The Trouble with (Apple's) Color

I am a big fan of Apple's Final Cut Pro video editing application. I have used FCP since its first version that I bought installed on a close-out G4 that I bought in 1998. Since then I have bought two other updated versions and a third for work. Since version 5 FCP has come bundled into a "Production Suite". The suite includes FCP, Compressor, Soundtrack, Live Type and Motion.

With FCP version 6 there came a new potentially ground-breaking application bundled with the suite- Color. It is a stand alone color corrector that is touted to rival expensive Black Magic's Da Vinci. This application could possibly revolutionize the way film and high-end video were produced and color corrected.

Problem is... it isn't all that good. Color's UI is still unfamiliar to me after 2 years. It bears no resemblance to other applications with the FCP suite. Navagating it is more like using Shake than FCP. The cool things that Apple has done with other apps within the suite have no relevance to Color.

One thing that really kills me is the lack of an eye dropper color picker to select a point of color for white balance. FCP has one in its Color Corrector filter... why did they not think it was important for Color? Another gripe is the lack of sliders anywhere. Motion, Soundtrack, FCP all make use of sliders. Color uses a scrollable positive numeral that is accurate to six positions after the decimal point. This is probably a hold over from the professional color-grading application that it originated from.

Overall I like the concept of a stand-alone application to tweek/finesse color other than the built in Color Corrector of FCP but Color falls short. I hope in the latest version it is rebuilt to be better than the original.