Of course, here at Red Giant, we’re passionate about Magic Bullet Looks and how it adds real emotional depth to your footage. But we’re constantly amazed at how many people post side-by-side comparison shots of their original footage with a Magic Bullet Looks treated version. A quick glance at Vimeo brought these up:

Magic bullet looks from quentin.panel on Vimeo.

Looks Testing from mike mckelvey on Vimeo.

Magic Bullet (Before & After) from Sam Tuor on Vimeo.

Magic Bullet Looks Before and After from Aharon Rabinowitz on Vimeo.

OK, that one wasn’t found so much as posted by me. But I do use the software myself.

Test Magic Bullet Looks #Con-Sin filtro# from Javier Villalón Arias on Vimeo.

In the above case, the treated footage is on the left. But you probably figured that out.

Hey folks – we just picked the random winner for the Plastic Bullet International contest. The winner was @scoodog (Tom Myler) with this image:

When we let Tom know this morning, he responded: “Wow, thank you so much!!  I am so happy to have won. I love Plastic Bullet so much.”

Congratulations Tom! We love Plastic Bullet too!

FYI – We used Rowfeeder.com to capture all entries to the contest. After removing any posts that were ineligible (based on the contest rules), we used Random.org to randomly pick the winner from list of contestants.

But now on to 2nd Prize… We’ll anounce the skill-based winners later this week. We have to go through them as a team, here at RG. We’ll let you know soon. Thanks to everyone for their great submissions!

Own Trapcode plug-ins? Get the Trapcode Suite 10 Upgrade for just $399.

Special Upgrade! For the next 5 days, we are offering 20% off on the Trapcode Suite 10 Upgrade. If you own Particular 2.0 or any four Trapcode products, you can get the entire Trapcode Suite 10 for only $399. Regular price $499. Learn about Trapcode Suite 10.

Note: This offer is good for the Trapcode Suite 10 Upgrade not a purchase of the full version. This offer is good for customers who already own the Trapcode Suite 2004, Trapcode Suite 2005, Particular 2.0, or any four Trapcode products.

5 Day Sale: This 20% OFF sale runs through Sunday, November 28, 2010 at 11:59 PM PST (California). To find out when the sale ends in your time zone, visit the World Clock site.

How To Buy: Go to our store. Enter Coupon Code 11TCDSuite20 during checkout to redeem your discount on the page titled Review and Submit Your Order. (Note: The coupon code field appears after you have entered your credit card information and hit Continue.)

If you run into any issues or have questions about your eligibility, please contact our Support team.

Hey folks – our Plastic Bullet International contest is now closed. Here are our favorite entries that came in over the last few days of the contest.

Don’t forget – ANYONE who submitted an Plastic Bullet-ized image is eligible for the grand prize. So even if your image is not featured in our blog, you can win big.

Winners will be announced a few days after the Thanksgiving Holiday. Thanks so much for all of the great submissions!

Hey folks – Red Giant Text Anarchy is now CS5 compatible! Get it HERE.

Tex Anarchy works in: After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Apple Motion. Get full compatibility info HERE.

For people that already own Text Anarchy: All products purchased on or after April 12, 2010 qualify for FREE 64-bit updates (Adobe CS5 compatible) as soon as they are available. We’ll send an email out to you explain how to get your CS5 upgrade, free of charge, shortly.

Customers that purchased products prior to April 12, 2010 and choose to add 64-bit compatibility will need to pay for upgrades.

We had a lot of submissions come in for our Plastic Bullet International contest, from Friday through today, and I’m trying to catch up with them. But, for now, here are our favorite images that came in until Friday @ 11:59 PM EST:

Today is the last day to enter the contest.

I’m out for the rest of the week on a 1-2 punch of jury duty and Thanksgiving, so we will probably post the rest of our favorites next week, and then pick a winner.

Don’t forget you can use ANY CAMERA, so long as the final image is processed with Plastic Bullet. And even if you don’t have serious photography chops (or any at all) EVERYONE who enters has an equal chance at winning the grand prize. There are also prizes for the best images, but anyone has a chance at the big one.

• Get Plastic Bullet HERE.
• Enter the contest HERE.

Let’s cut to the chase: A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you’re here because, in our Plastic Bullet International contest, it may also be worth an iPad. Here are some of our favorites from day 3. These are images that came in until Thursday @ 11:59 PM EST:

Don’t forget you can use ANY CAMERA, so long as the final image is processed with Plastic Bullet. And even if you don’t have serious photography chops (or any at all) EVERYONE who enters has an equal chance at winning the grand prize. There are also prizes for the best images, but anyone has a chance at the big one.

Get Plastic Bullet HERE.

Enter the contest HERE.

Red Giant QuickTip #23: Using Grinder and Automator Together

In this tutorial, Apple Certified Master Trainer Simon Walker shows you how to use Apple’s free tool, Automator, to quickly prepare clips for Magic Bullet Grinder, so that they can be easily worked with in Final Cut Pro.

Related Links:

• Buy  Magic Bullet Grinder
  
• Guru Preset Pack: Simon Walker’s Weddings and Events for Looks
• Simon Walker’s Offical Website

OK. Now we’re talking. Our Plastic Bullet International contest is really starting to heat up. We’re getting a lot of evocative pieces as well as some cool looking vintage, scenic, and family stuff – not to mention your pets (Who’s a good boy?! It’s you! Yeah! It’s you! Your going to win me an iPad!).

Here are some of our favorites from day 2. These are images that came in until Wednesday @ 11:59 PM EST.

Great stuff! Keep the entries coming!  Don’t forget you can use ANY CAMERA, so long as the final image is processed with Plastic Bullet.

Get Plastic Bullet HERE.

Enter the contest HERE.

LIVE [NIKE] from SomeofmyWork™ on Vimeo.

After seeing this project by Jim Campbell’s that used Colorista II and Mojo, we asked him to tell us more about how he made this beautiful piece. This was his response:

“Since I was shooting with the anamorphic adapter for the more cinematic ratio alongside my intention to get a further cinematic feel to the project by doing the film reel/light leak effects, the grade was always going to be important. I shot the footage flat on the 550D so that I could get as much latitude as possible out of the footage once grading. The problem was since the shoe was silver, it appeared such different colours in different settings and since I was pushing my grade heavily towards warmer tones, I didn’t want the true colour of the shoe to be lost in a yellow mush. So I used the Secondary keyer on ever single shot, to isolate the shoe, push it towards the blue, so that on balance it retained a medium tone, also adding a bit of separate ‘Pop’ to make sure the shoes always stood out within the frame. I then also used other instances of Colorista 2 to add a general amount of ‘Pop’ across the frame, add vignettes, using masks to pull back cloud information blown out skies and similarly to tone down blown highlights on the shoes themselves. The secondary keyer really is so useful I kinda wish we had it on every level, but it’s easy enough to just add further instances whenever needed.

I then added a subtle amount of Mojo to each clip, using the warm slider and the mojo balance to get the warmer feel I was after, safe in the knowledge the prep I’d done on the shoes wouldn’t turn the whole thing too warm/yellow.

Then again once I’d edited all the shots together I added a bit more Mojo just to get the final look I was looking for.

Other Red Giant tools I used included SoundKeys which I used along with a lot of keyframing to control some of the lightleaks etc along with the music. I would have used Looks for the grain and hairs, but had my own prepared files that I use for these things.”

Dude – that was awesome. Jim was kind enough to send us the footage pre-grading so you could compare it to the final color corrected version:

You can read more about this project on Jim’s site.