Color Correction Handbook: Professional Techniques for Video and Cinema

Color correction is a complex and subtle craft. The student needs to sit next to professionals on a real jobs, and ask them continuously what they just did, and why they did it. The professional rarely has the time and the patience to answer newbie questions, and the earnest scholar quickly ends up outside the grading suite, wondering sadly whether there was an easier road to knowledge.

Now, at last, there may be. Alex Van Hurkman's book comes with a DVD of example material you can load onto your color grading workstation. It covers many useful real examples, explaining what you might do to make the images look better, what is the easiest way to do it on any of the popular platforms, and even how to explain what you are doing to others. If you want to learn color correction, this book will make a difference.

Van Hurkman covers the theory and the practical application of color-correction very well...it's always good to understand the theory of *why* the image looks good or bad and how it relates to photography, electronics, and physics.

I have no doubt Van Hurkman's book is as close as we're going to get to a standard textbook for the world of color correction.  If nothing else, I think it communicates the idea to neophyte filmmakers that there's far more to color-correction than just having the software or the box.  It's *experience* that makes good color -- not the system.