Technicolor effect in Affinity Photo

[Madmax45]

Hello!

 

Could you help me to make a Technicolor effect to get this special movie color grading?

 

Thank you so much!

 

Peter

 

 

[stokerg]

Hi Madmax45,

This tutorial is a great starting point:

 

[Madmax45]

Hi Stokerg!

 

Thanks a lot! Let me see!

 

Peter

[R C-R]

**** EDIT: I just noticed there is something wrong with the "Technicolor pt 2" macro that I uploaded in the .afmacros file below that was not there when I first created that macro. I will try to get that fixed ASAP, but for now it won't work as expected. Sorry about that. 

EDIT 2: I >>>think<<< I have found & fixed the problem in the "Technicolor pt 2 file" & included it in the updated 'channel stuff' macros library file below. If you downloaded the first version, please delete it & try this one instead. (This version has the same name as the original but the main "Technicolor Effect" macro has been renamed "Technicolor EFFECT" so you can tell which version is installed.)

Really sorry for the problems & the length of this post but I hope everything is sorted out now & the macro will be useful to some of you.

 

The 'take away' comment at the end of the Affinity Photo video tutorial reminded me that I had made a macro to create 3 individual RGB layers, much like in the first part of that video. That inspired me to see if I could expand on that macro to do most of the steps in the video. The result is this unimaginatively named Color Channel Stuff.afmacros macros library file. It contains these 4 macros:

The first one, "Technicolor Effect," mostly just runs the last two macros above, & should (I hope) do everything up to the 'basic technicolor effect' shown at about 4:00 in the video. If you want, you can import the file as a new category into the Library Studio & try it out. Just be aware that it is intended to be run on an .afphoto file with a single pixel layer, so you may get unexpected results if you try running it on anything else!

If that is all you are interested in, skip the remainder of this post because what follows are my probably much too wordy & boring notes about these macros:

1. "Add RGB Channels, blend mode options" is my original macro. The "Add RGB Channels, lighten blend mode" one is a duplicate of that, just without the options to choose the blend modes of the 3 layers enabled so it does not pause running the macro.

2. Both of these two 'add' macros expect the single pixel layer to already be selected when run; otherwise, they fail to create the "RED" layer. If I had my act together when I made the first one, I would have made that the first step, but since the AP macro feature currently does not allow editing an existing macro to add any step except at the end (grrr!) I am not willing to start over with a new macro with that as the first step & manually record the other 26 steps to fix that oversight!

3. The "Technicolor Effect" macro begins by selecting the top layer (which should be the only layer) so there is no need to select it manually first. Just be aware that you do need to do that if you use either of the 'add' macros by themselves.

4. The "Technicolor pt 2" macro is not intended to be run by itself. It could have been eliminated from the category if I had manually added its 16 steps to the end of the "Technicolor Effect" macro, but I am too lazy to do that. (If anyone wants to do it, please post your version here so we can all share it.)

5. The 'pt 2' macro relies on the circled Assistant option being set while it is being recorded, so if you redo it make sure that option is set! (The macro records the setting so it does not need to be set to run the macro later or at any other time.)

6. For some reason I could not get the 'pt 2' macro to select the second color layer after adjusting the recolor filter on the first one (all the layer select options were greyed out) unless I added extra 'Set current selection' steps that selected the parent layer of the first recolor layer. That is why the macro has two 'Set current selection' steps in a row as its 5th & 6th steps. I was probably overlooking something that should have been obvious. If anybody knows what that might be, please let me know.

Anyway, I hope you find some of this useful or at least interesting.

[Polygonius]

offtop:

What is the bold font in the daniel craig picture, its unfortunately not shown in the vid?

[Madmax45]

Hello R C-R!

 

The macro doesn't work, I can't import it. The downloaded file is inactive. What shall I do?

 

Peter

[Wosven]

Hi @Madmax45 ,

You need to import the .afmacros in the Library panel.

[R C-R]

37 minutes ago, Madmax45 said:

The macro doesn't work, I can't import it. The downloaded file is inactive. What shall I do?

Like @Wosven said, this is an .afmacros file (note the plural), so it must be imported into the Library Studio as a category containing the four macros. You do this using the four line 'burger' menu in the Library Studio:

[firstdefence]

5 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Like @Wosven said, this is an .afmacros file (note the plural), so it must be imported into the Library Studio as a category containing the four macros. You do this using the four line 'burger' menu in the Library Studio:

Imports fine R C-R, oh and thanks for the Macro's

[smadell]

OK R C-R, I'll take the challenge. As per your post above (specifically, your item #4) I am including a file called "Technicolor Simulation.afmacros". It is a single macro (which I actually created quite some time ago, also based on James' tutorial video). The user should have a single pixel layer selected to get an appropriate result. It re-creates the steps outlined in the tutorial video, also adding a CMYK Curves adjustment at the end, which alters the tones of the resulting output a bit, similar to what James does starting at about 4:00 in the video.

The file should be imported through the LIBRARY panel (since it is an .afmacros file). However, it only contains a single macro, and that macro can be dragged into another category if desired.

Technicolor Simulation.afmacros

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Imports fine R C-R, oh and thanks for the Macro's

You are most welcome. I hope you find them useful, or at least fun to experiment with.

Since all the adjustment layers & the RGB blend modes can be edited after running the 'master' Technicolor EFFECT macro, you can create lots of different looks by adjusting them afterwards, from very subtle to extremely bizarre. The best part of that is in Affinity Photo everything updates in near realtime so you don't have to wait around to see what some change does. 

[Madmax45]

Thank you, Folks!

I imported the macro, but  I made a Technicolor simulation as seen in the tutorial, but it's not so nice. (See below the screenshot)  I guess for the best result have to use a picture which contains lots of colors. (Yellows, greens, oranges etc) Here is the original file, if somebody would like to demonstrate the Technicolor look for me :-) If somebody has nice analog color grading LUTs, Macros, plugins. Please, send to me!

 

 

 

[R C-R]

47 minutes ago, smadell said:

OK R C-R, I'll take the challenge. As per your post above (specifically, your item #4) I am including a file called "Technicolor Simulation.afmacros". It is a single macro (which I actually created quite some time ago, also based on James' tutorial video). The user should have a single pixel layer selected to get an appropriate result. It re-creates the steps outlined in the tutorial video, also adding a CMYK Curves adjustment at the end, which alters the tones of the resulting output a bit, similar to what James does starting at about 4:00 in the video.

Nicely done! 

Your version has the benefit of fewer layers (I think because of the merge steps) while mine has the benefit of keeping all the recolor layers adjustable, so users can try both & see which one works best for them. That's one of the big things I love about this forum: so many people are willing to share their take on some idea or technique that there are lots of them to choose from and/or built on. Yay! 

[R C-R]

22 minutes ago, Madmax45 said:

I imported the macro, but  I made a Technicolor simulation as seen in the tutorial, but it's not so nice. (See below the screenshot)  I guess for the best result have to use a picture which contains lots of colors. (Yellows, greens, oranges etc) Here is the original file, if somebody would like to demonstrate the Technicolor look for me :-)

The file you attached is a JPEG, which may or may not be the original file you started with. Either way, it would be better to attach the .afphoto file you started with by importing (?) it into Affinity Photo, if possible with the history saved with it so we can see what you did.

Anyway, just for a quick & dirty comparison, attached are 2 JPEG files created from the JPEG you attached, exported after applying the macro I created & the one @smadell did (mine is the first one)

Neither one is substantially different from the original. In fact, even before mangling them with more lossy JPEG compression so the smaller file sizes would be better suited to be viewed in the forum, viewed in Affinity Photo before export the differences between them were subtle, probably because my version does not add the CMYK Curves adjustment at the end that the @smadell version includes.