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Color 3 Way

Together with Histogram Bezier / Curves Color 3 Way is the main tool of Color Grading because you can modify the colors of Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights as desired. Color 3 Way is keyframable (figure 10.35).

Figure 10.35: Color 3 Way control window

- It allows you to vary the contrast of the image using the slider Value, always acting separately on shadows, midtones, and highlights and thus resulting in very precise application.
- Allows you to automate the white balance by simply choosing a neutral color in the output of the Compositing window using the Color Picker and pressing the corresponding button in the plugin.
- Allows you to vary the Saturation with sliders in the same manner as contrast was varied by the Value slider. For istance, to decrease the incidence of color dominants present in the shadows or in the highlights, vary the Saturation.
- With the color wheels you can make very sophisticated adjustments to the shades of the images, in each of the three main areas of shadows, midtones and highlights.
- Allows you to copy exactly the setting of one zone to the other two zones using Copy to all button. With this option, it is like using a fourth wheel called OffSet in other programs.
- In addition to the three reset buttons, each slider and each wheel has its own Clear button, to return it to the default value without affecting the others.

This plugin allows maximum control over the result and maximum precision of adjustments when used simultaneously with the control monitors, i.e. Waveform, RGB Parade and Vectorscope. It is important to keep in mind that the three zones are not clearly separated, but slightly overlapping. This results in less precision but looks better for more smooth shades. By varying the values on the color wheels all RGB channels are affected simultaneously, which can result in unwanted color dominance. Saturation is also affected and must therefore be monitored. To use more precisely, drag the crosshair with the mouse in the desired area and then adjust in steps of 0.001 using the up/down and right/left arrows on the keyboard. The most common use cases (but can be adapted to virtually any situation) of the plugin are:

- White balancing.
- Expand/compress contrast.
- Mitigate under and over exposure.
- Balance colors, i.e. eliminate color dominance.
- Color matching Shot to Shot.
- Create a Stylized look.

When using the X11 graphics driver and RGBA-FLOAT color model, this plugin allows for greater than (0 - 1.0f) values (illegal values). This does not work when using X11-OpenGL because it is an 8-bit limited driver. Illegal values will only work for the color wheel, while the Value and Saturation sliders are always clipped to 1.0f.