By J.R. Bookwalter

There are already a veritable sea of Final Cut and After Effects filters available for tweaking the color of your video clips, so the first question going into this review is: Do we really need another one? The short answer is, yes! If you download the free trial version of PHYX Color (that’s pronounced “Fix” Color), you’ll probably find yourself fumbling for your wallet to part with another 99 bucks – and being happy you did.

The PHYX GIU.

PHYX Color is one of the latest filter sets made available for Noise Industries’ excellent FxFactory plug-in application, a collection of five professional color processors which give you amazing new tools for controlling the look of your video and even simulating classic film processes such as Bleach Bypass and Technicolor’s two-strip.

Bleach Bypass.

Technicolor 2Strip.

At first glance, you might not perceive the true value of PHYX Color – this is not a quantity-based filter set, but rather one focused more on quality. Users accustomed to getting hundreds of mostly useless filters in a $100 pack may balk at the idea of paying the same amount for only five filters. But at less than $20 per filter, they’re a bargain.

If you already have FxFactory installed, you can update to the latest 2.1.4 version and have the PHYX Color trial already available to you (or you can download it directly from the Noise Industries Web site). The plug-in requires an FxFactory installation (of course), as well as Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6 in addition to your host software. Supporting Adobe After Effects, Final Cut Studio (Final Cut Pro and Motion) and Final Cut Express, PHYX Color is comprised of five customizable filters: Bleach Bypass, Glow Dark, Selective Saturation, Shift/Suppress and Techni2Strip.

Bleach Bypass (aka ‘skip-bleach’ or ‘ENR’) is familiar to anyone who’s seen popular movies such as Saving Private Ryan and Fight Club, although the technology actually dates back to the late 1950s, where it was first developed by cameraman Miyazawa Kazuo for director Kon Ichikawa's film Her Brother. This filter emulates the process of reducing both the latitude and saturation of film and to this reviewer’s eye, it’s one of the most faithful interpretations to date.

Glow Dark.

Glow Dark diffuses the darker edges of 3D-generated imagery in an effort to make renders look more realistic, but it also serves double duty with both film and video originated media to add a unique diffusion to darker areas of an image. This filter is also ideal for dampening the “in your face” harshness of digital video.

Selective Saturation.

Selective Saturation does exactly what its name implies: You can sample any single color in your video and use the sliders to precisely control its intensity. One of the more impressive filters in this set, Selective Saturation is great for isolating or removing a color from your video clips, as well as correcting areas of your image that might be oversaturated and out of spec.

Shift/Suppress is one of the more adaptable filters in PHYX Color. Select a target color using the color picker and you’ll have powerful control over the shift or tint. Use the Suppress mode to restrain any color or Shift to alter it, and the amount of the Shift or Suppress is totally controllable. PHYX recommends using this filter to create your own color gels, and also to suppress more garish hues within your video.

Last but not least, Techni2Strip gives the user an authentic simulation of the classic Technicolor two-strip process first introduced in 1917. Technicolor System 1 Additive Color Projection went on to become popular with classic movies such as Gone With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz and Ben-Hur, and now you can have the same process on your NLE for a mere fraction of what it cost back in those days.

One of the major things in PHYX Color’s favor is the simplicity of its filter parameters, especially considering how powerful the end results are. In fact, advanced users who apply one of the PHYX Color filters might be confused at first glance, because there are so few parameters to adjust in the first place!

The most “complex” filter of the batch is Bleach Bypass, which has only five adjustable settings: Saturation, Gamma, Bleach High, Bleach Low and Bleach Lift. The remaining four filters have even less, with the Techni2Strip having only the ability to switch between “Method A” and “Method B” and a slider to adjust the Amount of each process – more plug-ins could benefit from this approach, in my opinion.

Unlike competing filter sets that overwhelm you with too many options all at once, PHYX Color doesn’t even include any built-in presets. At first I was confused as to why they chose not to include at least a few, but I quickly realized that the few simple controls offered by the filters is actually a blessing in disguise – it doesn’t take much effort to create exactly the look you want, and once you have a look you like, you can easily save and recall it again later.

I gave PHYX Color a spin using the latest Final Cut Pro 7, part of Apple’s Final Cut Studio 2009 refresh, under Mac OS X 10.6.3 and had no issues. As is the case with all of the FxFactory plug-ins, PHYX Color “just worked” – the filters loaded quickly and adjustments were made in a snap. Of course, as with most plug-ins of this type, you’ll have to do some rendering in order to play back the results, but scrolling through for a quick preview on both HD 720p and standard-definition DV media was as efficient as it gets.

Each PHYX Color filter comes with a handy Help box above the parameter adjustment pane which quickly sends you to a detailed page in your web browser demonstrating before and after shots of that particular filter, as well as detail on what each of the parameters do. Even if you start to feel overwhelmed by the possibilities, you can visit the PHYX website and watch several tutorial videos to get you started.

PHYX Incorporated are not exactly new to the digital video game. They’ve been developing visual effects tools since 2002 and have created a number of highly-acclaimed plug-ins for Apple Shake which have been widely used by such legends of the craft as Industrial Light and Magic, Peter Jackson’s WETA and even film schools such as NYU, UC Irvine and The London Film School.

If you find yourself often in need of subtle or even dramatic color changes to the look of your video, PHYX Color is $99 well spent and it will continue to reward you with its ease of use and powerful adjustments for years to come.

PHYX Color

SCORE: 

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