Review: CrumplePop ToneGrade color correction plug-in 
By Steve Douglas
Last Update: 01 February 2012 07:42 AM
Author: Steve Douglas
It was inevitable that third-party software companies would begin to update their plug-ins for Apple’s new Final Cut Pro X as soon as they could. Some already have, but with limited success, as adjustable parameters in previous sets are not always found in the Final Cut Pro X versions, and I have found that some are not as stable as they may have been in legacy versions of Final Cut Pro.
While CrumplePop has updated their split screen plug-in previously reviewed here and actually made improvements to it in that, for the Final Cut Pro X update, you can add color corrected clips to the many split screen options which will retain the color correction, this review will focus on CrumplePop’s completely new plug-in, ToneGrade for Final Cut Pro X.
There are some similarities to other plug-in packages on the market, but CrumplePop’s ToneGrade comes in at a fraction of the price of their competitors, is completely stable with Final Cut Pro X and offers many advantages in its simplicity of use, the diverse footage types it can be applied to, and how much it can improve your imaging results.
While I wouldn’t quite call ToneGrade a color grading application like Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Looks or a touch up app like Digital Anarchy’s Beauty Box, I would say that ToneGrade can provide you with the tools you need to make the subtle changes to your images color tone that can smooth out the wrinkles in skin or simply make your image pop just the little bit it needs to stand out.
In a nutshell, ToneGrade uses an image processing technique which simulates the properties of high dynamic range photography, quickly allowing you to dial in the small amounts of tone mapping to your image while expanding the details in both your highlights and shadows. Unlike full color grading applications which often soften or smear fine details, I found ToneGrade to be able to grade the image of my clips while retaining or even punching up the small details stylizing it for a greater dramatic appearance.
In Final Cut Pro X, ToneGrade, once installed, can be found in your effects browser under ‘Basics’. Scroll down to the bottom of your folder and ToneGrade will be there waiting for you to apply it as you would any effect in Final Cut X. Making sure your video inspector is open and set to Video, drag ToneGrade on to your clip. You will then see a short list of ToneGrade adjustable parameters for you to use. There are not too many so as to confuse or overwhelm you, but just what you need to accomplish the task at hand. We’ve all seen some effects parameters that really don’t accomplish a whole lot for the image. However, each one of the parameters provided in Tone Grade actually can make a huge difference.
The first parameter, Depth, adjust the mid-tones and highlights. I found that, in its own way, it separates certain details from others creating just what it says, depth. At the same time it crushes shadows a bit, but you can use the depth slider or ToneGrade’s own Exposure slider to bring the blacks back up and balance out the image to your liking.
The Fine Detail slider does an excellent job on bringing up the smaller details like hair or, should you want it, the cragginess in an individual’s skin.
The Coarse Detail parameter is similar, but focuses more on the larger outline details. From my testing, this was the only parameter that should be used parsimoniously as bringing it up too much made the image look rough and somewhat cartoonish. Then again, any parameter adjustment to any plug-in should not be done to the extreme for a well graded and color corrected image.
The Shadow Depth setting further helps to avoid crushing the blacks too much maintaining details even in the darker areas of the image and worked quite nicely.
The Saturation parameter works as any saturate/desaturate tool might work.
ToneGrade can be used to simply smooth out the wrinkles and blemishes to a face as well as sharpen details. The Skin Smoothing slider does just that; it helps smooth skin appearance out without creating a cartoon effect. Use it in small amounts to maintain realism.
Both the Color Cool/Warm and Cool/Warm Intensity sliders adjust the overall tone of the image without effecting the image details. Drag the slider to the left for a cooler effect and to the right for a warmer look.
Usually I avoid using sliders as I don’t find them to be as precise as I like and wind up typing my settings in. Not sure why, but the sliders for ToneGrade were very easy to move about in Final Cut Pro X.
I found that just applying ToneGrade to a clip improved the image with its default settings. Below I applied ToneGrade to a clip of a Sand Tiger Shark on the wreck of the Spar in N. Carolina.
Third party creation of plug-ins strictly developed for Final Cut Pro X was inevitable, and CrumplePop has produced the first plug-in devised only for Final Cut Pro X.
They are to be congratulated on doing a great job of it. Some real thought and effort have obviously gone into bringing this plug-in to the Final Cut Pro X community. On another note, I am known for frequently commenting on a company’s website and its user friendliness. As I have noted before, CrumplePop has always maintained excellently produced video tutorials for any of their plug-ins. The three separate video tutorial for ToneGrade were all well done and easily accessible. CrumplePop even has a couple of other plug-ins I didn’t know existed called ‘Paul Irmiter: Dacar set for light looks, and an interesting set of ‘Noir Moderne’ dramatic lighting effects. If their quality is as good as ToneGrade, I will have to check them out myself; soon.
CrumplePop’s ToneGrade plug-in for Final Cut Pro X was provided to the reviewer free of charge for the purpose of an objective review. In no way, is the reviewer obligated to provide either a positive or negative review. It is available to purchase from CrumplePop for $75.00.
Steve Douglas is a certified Apple Pro for Final Cut Pro 7 and underwater videographer. A winner of the 1999 Pacific Coast Underwater Film Competition, 2003 IVIE competition, 2004 Los Angeles Underwater Photographic competition, and the prestigious 2005 International Beneath the Sea Film Competition, where he also won the Stan Waterman Award for Excellence in Underwater Videography and 'Diver of the Year', Steve was a safety diver on the feature film "The Deep Blue Sea", contributed footage to the Seaworld Park's Atlantis production, and productions for National Geographic and the History channels. Steve was a feature writer for Asian Diver Magazine and is one of the founding organizers of the San Diego UnderSea Film Exhibition. He is available for both private and group seminars for Final Cut Pro and leads underwater filming expeditions and African safaris with upcoming excursions to the Cocos Islands, Costa Rica, and Hawaii. Feel free to contact him if you are interested in joining Steve on any of these exciting trips.
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Comment(s):The article provides information on slave TTL solutions in general, describing technical details and ‘tricks” based on the DA2 features which are available to the public. Accuracy lacking is a bit controversial to mention because opposite to DA2’s available documentation the lack of provided D2000 information clearly could not and did not claim any accuracy in terms of D2000 / S-TTL internal operating method.
Based on the provided description I kindly doubt (in an advantageously way) a pure and steady 1:1 internal strobe copy as the D2000 in my hands has proven to feature a reliable working exposure compensation dial. It may not be required to understand the method of the compensation dial for underwater usage but I still would be happy to see an explanation due to theoretical interest as this was the item my assumption was actually focused on.
As a manufacture has taken the opportunity to share its point of view on a foreign product I would like to comment a few issues.
Basically it is recommended to mount the DA2 completely free of ambient and foreign strobe light in order to avoid any influence - similar to the D2000 (supported mounting and optical cable is mandatory). Furthermore there is an additional feature called “recorded TTL”. This feature is user settable and allows save slave TTL operation even if the DA2 is not mounted properly (I was surprised how uninfluenced operation was possible even if the mounting is very poor). External strobe output is only delayed if Recorded TTL is switched on. Therefore this feature is no drawback but a handy additional tool for worst cases where other solutions suffer from ambient influence. This makes sense as DA2 is designed to work with many different cameras/housings and many different strobes. In several cases camera’s fastest sync speed is even untouched when Recorded TTL is active (S60: 1/60s fastest TTL sync speed). But you don’t have to use it as long as the mounting is properly done.Z220 + DA2 enable focus light suppression during flash output. In spite of this feature the Z220 user manual explains how focus light (and target laser) might be recorded under certain conditions. I guess this is because the strobe does not know when the camera opens the shutter and focus light can not quench before this happens. This limitation applies to Nikonos cameras in general. As the DA2 provides standard Nikonos connection this issue shows up in the same way it does on land with my Nikonos V (see exposure series).
The Z220 can not distinguish between pre- and mainflash (basically a Nikonos strobe – no preflash) as the D2000 seems to do (and cuts of the light accordingly before or exactly when the shutter opens).
However even small amount of light being recorded at the beginning of the exposure - the suppression applies to pre- and mainflash in the same manner and does not influence exposure.
Moreover this issue is less effective underwater like the D2000 exposure deviation tendency due to the preflash focus light influence. In spite of the Z220 manual stating this issue I have never seen any focus light on my Nikonos V underwater pictures.
Furthermore DA2 incorporates a special Z220 mode (user settable as well) to take care of focus and laser light. I have to admit I’ve never tried this mode and can not confirm the usefulness. The normal mode was fine underwater.Posted by Jolly on 03/16 at 09:18 AMD2000 has shown to be extraordinarily fast and I certainly do agree that this is the best way to meet camera’s internal strobe characteristics. I think a 5 times faster discharge @full power would have been worth advertising from the beginning as I could not think of any reason to not mention this strength. On the other hand I can not confirm suspicion that exposure accuracy is decreased in case of DA2 in combination with a slower strobe (Z220, ys-60, Mini, etc.). The DA2 gain/amplify feature is user settable as well and set to no gain by default. The accurate topside results (exposure series) are not decreased underwater.
The virtual gain numbers given in the article are simplified values basically demonstrating this feature. In reality light output is not proportional to flash duration. Most of the energy is dumped in the beginning because the discharge envelope fades out to the end. This characteristic differs from strobe to strobe. This means half power would require a lot less than half of the flash duration. Even with gain factor 1 (no gain) and a slower but more powerful amphibic strobe connected to the DA2, a great amount of energy is dumped in a relatively short duration. Depending on the discharge envelope and speed a quiet powerful strobe may not dump its complete full power in certain conditions when DA2 does not apply gain. Depending on which strobes is used, it probably could emit a bit less, the same or even a bit more amount of light in the same time compared to the D2000 max light output.
In other words: Compared to the D2000 the DA2 is not an amphibic strobe but enables usage of a lot of existing strobes as slave TTL solution. In order to compare actual max power output it would be necessary to evaluate the actual connected strobe’s corresponding light output in the same amount of time instead of comparing full discharge speed only (speed only leaves out the intensity and overall guide number as it differs a lot between several strobes). This is hard to determine as many compatible strobes can be used in conjunction with the DA2. For example: ys-350 strobe might dump even more power than the D2000 within the camera internal strobe’s lightning duration (which differs a little bit between several camera models as well) as the big strobe’s intensity is higher. Of course this is not confirmed as several parameters have an influence on this: mother strobe’s lightning duration, external strobe’s intensity, discharge speed and envelope fade characteristic, etc.
Beside the technical stuff which might be of limited real world usage the article is focused on the fundamental differences and circumstances between a slave adapter combined with a preferred strobe and an integrated solution. In my opinion this is what counts when it comes down to individual needs. For example:
A friend of mine has spent a lot of money on dual ys-350 strobes in conjunction with his film SLR rig. Having the DSLR upgrade in mind he uses a compact digital camera for the time being. He was quiet happy by just adding a DA2 for 90 bucks to each strobe (he could have used just one DA2 but y-cable would have been more expensive than two DA2). Would be hard to convince him for two D2000 instead as he likes the powerful ys-350’s and is going to use them in the future with sync cord connections (DSLR).
On the other hand a digital compact camera user gets the best available handling when choosing the D2000 (+/- compensation, unlimited manual settings with every camera, etc.).
A C5060 owner might want to obtain full advantage of the camera’s hot shoe and the PT housing’s bulkhead and prefers a sync cord TTL solution (leaving out all of the mentioned optical slave TTL circumstances) and goes for a Subtronic Mini/Midi/Maxi with integrated Olympus TTL circuit and manual power settings available on the back as well.
There are a lot of solutions out there and it depends purely on the individual requirements and eventually already existing gear. I hope the article has mentioned some useful points in this respect.
Julian
Posted by Jolly on 03/16 at 09:19 AM
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