On the heels of yesterday’s “handy” little Color Corrector shortcut, we’ll discuss another, rather obscure but potentially great color corrector shortcut that really isn’t very handy at all. And by that, I mean it’s a rare shortcut that really isn’t designed to be used with your hands!
Here’s the deal: some people who are doing heavy-duty color work with FCP (to the extent that you can do heavy-duty color work in FCP) like to use a USB trackball to adjust the balance indicators on the 3-way color Corrector’s color wheels. Kind of making it into a poor man’s Da Vinci, so to speak. Thing is, in order to switch between the three color wheels, you have to hit the Tab key–after all, with this set-up, you only have one ball, not three (one for each wheel). Well, there is a set of three shortcuts that, if you program them into three buttons on your trackball, will enable you to easily switch wheels with your trackball hand:
CTRL OPT 8 activates Wheel 1 (the darks), CTRL OPT 9 activates the second wheel (mids) and CTRL OPT 0 activates wheel 3 (the “whites”). Clearly, with a 3-key combo, this is not “handy” for the hand (and frankly, meaningless if you’re not using a trackball), but it is perfect for mapping to the trackball buttons, no? I salute the FCP developers on their thinking here! No need to memorize these ungainly beasts–just map ‘em in.
So if you have an old trackball laying around and want to get some additional mileage out of it while having some fun with the 3-way Color Corrector, this might be something to try.
And Now for A Not So “Handy” Color Corrector Shortcut
On the heels of yesterday’s “handy” little Color Corrector shortcut, we’ll discuss another, rather obscure but potentially great color corrector shortcut that really isn’t very handy at all. And by that, I mean it’s a rare shortcut that really isn’t designed to be used with your hands!
Here’s the deal: some people who are doing heavy-duty color work with FCP (to the extent that you can do heavy-duty color work in FCP) like to use a USB trackball to adjust the balance indicators on the 3-way color Corrector’s color wheels. Kind of making it into a poor man’s Da Vinci, so to speak. Thing is, in order to switch between the three color wheels, you have to hit the Tab key–after all, with this set-up, you only have one ball, not three (one for each wheel). Well, there is a set of three shortcuts that, if you program them into three buttons on your trackball, will enable you to easily switch wheels with your trackball hand:
CTRL OPT 8 activates Wheel 1 (the darks), CTRL OPT 9 activates the second wheel (mids) and CTRL OPT 0 activates wheel 3 (the “whites”). Clearly, with a 3-key combo, this is not “handy” for the hand (and frankly, meaningless if you’re not using a trackball), but it is perfect for mapping to the trackball buttons, no? I salute the FCP developers on their thinking here! No need to memorize these ungainly beasts–just map ‘em in.
So if you have an old trackball laying around and want to get some additional mileage out of it while having some fun with the 3-way Color Corrector, this might be something to try.