New to this version of Colorista are three levels of color correction, Primary, Secondary, and Master, which act in a similar manner to the "rooms" that you'll find in Apple's Color, and allow you much more detailed control way beyond what was found in Colorista I (which incidentally is also included with this release, as Colorista II is not backwards compatible). In many ways, Colorista II is so much of an upgrade that it's practically a whole new program.
Also new to this version is a very powerful keyer, that will allow you to completely replace any one specific color in your video, and some extremely easy to use Hue, Saturation, and Lightness wheels.
Despite the complex color correcton Colorista II is capable of, the layout is actually very simple, and easy to pick up on quickly. Within each level, Primary, Secondary and Master, you're given 3 color correction wheels for shadows, midtones, and highlights. You can also adjust these values numerically for some pretty specific fine tuning.
You also have the Master levels, which you can adjust using familiar RGB curves, which actually are adjusted using sliders as opposed to moving points on the curves themselves. In addition, feel free to play with the "pop" slider, which could easily be renamed the "awesome" slider, to help give your overall image more of a visual punch.
You won't be overwhelmed by 80 different sliders and wheels, but everything you'll need is here, and is streamlined for simplicity.
Like some of Magic Bullet's other filters such as Looks or Misfire (which I find myself going to a lot), the quality is top notch, and easily trumps any similar plug-ins I've seen from other developers.
The natural downside to the high quality, as with Magic Bullet's other products, Colorista results in long render times and choppy real-time playback. While I was hoping that running Colorista on CS5, where I could make use of the 64 bit processing and additional RAM would give me more instantaneous results, any real improvement in speed was negligible.
Maybe I'm being unreasonable with this desire. No other color correction tool of this caliber will afford you this luxury either, and any color correction software I'm aware of that allows you to do secondary color correction, forces you outside of your editing program to do it, such as Apple's Color or Synthetic Aperature Color Finesse, so ultimately you'll end up wasting more time with all of the "back and forth" between programs.
$299 for just one color-correction filter may seem a bit steep if you find yourself generally able to get by with what's included in your software, but at $99 for the upgrade it's well worth it for previous users. Like I said before, the differences between this and Colorista I are monumental.
Furthermore, if you're in the business of high-end finishing, and either don't have access to Apple's Color, or are simply sick of bouncing back and forth between it and FCP, then Colorista II is a must.
In addition, you may find it really worthwile to purchase this as part of the Magic Bullet Suite, which at $799 for the full version, not only includes Colorista, but the equally great Looks plug-in, as well as Denoiser, Frames, Grinder, Instant HD, & more, all in all, an extremely worthwhile set of great looking plug-ins that may be more appealing as a bundle, since you'll be saving a lot more of your hard earned cash this way.
High end finishing and color correction is now easy and affordable thanks to Colorista II. For CS5 owners this is a great and affordable buy, and Final Cut owners should be glad to say goodbye to Color in favor of having all the same capabilities, with a much more user friendly interface, right within their effects window.
Magic Bullet Colorista II is the latest color correction plug-in from Red Giant software for Adobe Premiere, After Effects and Final Cut Pro, and is designed to let you perform advanced color correction on your project without going through an outside program, such as Apple's Color, for example. For the purposes of this review, I was using Colorista II on Premiere Pro and After Effects CS5. It is also compatible with Final Cut Pro (and PP/AE CS3/4), but not yet available for Vegas, Motion, or Avid.
