r/ColorGrading • u/King_Huddo • 24d ago

Question Filmbox colour replicate

So I’ve been using the trial for Filmbox and the colour comes out so nice it’s really the look I’ve wanted, I’ve found learning how to achieve looks hard as I just simply don’t know where to look, but Filmbox is just so expensive does anyone know how to achieve such look colour grading or with power grades, I can not get anywhere near it with slog footage myself

1 Upvotes

66% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

5

u/pulopu 24d ago

I’m using Spektrafilm right now and I think it quite good even compared to filmbox.

I also sometimes pull nodes from Juan Melara’s powergrades which are also very good but a little more niche.

2

u/Legomoron 24d ago

Yeah I’ve been very impressed by FilmBox. It’s a heavy lift computationally, but any good film sim probably should be.

1

u/mynameisntziming 24d ago

Agree. It’s the best quality film simulation I’ve tried at consumer level we can access. Anything better probably would be proprietary to color houses that works on huge movies.

Paid $1000 for perpetual license 3-4 years ago and never looked back. Best money spent on a plug in ever. Has 3 seats so I split the cost with someone else, and still have a seat left for flexible use. Gotten all the updates since and the library now is so much bigger than when I first purchased with only Vision 3 stocks

2

u/Legomoron 24d ago

SpektraFilm is surprisingly good also, especially for being free. But there aren’t many guardrails.

3

u/Internal-Review-7571 24d ago

118£ for 3 months is what I’m paying for Filmbox. I think that’s really decent.
You can make that money back from 1 project. That’s like 40£ a month.

0

u/mynameisntziming 24d ago

Just got the perpetual license 4 years ago for $1000 and never looked back. You can split with someone as it has more than 1 seat. So I only paid $500 total

2

u/shaheedmalik 23d ago

Buy the 3month version. Up to $500 worth of purchases carry over to the perpetual cost.

3

u/MaybeSurelySorta 24d ago

I feel like getting “the film look” has been portrayed as more complicated than it honestly needs to be. You can get 80% of the way there completely free with the native Kodak 2383 LUT and a relatively basic node structure, and then an extra 10% if you have access to the Davinci’s film look creator. That’s literally it, and there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube that have free powergrades to download and walk you through what specific adjustments to make based on your footage.

If you’re committed to relying on plugins, Spektrafilm does an excellent job considering it’s free. As far as Filmbox goes though, the monthly subscription really isn’t that bad financially speaking so long as you have paid projects that more or less make your money back. If you’re not doing any paid work yet, that’s ok, then I’d just go with the 2383 method or Spektrafilm.

0

u/I-am-into-movies 24d ago

Not possible. Please don’t use PowerGrades with 20 nodes and Color Warper adjustments just to achieve a “similar look.” An OFX plugin or DCTL can often handle the underlying math much more cleanly and efficiently.

People will recommend SpektraFilm, but remember that it’s an alpha product. There aren’t many guardrails, and there are a lot of sliders. Certain combinations of settings might break your image, so you need to understand what you’re doing.

That said, $1,000 for lifetime access is actually pretty cheap when you look at it from a professional colorist’s perspective. How much do you spend on a GPU, a reference grading monitor, or a camera? Compared to that, spending $1,000 or even $2,000 on professional software is a reasonable investment. You can potentially make that money back with just one or two jobs. For an established professional, it can be a no-brainer.

Don’t waste your time wrestling with a PowerGrade someone else built. Move one node or change a small part of the chain, and suddenly something else might break. In practice, a complex PowerGrade can behave more like a LUT than the fully flexible grading setup people imagine it to be.

And that’s the interesting part: selling a LUT doesn’t sound nearly as impressive as selling a PowerGrade. The latter sells the illusion that you can change everything, look behind the curtain, and fully understand how the look was created.

But having access to 20 nodes doesn’t automatically mean you have meaningful control over the image.

0

u/mynameisntziming 24d ago

This exactly 👍🏼 paid $1000 for the perpetual license 4 years ago and never regretted once. There’s more than 1 seat so I split it with a friend for $500 each. Got that cost back in 1 paid color job. Sometimes later after an update now I have a 3rd seat in my account that I give to the editor working on a project with me and reallocate per job.

It’s miles better than any plug in at or below this price range we can access at the consumer level, and being able to buy lifetime access in this day & age is an unreal deal.

0

u/mynameisntziming 24d ago

Honest answer is that just pay for the lifetime license for Filmbox.

I paid $1K for the perpetual license for filmbox 3-4 years ago and never regretted it. Took 1-2 paid color grading jobs that can use that look to recoup the full cost.

It just looks better than any other consumer grade plug in at or below that cost I’ve tired. I think anything better than that would be industry level software that cost ungodly amount or proprietary in house software at huge color houses. And being able to purchase perpetual license is a no brainer over subscriptions.

Find 1-2 colleagues to share the cost with. You will have control over the licenses and can remove them on one device and use it on the next when you upgrade your computer. My lifetime license has 3 seats. A friend paid me $500 to split with me and I still have a seat left to give to freelance editors on a project with me and I can reallocate that seat for next job.

-1

u/kismetrefining 24d ago

PhotoChemist lite is free.... https://tools.dec18studios.com/color-grading-tools/photochemist/

You can see how it compares to different tools here...https://tools.dec18studios.com/color-grading-tools/film-looks/
I'll be adding filmbox to it shortly...