POLL: How many PB scenes owned you actually have downloaded?

[Sir Noel]

I run probably 75% of scenes through Adobe Premiere to colour correct...

I'm intrigued by this. Have you maybe posted more details or examples of the benefits somewhere previously? I can totally see the greater value of local backups with all the extra work you're putting in.

I haven't but maybe I will (I am away from home atm).
The Lumetri Scopes system in Premiere is great for correcting for whites, skin tones, adjusting the dynamic range and the saturation.
The main LP studios tend not to be too bad. GG and Gonzo tend to over expose the scenes which washes them out but other than Giorgios blue set they are usually well balanced. Normally it is just a case of minor tweaking.
Some all time classic scenes are poor though. A couple of Angel Smalls Giorgio scenes spring to mind (blue cast and poorly exposed) along with a very intense scene Chris Diamond shot with Scarlet Domingo which looks absolute crap (washed out and grey and poor colours) without correcting.
Tushy, on the other hand, are absolutely awful. Some of their scenes have awful colour casts, or are so under exposed they can make a sunny day look like an overcast winters afternoon. Premiere can make some of those scenes look SO much better.Pornworld scenes are over saturated 100% of the time and wash out detail as a result; 21 Sextury frequently nowadays have a blue cast ..... soon as you remove it the skin tones pop to life.

When I get the chance I will post some examples, before and after, on this thread.

[Ultra-Gape]

GG and Gonzo tend to over expose the scenes which washes them out...

I feel the same, despite them often seemingly being presented as apparent examples of always great video quality. From a quick Google it looks like the software you use may be relatively expensive but it's still interesting if you're able to routines improve the visual quality of scenes. If you do get chance to share some examples some time they'll be interesting to see.

[Ultra-Gape]

GG and Gonzo tend to over expose the scenes which washes them out...

I feel the same, despite them often seemingly being presented as apparent examples of always great video quality. From a quick Google it looks like the software you use may be relatively expensive but it's still interesting if you're able to routines improve the visual quality of scenes. If you do get chance to share some examples some time they'll be interesting to see.

[Sir Noel]

GG and Gonzo tend to over expose the scenes which washes them out...

I feel the same, despite them often seemingly being presented as apparent examples of always great video quality. From a quick Google it looks like the software you use may be relatively expensive but it's still interesting if you're able to routines improve the visual quality of scenes. If you do get chance to share some examples some time they'll be interesting to see.

Will do.
The software is expensive and an ongoing monthly expense, not least if this was your only reason to own it! What usbgreat about it though, is that it not only allows you to correct a scene but the scopes give a visual representation of what is right or wrong with a scene. You may feel skin tones are shifted to magenta (as they almost always are with Pornworld scenes) but with this you can quickly focus on a bit of skin and see exactly how far they are and what correction is required.
It is a pretty satisfying process when you feel like, at the end of it, you are one of perhaps a handful of people in the world who have the scene looking like it actually should!

[Sir Noel]

GG and Gonzo tend to over expose the scenes which washes them out...

If you do get chance to share some examples some time they'll be interesting to see.

Ok, so here are some examples. I had to re-download a couple of originals for the comparison shots but I wanted to show you a few very poorly shot or corrected scenes to show what is possible and what isn't (or at least is beyond my level). Tushy tends to be a perennial offender so three examples are from there. Gonzo and GG tend to be simple corrections as the colour balance is usually pretty good but they are over-exposed and washed out. You tend to find as you correct the exposure the saturation increases so for these scenes that often rectifies itself.
Anyway, the examples:


So this Tushy scene was well shot but with just a blue colour cast and a little bit dark given the implied sunny indoor location. The photoset often provides a good reference point as these tend to be way better lit than the video.

So this next scene was a bitch to correct. No correction made for the blue set they were filming on and so the entire scene is absolutely miles out colour wise and it looks incredibly flat (grey - all the information in the midtones). The result shows the limitation of what you can do. It looks way better than the original but with such poorly lit source material it inevitably still looks a bit flat and, short of correcting the background and the girls separately (sometimes easy to isolate in Premiere, sometimes not) and going shot by shot, getting whites and skintones back to looking anywhere near neutral is a compromise

One of my favourite early Tushy scenes but also one of the worst shot scenes they have ever made. It is SO dark I have no idea wtf was going on. When correcting scenes like this I have noticed the skin tones take on a sort of burnt quality that is hard to totally resolve. This correction took a lot more work and attempts than you would probably realise to get the best result. It certainly wasn't a case of just making it brighter!

For me a Gonzo classic here and another scene that I took a few attempts at. A strong magenta tint (which affects the skin) and the entire scene squashed up so the blacks start in the midtones.

Lastly a typical PornWorld scene. To be fair, most PW scenes are well balanced but just over saturated. This is typical of the PW scenes that are not. Because their scenes are so well lit scenes like this with a red colour cast push the red component of the whites off the scale. This scene needed correcting the colour temp towards the blue, the tint towards the green, dropping the midtones a bit and then actually adding a bit of saturation (odd for a PW scene). It does show what can be done with well shot source material though.

PS: of course how you view these examples will depend on your monitor. I have a properly colour corrected BenQ monitor I use to visually check the scene (Premiere gives you a series of scopes to remove the vagaries of your eyes and monitor) but if I flick across to my second monitor (a quality Acer monitor but not as colour accurate) every scene looks redder, so you may view some of these pics a bit differently to how you would on a neutral display

[Ultra-Gape]

PS: of course how you view these examples will depend on your monitor.

A very valid point but just viewing your examples on my uncalibrated laptop screen I'd still have to say you've made notable improvements in all examples. Thanks for taking the time to share.

I guess one question that arises is why studios themselves don't look to make this sort of post-processing improvement. I guess they think it's not worth the trouble but I wonder if they're underestimating this. Some of the recent vibrant outdoor shots on Natasha Teen scenes were certainly commented on by a few.

[Sir Noel]

Yeh, I am not really sure. The best studio we have had on LP for this was American Anal who almost always gave wonderfully lit and balanced scenes with vibrant colours and dynamic, but not overdone, lighting.

The frustrating thing is that it is harder to correct after a scene is edited. Case in point is the Gonzo Xmas orgies where the two cameras are typically not matched so you can clearly see the colour balance shift as the filming goes from one camera to another. Obviously, what is a simple job prior to editing it ten tines the work after as you have to go through the entire scene trying to locate each and every switch between the cameras (very satisfying once you get them both looking the same though).
I really don't know why studios are so bad at this. Especially in artificially lit sets there is no excuse for not white balancing prior to filming and it is baffling why they don't spend ten minutes during editing just to correct any imperfections. I suppose it is the same reason many studios (not LP, fortunately) produce 4k videos that look like they were shot with a potato and with woefully inadequate bitrate files: they just know most consumers just want to see that "4k" sticker and look no further.
What is odder to me is how do so many viewers not see an amazing looking photoset and then see a video that bares little to no resemblance and not complain a bit more?