1. Color Finesse 3 Free Download
2. Color Finesse 3 Download

Marco Solorio
OneRiver Media
Concord, California, USA
www.onerivermedia.com
Article, photos and images © 2002, Marco Solorio
November, 2002

Article Focus:
Don't have the hundredsof thousands of dollars for a DaVinci color-correction system?But you do have After Effects? In a jaw-dropping review of SyntheticAperture's 'Color Finesse,' Marco Solorio shows how Color Finessefar surpasses the capabilities of standard color correction tools-- as well as the error-prone realities of using standard colorcorrection plug-ins. The differences are shocking! Note: thisis NOT an article on how to color correct (although some of theprinciples are explored in the article and there is much to belearned here).

'Finesse' is a song by American singer Bruno Mars from his third studio album, 24K Magic (2016). The song was written by Mars, Philip Lawrence, Christopher Brody Brown, James Fauntleroy, Jonathan Yip, Ray Romulus, Jeremy Reeves and Ray McCullough II.

• Finesse finish is a premixed 100% acrylic-based architectural finish which is offered in all Dryvit standard colors as well as custom colors. Finesse provides the finishing touch that adds lasting color to exterior and interior walls. Finesse includes DPR (dirt pickup resistant) chemistry that will remain clean longer after application.
• The Finesse TRD (The Real Deal) is designed specifically for the Midwest finesse style of fishing, more commonly known as the Ned Rig, which has been gaining momentum nationwide as a subtle and easy-to-master, yet amazingly effective, presentation.

Okay, let's cutto the chase... the Color Finesse plugin by Synthetic Apertureis by far the best color correction tool available for post production,save a DaVinci color suite costing a few hundred grand. Insteadof writing an article review explaining the merits of such a fineproduct Color Finesse is, I will otherwise try to convince youthat the current crop of color correcting/effect tools availabletoday are junk and without this tool, you're missing out on superiorcolor correction quality available in software form.

The best example I can use for relatingColor Finesse to standard color correction/effect tools is bythe following example. You know those great sounding speakersyou can buy at the local audio/video/computer store? Lots of bassand bright highs with a lot of color? So why don't recording studiosuse these speakers? Because they're totally inaccurate! If youmeasure the frequency response of the speaker's output, you'llget a graph that's something akin to the Swiss Alps. Standardcolor correction tools are the same way. Totally inaccurate! Viewthe results on a waveform monitor and you'll see a mix of clipping,noise gain, rounding errors, RGB gain, contrast gain, saturationgain, banding and some times errors so profound they actuallycreate errors in the places they were supposed to fix! With ColorFinesse, you're using a tool that is scientifically accurate,resulting in a natural, lifelike results.

Just like the inaccurate audio speakersyou can buy at the store that boost specific audio frequenciesto make them appear as if they sound good, so is the samewith standard color correction tools. When using a standard brightnesstool in Adobe After Effects for example, the result adds RGB gainto make it appear it's really bright, when in fact it's addingcontrast and clipping for the illusion of brightness. Nothingtoo accurate about that!

Although packagedas a plugin, Color Finesse is really an application unto itself.When used in Adobe After Effects for example, it loads the ColorFinesse application up in memory and keeps it memory (user definableof course). Instead of a cheesy little palette full of slidersand buttons, Color Finesse opens up its own full-screen graphicaluser interface (GUI). The interface is clear and understandablewith oodles of visual feedback and options. It's very easy toquickly become comfortable with the interface and remember wherethings are.

The biggest feature of this product forme is its incredible resolution for processing. Its 32-bit percomponent processing makes it a 96-bit plugin! Wow! Working in16-bit mode in After Effects is simply awesome. But more on thatin a bit (pun intended). Many standard color correction toolsgive you options to work in HSL and RGB, but Color Finesse goesa step further and allows you to also work in CMY (Cyan, Magenta,Yellow) and also YCbCr (the digital equivalent of analog YUV).A plethora of scopes, waveforms, histograms and other displaysgives you full monitoring of your color correction actions. Andof course, there's the in-depth control of the color correctiontools themselves. Everything from a single channel having manycontrols, to global settings allowing for automatic control. Thisis the real deal.

In order for me to see how well ColorFinesse compares and differs from the general color correctiontools found in the likes of After Effects and Final Cut Pro, Iused similar footage and did A/B comparisons with similar settingsbetween the two. Color Finesse will do anything any other colorcorrection tool has to offer. But it can go so much deeper withso much more control and accuracy. Let me discuss some of thesimple tools and how they compare before getting deeper into theplugin.

For some technical evaluations, I alsoused my 16-bit test image I use to test codecs with. The testimage reveals a ton of information about these plugins. You candownload my test image at my codeccomparison site to perform tests on your own. The file isin lossless SuperPNG format.

Saturation
Adobe After Effects allows you to set the saturation of the Hue/Saturationplugin as far as 100. Stacking or doubling the plugin has no effect.With Color Finesse, I can slide the Master saturation value upto 300 (keeping in mind that 100 is the default neutral value).I can manually type in a maximum value of 1000. The biggestdifference is that the standard AE plugin seems to add some contrastin the image with little accuracy in actually saturating the hues.Color Finesse on the other hand gives me more realistic and naturalsaturation amplification. It looks less 'digital' andmore lifelike. Interestingly, the standard AE plugin banded in8-bit mode at 100% saturation and was 'fine' in 16-bitmode (note the excessive green hues -- easier to view on a Macintoshgamma monitor). The Color Finesse plugin on the other hand givesme 99% of the same visual cleanliness in 8-bit mode from 16-bitmode with my test image. In fact, some tests showed no visualdifference between Color Finesse's 8-bit and 16-bit testing becauseit always processes in 32-bit per component. Never once did ColorFinesse ever give me poor results like standard plugins can whenreally pushing the limits to their extreme in 8-bit mode. ColorFinesse really shined nicely in natural, real-world clips whenpushing saturation.

So this makes things very interestingto think about. If you work in 8-bit mode and want to guard againstbanding when really pushing color controls, use Color Finesseto make sure you don't band. If you do work in 16-bit mode inAE, you'll need to use 16-bit compliant plugins to make sure yourimage doesn't bottleneck to 8-bit resolution. However, not allstandard AE plugins are 16-bit compliant (like the AE BroadcastColors plugin), so you'll again need to utilize Color Finesseto maintain quality. As you can see, Color Finesse already showshow it's the missing link to your post production workflow!

One of the interesting tricks with theSaturation tool is how the values work. The default value is 100as this does nothing to the image. One would think that 'zero'would be the best default number for a neutral position. -100for desaturation, zero for default and +100 for amplified saturation.You'll soon realize this is NOT the correct way of working withtrue saturation. Read on.

Increase thenumber past 100 and you'll saturate the image. Decrease the numberfrom 100 to 0 and you desaturate the image, where zero is a totalgrayscale image. Now slide the image even more to the left, pastzero and you get a negative value. This negative value will slowlyinvert the colors and add saturation to that inversion! At a valueof -100 you have a perfectly inverted image from the default 100value. Now if you go past -100 (to say -200), you then add additionalsaturation just like you did above 100 (to say 200). When playingwith the Saturation slider and watching the RGB Parade Histogramat the same time, this begins to TOTALLY makes sense, yet no other'saturation' tools do this.

Brightness
Yuck! The standard AE Brightness/Contrast plugin does a horriblejob of this simple procedure! Once again, the AE plugin adds contrastto the image at 100% brightness. In fact, it appears to add RGBGain, which 'helps' it to make it appear brighter, whenin fact it's dead wrong and inaccurate! Color Finesse is silkysmooth with no hard contrasts between colors at 100% brightnesson the Master setting. The AE plugin is so bad in fact that itactually introduced aliasing on some edges (bottom arrow) whereColor Finesse did nothing of the kind. You can see where the RGBgain clipping blows out the highlights (left arrow) causing unnecessarycontrast errors. The right arrow also shows the mid point in whichthe contrast errors occur. You can see this hard-edge line fromleft to right in the image (humps up in the blue area). You canalso see the ugly aliasing in the URL text of the image. I'llnever use the standard AE Brightness/Contrast plugin ever again!

Contrast
Although contrasting between the standard AE Brightness/Contrastcontrols and the Color Finesse controls showed similar results,it was Color Finesse that had a more 'softer' approachto the task at hand. This again gives a more natural and lifelikefeel to the affected image. However, if you really want that cartooncel-like contrast appearance with hard edges, you can use optionalcontrols in Color Finesse to achieve this goal with finite detail.You can even assign the mid-point of the contrast change. Theamount of control is truly amazing.

Final Cut Pro 3-Way Color Correctorvs. Color Finesse
Final Cut Pro's 3-way color corrector is actually a good tool.One major limitation of course is that it's limited to 8-bit processing.I can induce banding or aliasing with the FCP 3-way CC tool onextreme tests. Color Finesse of course does not band nor aliasin the same examples. And as always, I have much more controlof my accuracies. There is one major draw back to Color Finessein FCP though... It only works in OS9 for now. This is actuallya fault of Apple since they decided to not support Adobe AfterEffects compatible plugins in Final Cut Pro for OSX. So the workaround is either use standard color correction tools within FCPat 8-bit processing, or run FCP in OS9 to use Color Finesse orexport your edit out of FCP using Automatic Duck and import itin AE for color treatment there. If you want the most accuratecolor correction, then the temporary hassle will be worth theeffort.

We've just sampledsome of the simplicities of Color Finesse. When we look at theHSL controls, we can globally change the settings to affect theimage. But going a step further, we can also adjust the followingsettings in each of the Highlights, Midtones and Shadows tabs.They include: Hue, Saturation, Brightness, Contrast, ContrastCenter, RGB Gain, Gamma and Pedestal. The first four main imagecontrol sections, including HSL, RGB, CMY and YCbCr work thisway. In other words, they have a global Master setting for colorcontrol, as well as individual Highlights, Midtones and Shadowssub control. This truly is the ultimate in finite precision.

Lets move down to the Curves pane. TheCurves main image control section works a little like the firstfour main sections, in that you have a global master setting withadditional component settings. In this case, you have a Mastercurve as well as a Red, Green and Blue curve (as opposed to aMaster, Highlights, Midtones and Shadows setting). Each curvecan have multiple spline-like points. You also have the optionfor eye-dropper control in black-point, gray-point and white-pointvalues. You can even save your multi-curve data as a file to useon other clips. The only thing I don't like about the Curves sectionis that the I/O values for each point doesn't infinitely displayin the feedback information. You must also click on a point ofchoice to get the I/O value if it disappears. This of course doesn'taffect the image in any way, but continuous numerical value feedbackis always nice.

The Levels section isn't anything newto users, but the way Color Finesse implements it is easier tointeract with. This actually functions very much like the 'Levels(Individual Controls)' plugin in AE. You have individuallevels for Master, Red, Green and Blue (although no alpha channelcontrol like the AE plugin). Each level has controls and dynamichistograms for both the input and output results. Simple, effective,accurate.

More than just a color corrector, butcolor creativity
Because there's so much color control with Color Finesse, youcan actually use this plugin to perform some cool stunts. Let'slook at the basic functionality of the Secondary section. To understandwhat secondary color correction is (as compared to primary colorcorrection), let's imagine we have a shot of a talking head infront of a lake, but the white balance is off (giving us an imagetoo yellow) with an overall dark appearance. With primary colorcorrection, we fix the yellow cast to a more natural state aswell as the brightness issue. For added effect, we also improvethe saturation and contrast a bit too. Great, so the overall imagelooks nice. Except let's say the lake in the background is greendue to toxic pollution and it's still green in both the raw videoshot and the primary color corrected shot. We want to turn thatgreen lake into a blue lake. Now we can move on to secondary colorcorrection.

The Secondary section can hold up to sixindividual banks (A-F) or 'channels' as Color Finessecalls it. Each channel can eye-drop up to four color-points whichis useful for keying in on a gradient-like color. This functionsmuch like a chroma-keyer actually. You pick the color with oneof four eye-dropper tools, apply your Chroma and Luma Tolerances,your Softness value and then apply your color effect to the selectedcolor area. And remember, you have six, full channels to use thison.

Okay so now we want to turn our naturallygreen lake to blue. You simply dial in the green hues with theeye-dropper(s), apply your tolerances and shift your hue fromgreen to blue. Maybe even add a bit of saturation to give it thatMaui look.

Here's a quick, creative example whenusing the Secondary section all by itself. Remember the moviePleasantville where everything in the 1950's was black and whitefootage and as the story progressed, items in the scenes weregiven color? You can do the same thing with Color Finesse giventhe right conditions. I've used the image below as an example,although I don't think my dog enjoyed taking the picture withme (she's usually quite smiley). For the example I'll desaturatethe image to grayscale and only make the red flowers appear incolor (like what was shown in the movie).

Sample the red hue(s) from the flowerswith the eye-dropper tool. One or two samples should do it. ClickPreview. You'll instantly see the Pleasantville effect. Adjustyour tolerances and softness for more accuracy. Make sure youkeep the Preview button checked and click OK. If you change anyother settings within Color Finesse, you'll need to go back tothe Secondary section and click Preview again. Then render away.

Obviously the Preview button is to dialin your eye-dropper values and after you've done so you simplyturn off the Preview and perform your color effects (like a hueshift from green water to Maui blue water). But using the Previewbutton can be a creative tool on its own!

Other tricks like turning a day shot intoa night shot is easily done in Color Finesse and with no degradationto the image like pixelation or banding.

Color Finesse as a film stock emulator?That's crazy talk!
I actually found this out by accident while poking around theColor Finesse folder looking for something else! Apply Color Finesseto your video clip of choice. Once you're in the Color Finesseinterface, click Load and go the the folder that holds the actualColor Finesse application (not the 'SA Color FinesseAE' plugin found in your AE plugins folder). Open the 'ColorFinesse Presets' folder, then the '35mm Filmstocks'folder. There you will find twelve presets for various film stock.

I went through all twelve of them andrealized, 'hey, this makes sense!' The reason for myexcitement is because video has a linear level curve to it, wherefilm has more of an 'S' shape to it, meaning it graduallytapers from the bottom to the mid section, then gradually tapersoff to the upper section. The RGB curves of the stock film presetsdid this as well, which is why it made sense to me. About halfof the presets also included slight desaturation in the HSL settings,but not by much. These film stock presets were a lot of fun toplay with and my favorite (with the type of clip I was playingwith) was the Eastman 5298 EXR 500T preset. Obviously these filmstock presets only work as good as the video shot, so don't thinkthis is an auto-film-plugin. But it does yield favorable results.I'm just waiting for the 'Saving Private Ryan' filmstock preset. The 'Puff Daddy' (or is it 'P-Diddy'now?) film stock would be fun too with 50 stops, gray and blacklevels crushed to -5000 IRE and bright levels shot up to 12,000IRE. But I digress.

Some of the film stock presets include:

* Eastman 5222 Double-X B&W
* Eastman 5231 Plus-X B&W
* Eastman 5245 EXR 50D
* Eastman 5248 EXR 100T
* Eastman 5293 EXR 200T
* Eastman 5298 EXR 500T (my personal favorite)
* Kodak 5246 Vision 250D
* Kodak 5247 Vision 200T
* Kodak 5277 Vision 320T
* Kodak 5279 500T (I also really liked this one)
* Kodak 5620 Primetime 640T
* Kodak SFX 200T

And after previewing all the film stockpresets, I played around with my own 'film' preset inwhich I called, 'High Contrast Blue Metal'. It tookme all of about 5 minutes to create. I beefed up the RGB colorcurve a bit (mostly the Blue curve and clipped the bottom-leftblue curve point to 30,0), desaturated the Master, Highlightsand Shadows, saturated the Midtones, boosted the Master Contrast,decreased the Master Contrast Center and RGB Gain, added a bitof blue in the Shadow Hue Offset color wheel, added a tiny bitof boost to the skin tones in the Midtones and Highlights HueOffset color wheel (nothing to the Master color wheel), addedsome RGB Midtone Blue Gamma, and finally used the Secondary colorcorrector to use four eye-dropper samples on skin tone valuesand increased the saturation to those skin tone samples. Eek!

Okay, sounds like a big mess, but withall these controls, one can go crazy! I wanted to create a cold,metallic-like effect with high contrast, crushed blacks (includingvery dark blue values, hence the clipped blue RGB curve) but withthe ability to also preserve skin tones (but not to over saturateand create unbalance). The light and dark areas are sightly moredesaturated than the other areas. The result is actually quitepleasing... and with no additional noise, clipping or banding!I also ran my preset through my main RGB test image which gaveme far better results than I expected (little pat on my back).The image didn't look like it simply had a digital 'bluefilter' through it or a problem with white balance, but rathersomething that appears more natural and realistic (pat on SyntheticAperture's back).

I initially used my 5-minute film stockwith people in the image. I imported an image of a building (aspictured below) and the plugin worked great on it too (to my amazementonce again). The reds are technically less saturated with thefilm effect and yet they add 'pop' or separation fromthe rest of the image. When comparing the two on my NTSC monitor,the film effect is really cool. The small images below don't doit justice.

Some other Color Finesse presets include:

* Day for Night 1
* Faded Color Neg 1
* Sepia 1 (very accurate with good use of the Hue Offset colorwheels)

Visual eye candy galore
Obviously Color Finesse packs a punch with all of its color correctiontools. But what's a tool if it doesn't have a visual way to measureits interactivity? You get a total of seven different waysto get feedback from your color corrections in the area knownas the Analysis Window. Four of the seven can be viewed at oncein a 4-up Combo View. The seven displays include, Luma WFM (WaveForm Monitor), YC WFM, RGB WFM, YCbCr WFM, Vectorscope, Histogramsand Level Curves. What's cool too is that you're not limited tothe 'green' feedback display of old. You have the optionof standard green as well as full color feedback display in boththe WFMs and the Vectorscopes. In software form, this is equalto the best hardware based waveform vectorscope money could buy...and the display will never get soft! You also have optional settingsto calibrate Color Finesse to your needs, including NTSC, PALor ATSC, Video Level Coding (of 8-bit) to 0-255 or 16-235, optionto select your black having 7.5% IRE setup and to calibrate thevectorscope to 100% color bars. Very nice indeed.

Using the YCbCr WFM and the accompanyingYCbCr pane, I had some fun playing with 4:4:4, 4:2:2, 4:1:1 and4:2:0 clips and their associated component values. Using the Gainslider, you can decrease (or increase) each component value (Y,Cb or Cr) for the clip. For example, by importing in a 4:2:2 clipand adjusting the luma/grayscale (Y) Gain slider to zero, youcreate an image with no luma value but full color values (as foundin the Cb and Cr components). You begin to see how the componentvalues work in these compressed color space formats. In realitythough, the YCbCr pane is a very useful tool for people workingwith video because, for example, you can adjust values in onlythe luma component (Y) without affecting the other two color components(Cb and Cr). However, this wouldn't be the best tool to use ifyou're color correcting with film as your master output format.Using the RGB and/or CMY pane would otherwise be better suitedfor film users for similar color correction options.

To compliment Color Finesse's array oftechnical visual feedback of waveforms and vectorscopes, the interfacealso has several forms of viewing and comparing your actual image.The default (and most used) display is the Result image, which basically displaysthe color corrected image in its entirety. You can compare yourcolor corrected image in the Result display with the originalimage in the Source display.

The really cool display is the Split Sourcefunction where you have controllable points in which to splitthe image in any possible variation. One half of the image ispre-effect and the other half is post-effect. In the image tothe right, you can see the Split Source view in action where theleft portion of the image is low in contrast with a brownish castand the right portion is color corrected. Very handy.

You also get a Luma display to help youquickly see which part of the image is getting affected when usingany of the Highlights, Midtones and Shadows controls. For instance,if you use the Shadows tab within the HSL pane, you will be affectingthe black areas of the Luma display. To further fine tune theratio between highlights, midtones and shadow areas, use the LumaRange pane to dial this in. Need more dark areas of the imageto be affected by the Shadow pane? Simply move the left curve'scontrol point anywhere north or east from its original point-positionor a combination therein (north east). It's all about accuratecontrol with precise feedback monitoring!

A neat feature of Color Finesse is itsReference feature in which you compare your color corrected clipwith other clips in your project. This is very helpful when youneed to target the colors of your current clip to that of otherclips in your project. Color Finesse even has a desktop-like builtin interface (within the Color Finesse interface) to navigateyour reference clips. This is great when you have a multi-camerashoot and one of your cameras wasn't calibrated to the other cameras.Simply color correct and compare your uncalibrated camera shotto your other calibrated camera shots. Very slick.

And because you can save all your ColorFinesse settings as one, global file, you can simply correct oneshot and apply those settings to all your other shots later onwithout having to manually input all the parameters. To simplifythings even further, you can color correct your clip, hit OK,copy the 'SA Color Finesse' plugin from the Effect Controlswindow in AE and then proceed to paste the Color Finesse pluginwith all its settings to all your other clips! Now that's easy!

Myfavorite tool of all
I've saved the Limiting pane for last because it's my favoritetool to use in Color Finesse. As a 10-bit uncompressed user forCGI, animation and other visual effects projects, there's no betterway to make my renders meet the legal maximums of NTSC broadcastsafety. Working in After Effects, you have the 'BroadcastColors' plugin. There's only one major problem with thisplugin. The geniuses at Adobe only made it for 8-bit! So if youhave a 10-bit clip and you need to run it through color safetyby means of the Adobe 8-bit filter, you've successfully convertedyour 10-bit clip to an 8-bit clip (or a 16-bit comp to an 8-bitcomp). With Color Finesse, you maintain your 10-bit, 12-bit or16-bit clip (or comp) when legalizing color safety. And like ColorFinesse's other color controls, the Limiting pane gives you awide realm of clipping/limiting controls for optimum broadcastsafety meeting your exact requirements.

I compared the After Effects 'BroadcastColors' plugin against Color Finesse and as usual, ColorFinesse shinned with flying colors. In fact, the AE 'BroadcastColors' plugin was so bad that the cyan and yellowhues actually produced an ugly result (error clipping) in my testimage (shown in the image below with the arrow on top)... thearea in which the plugin is supposed to cure the blown out colors!The red line with pixelation is a 16-bit ramp, created for codectesting, but more powerful here in color correction testing. Thebottom arrow shows adverse contrasting in the text. Elsewherein the image (cropped out) shows other contrasting errors. Theresults are quite astonishing to say the least, especially whenyou think a standard AE plugin is supposed to help your hot colors,not make them ugly!

For my animation work, this is essentialbecause I work in full (0-255) RGB color space where cyan andyellow hues will automatically get blown out first when introducedto NTSC. After the cyan and yellow hues come the nasty red huesand so forth. Oh and let's not forget about luma values... areyour white values too hot? It's imperative that a visual effectsartist working (and generating from scratch) in pure RGB colorspace understand the concept of legal broadcast NTSC/PAL colorlimitations and work in accordance within those rules. If not,you'll get yelled at somewhere in the pipeline!

Limiting may not be needed if you're finaloutput is component video playback, film, digital output, webstreaming, etc., but if your output goes to broadcast televisionor composite signal, then you'll need to follow the rules. Bettersafe than sorry!

As much as I LOVE this plugin, there area few set backs. The biggest one so far is that there isn't aWindows version of this plugin. Hopefully one will come soon asI can only imagine a huge increase in sales would be a welcomedsight for Synthetic Aperture! Sources say a Windows version willpossibly be released sometime in early 2003.

There's also no support for Color Finessein Final Cut Pro 3 under OSX. This is not a fault of SyntheticAperture, but a fault of Apple for not implementing standard AdobeAfter Effect plugin types into FCP 3 for OSX. Apple says it shouldbe implemented in the next release... whether that's a point-releaseto FCP 3 or in the next FCP 4 release is a secret they're keepingto themselves for now. So once again, the work around is eitheruse standard color correction tools within FCP at 8-bit processing,or run FCP in OS9 to use Color Finesse or export your edit outof FCP using Automatic Duck and import it in AE for color treatmentthere.

A note about Color Finess image mirroringto NTSC/PAL output. I have both an AJA Kona SD and Aurora IgniterFilm uncompressed NLE systems in my suites. Both these systemscan give me NTSC/PAL output from applications like Photoshop andAfter Effects. AJA Kona SD goes a step further with real-timeRAM playback and real-time comp window mirroring. The only problemis my capture cards don't recognize Color Finesse as an applicationfor mirrored output. However, Color Finesse does support EchoFireoutput to NTSC/PAL output, which is a software utility that enablesprograms like Photoshop to output the image to hardware that doesn'tsupport RGB output from the desktop by itself (like Pinnacle Cinewave).And guess who makes EchoFire? Yup, you guessed it... SyntheticAperture. Hmm, a conspiracy theory here? Okay, no conspiracy theoriesactually. Hardware developers would have to write drivers fortheir capture cards to work with applications like Color Finesse,but Synthetic Aperture has done this work for them with EchoFire.So this can either be viewed as, 'cool deal' becausethis mean a way to mirror out to NTSC/PAL via any capture card,but can also be viewed as, 'bum deal' because hardwarethat can already mirror out to NTSC/PAL in other apps will needto buy the extra EchoFire software to make it work in Color Finesse.It sounds like a possible Color Finesse point-update will soonbe released to support the latest EchoFire OSX release (EchoFireon OS9 with Color Finesse on OS9 currently function).

I also don't like the fact that you cannotscrub the video in the Image Window. A little QuickTime scrubslider would be a cool addition to this interface. Until then,you have to exit the plugin, click to a different location inthe timeline and go back into the plugin again. Not too big ofa deal really because one frame of the clip should do the jobof representing the entire clip... but still! According to SyntheticAperture, this is a limitation within After Effects. They're hopefula resolution will pend in a new AE release.

As for alpha channel support, it soundslike there's quite a large request for it. This would also meansome slight reconfiguring of the interface to accommodate theextra real estate for the added channel. But it does sound likeSynthetic Aperture wants it supported, so I'm sure we'll see itin a future upgrade.

And finally, it sounds like numericalvalues will be added in the Levels pane in the next point-update.

A 1.1 version update sounds like it'sin the works and should be released in the near future. Some ofthe above issues will be fixed in the upgrade. The 1.1 upgradefor current 1.0 users will be free.

If you don't already own Synthetic Aperture'sColor Finesse, you're grossly missing out. Not only in preservingyour high quality imagery, but by abstaining from regurgitatedugliness other standard color correction tools present you with.I cannot begin to tell you how important this plugin is if youwant to maintain the upmost standard in quality control and naturalvisual beauty. This is easily one of the 'top ten pluginsrequired in your do-or-die plugin toolset'. I'd give theplugin a perfect 5, but because it's not yet on Windowsand it doesn't support clip scrubbing, I have to be honest andgive it a 4.5 rating. Besides those two factors, the pluginis in fact a perfect 5 rating.

Download the software demo, try it outand you'll see how important this tool is. If you don't see howimportant it is, then you either haven't tested it long enough,or aren't comparing it to the standard batch of color correctiontools that are available to you. In a nutshell, nothing comesanywhere close to the quality, accuracy and control that ColorFinesse brings you. Hell will freeze over before I ever use anyother color correction tool again. And if hell does freeze over,I'll use Color Finesse to turn the blue freeze back to red fire...in 32-bit no less.

Price as tested:

Color Finesse - Web Delivery $575.00
Color Finesse - CD-ROM $595.00

EchoFire - Web Delivery $255.00
EchoFire - CD-ROM $275.00

Color Finesse / Echo Fire Bundle - CD-ROM $770.00 (Reg. $870)

Links: Synthetic Aperture - www.synthetic-ap.com

Marco Solorio is a multi-award winningdigital media producer in the San Francisco bay area. He ownsand operates OneRiverMedia, which focuses on producing animated content for broadcast,as well as serving production needs for content developers. Andof course, The PowerpuffGirls is his second most favorite cartoon in the world.

Article, photos and images © 2002,Marco Solorio

This article was first published on creativecow.net and isreprinted here with permission

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From: Jesse: Mesa, AZ 6/16/20

Comments: Me and my dad have been using these for years and they are by far the greatest worm for Texas rigging by far. The ElaZtech in the bait makes it so the worm floats up, you will catch fish on this period. The best way to rig one of these is to use a 1/4 - 5/16 oz worm weight, pegged on a 3/0 worm hook.
From: Julian: Laurens, SC 6/4/20

Comments: Tough and stands straight up on a shaky head. This and the Bang Stick are my two shaky head worms. I still prefer a Zoom Trick Worm for weightless and especially for drop shotting (the Zman floats up and rests parallel to your line on a drop shot rather put perpendicular).

From: Bill: Florida 6/5/20

Comments: First of all, I love these Z-man worms. One problem I have with these worms is the packaging is too small For the dang worm. Just about every pack of these worms I buy has a bent tail, and looks horrible in the water. About unusable. The elaZteck holds that bend in the worm. Great bait! Not worth buying until that bend in every worm is fixed. I am disappointed, it did not used to be like this.

From: Bobby: San Diego, CA 1/22/20

Comments: I discovered the neko rig about a year ago and it quickly became my favorite technique not only for numbers of bass but BIG bass. I was using a standard finesse worm or dinger at the time. I figured I would try these out on a neko rig since they float and I wouldn't have to constantly keep pressure on my line to keep the worm standing up. First day I tried these worms I caught at least double the amount I was catching on a standard finesse worm. The action is amazing. Trust me, pair these with a Zman neko weight and you will not be disappointment!

From: Brandon - Mobile, AL 8/19/21

Comments: Excellent dropshot bait. Stands up to multiple bites and doesn't get pulled off by bait fish.
From: David: 5/30/19

Comments: LOVE EM. these baits straight up work. ive caught using this bait on a shaky head, drop shot, texas rig and a carolina rig. great durability. watermelon red works the best.

From:Unknown 2/3/19

Comments: The 4 inch is great for DS and the 7 is good for anything you can think of. Been using them on shakey heads for years. Yes, they can be a pain to get on a screw lock but, if u heat up the screw up a bit with a lighter it makes it an easier job. Also if u want the same worm with more buoyancy and don't wanna presoak, stretch or break them in with a few fish to get the salt content down try the floating wormz . TW doesn't have many colors but zmans site has em hope this helps.

From:wingnut: lower jersey 1/26/19

Comments: The ONLY 7' straight tail finesse worm that you need, in my humble opinion. They last forever, the more worn a bait gets the better the action, and they flat out catch fish on a shakey head. This little bait is a staple for me and I've caught some of my biggest bass on it over the last couple of years. I'm hoarding them, in case they ever do discontinued, lol...

From:Brian: Richmond, KY 7/20/18

Comments: These worms don't take spike it dyes well. I tried dipping the tail of a 6' green pumpkin in chartreuse and you couldn't tell I dipped it. I had to let it soak, then you could barely see it. Trying to add color to the tail is useless.

From:Steve: Louisiana 4/6/18

Comments: Great on a shakey head. I use them on Owner screw-lock shakey heads and they work great. No problems.

From:Unknonwn 12/27/17

Comments: These worms are the only 'floating worms' I've found that actually float. I bought them for my shakey head, but they are so durable I couldn't get the screw lock into the head. They make a great presentation for bass feeding off the bottom or a really picky bed fish.

From: Joe: USA 3/28/16

Comments: I have these in the wodderrmelon/ red flake color and the action is amazing. But they don't catch ennything. My cousin out fished me on the delta of a river using robowermz on a shaky head rig. By the way, these DO go on screw lock heads. Just gotta put some man muscle into it. But they do float and I'm thinking about wacky rigging them weightless next spring for spawning crappie.

From: Dilly: Belletucky, OK 7/2015

Comments: These are one of my all time favorite soft plastics to use. These things are really durable, easily get 7-10 fish per worm before its worn out. You can stretch these to your full wingspan and it wont break, stretching it does seem to put more air into it if you want it to float a bit better. I simply use the 4inch Watermelon Red or Junebug texas rigged with a tiny bullet weight and twitch it on the bottom. The tail stands up and wiggles back and forth so well, fish cant resist. Caught my top 2 personal best Largemouths on it, each just shy of 6lbs. Caution, keep these with their own kind and out of the sun so they dont melt on you.

From: Abhi: NJ 2/24/15

Comments: Great worm. I was dropping it down with a shakeyhead on fish I could see on the graph, and sticking them. DONT try to screw it onto a screw-in jig head or something like a spot remover, it wont work. I get 3-10 fish out of each worm. Read the package for storage info.

From: Jay6: USA 1/20/15

Comments: I used it today and caught 3 peacock bass and one of them was my biggest yet. This is a great worm durable and good colors.
From: Kyle: IL/ singapore

Comments: They work great, and last a long time. I used one all day and it was still usable afterwards. The line on my drop shot rig even wrapped around it really tight looking like it was cutting into the bait, but I unwrapped it and it was just like it was before it happened, also On one of them that I got it said 'E King 3X' so I think it is the same mold as the strike king worm, but cheaper than strike king worms.

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From: Clay: IA

Comments: any way you want to fish this turkey, you can, and it will work. Shhh...fish it on a hardhead and you wont throw the shakey no mo. Catch fish RIGHT behind some jive arse turkey who is throwing the traditional shakey head. It only took once to be that JAT to figure it out, for me. I aint no sucka!

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From: meatwad: telling my non boater's secrets

Comments: this lure is terrible don't catch fish. Just kiddin caught a 5 pounder PB on Junebug wacky rigged on a dropshot fishn bout 6foot of water and he just a bout snapped my line so good lure worth 4 bucks instead of strike kings 6 bucks for like 5 worms that aren't elaztech

From: Connor: AR

Comments: i got my personal best smallie around 4 lbs on this bait in green pumpkin rigged on a 1/4 oz shakey head on a windy main lake rocky point
From: Justin: Nebraska at the time

Comments: im a 5ft 5in 13 year old and i stretched this as farr as i could reach they are invinsible and great action
From: Ben