Adobe After Effects CS5, CS4, CS3
• Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, CS4, CS3 (CS3 is Windows Only)  
• Apple Final Cut Pro 6, 7

Unleash Color in Your Favorite Timeline
Colorista II is ready for action with easy-to-use tools that remove the limits and let you experiment. Free yourself from clunky stacks and multiple layers of color correction. A single instance of Colorista in your timeline has all the flexibility you need. The best part is that you stay in your favorite editing applications and move the color grading precisely between them. Let Colorista II unleash gorgeous color correction directly inside your editor – no finishing application required.

Powerful, Playful System Redefines Color Correction
An incredible 3-Stage system redefines how you do color correction. Primary Stage is the first stop for white balance, exposure and a powerful 8-way HSL correction. Secondary Stage quickly isolates your talent to fine-tune specific tones or areas with a powerful new Keyer and Power Mask shape. Master Stage is where you finish color balance, image contrast or add finesse with a second Power Mask. Colorista II is a playful, powerful system with infinite opportunities for creative effects.

Huge Toolkit of Exciting New Features
Colorista II adds a significant amount of power with an arsenal of exciting new features. A dynamic Keyer gives exact control over how your shots will look. Eight HSL channels get important colors like flesh tones and blue skies looking exactly right. Use the Pop slider to boost visual sharpness or as an amazing cosmetic cleanup for skin smoothing and blemishes. Highlight Recovery, RBG Curves, improved Auto-Balance and other new tools deliver professional, precise color correction.

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Features:

• Powerful New Keyer
  A powerful, easy-to-use Keyer allows you to adjust individual colors or ranges of colors. Create color keys intuitively with a direct sampling interface. Soften, choke or invert the matte, and use it in conjunction with Power Masks for ultimate control.
• 8 HSL Channels
  Getting memory colors looking right is crucial. You have three color adjustment controls for changing Hue, Saturation and Luminance across eight color ranges. Make your skies look blue and get your talents' skin just right.
• Two Kinds of Pop
  The Pop slider has two very cool uses. Give your image more visual 'pop' by increasing the sharpness. Alternately, set Pop to negative values to smooth and clean up skin tones while keeping important detail.
• Highlight Recovery
  Intelligently rebuilds blown-out highlight detail. Now you can save shots by hiding problems like blown-out areas in a sky or on an actor's face.
• Two Power Masks
  Two rectangular or elliptical shaped masks can qualify an area so its ready for a specific color change. Use them separately, together or with the Keyer for powerful effects. For example, correct the fleshtones of two actors in a single pass.
• RGB Curves
  For precision control and smooth, film-like contrast adjustments. Provides a quick way to get a film-like contrast in the shot. Get a master curves contrast as well as individual RGB channel controls.
• Unique Auto-Balance
  A quick way to correct white balance in your image. Auto-Balance now does black and white balancing with one click to better handle mixed lighting situations.
• Image Flip
  This switch is a quick way to flip the shot before color correction. Makes it simple to deal with some brands of 35mm adaptors used on video cameras, like the Panasonic HVX200 and Sony EX-1, which capture the image upside-down. 
• Mixing or Soloing of Stages
  Set how much a stage contributes to the overall correction. Mix amount determines the interplay between the original image and a specific stage, giving you an ultimate refinement technique. The Bypass switch similarly turns off all the controls in that state.
• GPU Accelerated & CPU Supported
  Render engine flexibility lets you use Colorista II wherever and whenever you want. As with other Magic Bullet tools, the controls work in floating point color and use the GPU to accelerate playback AND final rendering of results. This feature greatly speeds the output process. Beefy GPU-equipped workstations will provide the best render speed but laptops or CPU-only render farms can also run Colorista II with confidence.
• Move Between Multiple Hosts
  Use the same color correction tool fluidly between your favorite editors. Colorista II ships as a native plug-in for these major host applications: Final Cut Pro, After Effects and Premiere Pro.

Apple Macintosh

• Mac OSX 10.4.8 and later*
• Power Mac G5, Mac Intel
• 1 GB of RAM
• 30 MB of Hard Drive space

*Updating from Mac OS X 10.5 to 10.5.2 or later will in most cases solve compatibility issues. Please update your operating system before contacting support.

PC / Windows

• Windows XP SP1 or later
• Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit
• Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or faster (or AMD equivalent)
• 1 GB of RAM
• 30 MB of Hard Drive space

COLORISTA II FAQ from RED GIANT

Why has the price increased for Colorista II?
The price has increased for two main reasons. Reason one: There are 10x’s more features in Colorista II. In late 2007, we built Colorista 1 as a good and unique alternate to the color tools built into the various editing systems. Now with Colorista II, we have developed a color correction system that is 10 times the power and feature set. 

Reason two: Even more exciting, with just two applications of Colorista II in your timeline, you can do 90% of what you can do in a high end color system (like DaVinci, Scratch, Apple Color) without ever leaving your editing environment. You never have to recreate your edit from scratch to move between host apps, which helps you meet deadlines. You get a faster, more comfortable workflow. You avoid having to transcode media and possibly deal with image degradation. With Colorista II, you don’t need to sacrifice doing color because you don’t have time.

Why is Colorista 1 shipping with Colorista II? 
The dual-shipment is our customer service guarantee to support Colorista 1 for the next couple of years. We are including Colorista 1.2 with Colorista II because version II is not backwards compatible with version 1 projects. If you open a Colorista 1 project with Colorista II installed, the project won’t automatically open in Colorista II. This is because the Colorista II controls are so radically improved and different. 

We don’t want to strand users who are upgrading from Colorista 1 to Colorista II. Therefore, we have made certain that both versions work in the current host applications, like the Adobe C5 Suite. The Colorista 1 that you get when purchasing Colorista II is an updated version of Colorista 1 with no added features but optimized to be bug-free and current OS compatible. The version number has changed to 1.2 from 1.1. We are committed to making sure both Colorista 1 and Colorista II work for the next couple of years in After Effects, Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro.

By the way, in its newly updated and bundled version, Colorista 1.2 now shares your new Colorista II serial number. Your original Colorista 1 serial number is no longer needed. 

What is new in Colorista II?
Wow, the list is long! Colorista II is a completely new and improved release. The product is built around an incredible 3-Stage system of a Primary Stage, Secondary Stage and Master Stage. These three stages replace the need to consistently use multiple instances as with Colorista 1.

More features include: A powerful new Keyer that allows you to adjust individual colors or ranges of colors. A new HSL picker lets you change Hue, Saturation and Luminance across nine color ranges. Two Power Masks (instead of one) to qualify an area for a specific color change. We replaced White Balance with an Auto-Balance that does both black and white balancing with one click. RGB Curves for film-like contrast adjustments. A Pop slider for more visual sharpness or, conversely, smoothing out skin. Choice of GPU or CPU acceleration, and much much more.

Can I purchase Colorista 1 on its own?
Colorista 1 is no longer sold separately. This is because Colorista 1 is now bundled with Colorista II. You will be happy to know that all of the version 1 features have been amplified and rolled into Colorista II. 

Does Colorista II have all of the features of version 1?
Yes! Colorista II has all of the original features of Colorista 1.0 , and we have improved many of those tools. In fact, the Secondary Stage in Colorista II is essentially a feature-rich version of Colorista 1. 

Can I open my Colorista 1 projects in Colorista II?
Unfortunately, no. Because the Colorista II controls are so radically improved and different, they are not compatible with Colorista 1 projects. To assist with this issue, we are including Colorista 1 with any Colorista II purchase. We are also committed to making sure both C1 and CII work for the next couple of years in After Effects, Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro.

By the way, in its newly updated and bundled version, Colorista 1 now shares your new Colorista II serial number. Your old Colorista 1 serial number is no longer needed. 

Are there any tutorials for Colorista II?
Yes! As of our launch date, our Creative Director Stu Maschwitz has posted a thorough overview tutorial.  Several more focused feature demonstrations will be posted in the days following the launch. Check out the tutorials here.

How do I upgrade to Colorista II?
If you own Colorista 1.x, you can upgrade to Colorista II for $99.

Is Colorista II CS5 ready?
Of course! Colorista II ships ready for After Effects CS5 and Premiere Pro CS5. 

Is Colorista II supported by FCE, Avid or Vegas? 
Colorista II DOES support After Effects and Premiere Pro CS3, CS4, CS5 and Final Cut Pro. Colorista II does NOT currently support Final Cut Express, Motion, Avid or Vegas. We may expand host app compatibility based on customer demand.

Is Colorista II compatible with Automatic Duck?
Colorista 1 is still supported in Automatic Duck moving between Final Cut Pro and After Effects. We haven’t worked yet with Automatic Duck to make Colorista II compatible but we will evaluate that development based on customer demand.

My favorite new video editing plug-ins are the Magic Bullet color filters. I love being able to give my videos a different Hollywood style look and feel with just a few mouse clicks. It is amazing how powerful these filters can be. In Hollywood, directors use different film stocks and lighting to give their features a distinct look and feel. With Magic Bullet you can do this with ease to your own videos.  I use them to really set the mood of my videos and to make them even more special.

Magic Bullet Looks is now a stand-alone application that lets you load and customize hundreds of different color grades to your video. You can mix and match and modify and save them to create your own as well. It's a really nice interface and I found it very easy to learn. I like loading up different looks, then ‘reverse engineering' them by digging into the settings and playing with the controls. I wanted to try and create a more ominous look for some clips I have of my kids trick or treating. You may want to make your vacation video look more romantic, or make a cloudy day at the ballpark feel more like a spectacular summer afternoon. After a few hours of messing around, I was amazed at what I was able to do.

Magic Bullet Colorista is a plug-in that has really enhanced my workflow. Colorista makes it quick and easy to color correct all your footage. I know that all the advanced or professional NLEs have color correction tools built-in and that many of them have color tools that are so sophisticated and complex that you can spend hours just learning them. (Which is why I love Colorists so much - It's quick, simple and it gets the job done).