Also works with Motion and Adobe's After Effects

Yanobox, a development house that produces plugs-in for FxFactory, has debuted a new "next-generation" color grading and correction module called Moods that works with Final Cut Pro X, Motion (versions 3, 4 and 5) and Adobe's After Effects (CS3 through CS5.5). The plug-in, which can be purchased separately, features a "heads-up display" that overlays on the video, allowing for full-screen color work with HD or SD footage.

The key to the program is six intuitive color wheels that appear on-screen with the footage, showing real-time results. From left to right, they are a desaturation/silver/contrast wheel to control black levels, gray tones, desaturation and contrast; an exposure/gamma wheel to control white levels (horizontally) and gamma (vertical); three wheels for overall color balance (shadow, mid-tone and highlight), and a "wash shadow" wheel to blend shadows with colors for vintage looks.

The wheels include an on-screen "help card" to remind users how each wheel functions, and the plug-in includes presets and the ability for users to make their own custom presets. Leveraging GPU acceleration makes rendering a transparent function and works with bit depths of 8 to 16 bits. A full video tutorial is available, as is a free trial version. The plug-in sells for $49.

by MacNN Staff