

The main reason I enjoy using these presets is that it allows me to make meaningful changes to my footage while saving me the time necessary to create one myself.

With Looks applied and some customization.Īs before, you can still apply any preset and tweak it to your hearts content but I find that I normally just make slight adjustments to account for differences in exposure, but don’t spend too much time trying to design my own look. I was able to take some GoPro footage and really make it shine in a way I’m not sure I could have done manually. In the past I felt a lot of the presets where on the extreme side, but these seem so much more subtle and useful and in some cases downright beautiful. The presets seem more thought out to me and are much easier and faster to preview. They seem to borrow some of the ideas of the FCPx interface (a good thing) and make great use of the screen size available by only showing what you need at the time you need it, and making it easy to hide the things you don’t need (and give more space of other panels). The interface has a much simpler and cleaner look and somehow seems easier to make sense of. In fact, the entire interface for Looks has received an overhaul and it so much nicer to use now. But I was pleasantly surprised to see this issue was finally addressed. It was VERY frustrating, not at all intuitive to new users and fraught with frustrating “features” (like the side panel that would disappear if you moved your mouse just a bit to far to the right). I still remember the first job I used it on and the producer just going nuts over the “look I created”, when in truth it was just a drag-and-drop preset from the package (but I didn’t think it was right for me to correct him – he still thinks I’m amazing).īut through all the version of the looks package, the one thing that always made me crazy was the interface. It allowed me to take just average corporate footage and with very little time make it look more stylized. I first discovered the suite when it was just Magic Bullet Looks, and fell in love with it right away.

The suite is very rich in what it offers and I can’t cover every detail of every plug-in in the package, but I will share my experiences on some of my favorite parts of the suite. The comments that follow apply to any host application that you choose to use them in, not just FCPx or Premiere.
Red giant magic bullet suite review pro#
I’ve been using it extensively for years, but recently upgraded to the version 12 suite and have been testing it on both FCPx and Premiere Pro CC/After Effects and wanted to share my impressions of it. It’s a collect of plug-ins designed to make it fast and easy to bring the best out of your footage. So in that light, what follows is my review of Red Giants Magic Looks Suite 12.
Red giant magic bullet suite review free#
It can also free up time to focus on other parts of the project that really could benefit from your talents. I’ve also come to think that it often makes great sense to use these tools to your advantage – because in the end what I really want is the best product possible. What I have found over the years is it’s not a either/or situation. I never wanted to fall into that.īut what I have learned is that even if I can make something myself, what’s the point if I can do something more efficiently and in the end have a better product for the client? Is it more important to turn out a good product, or have my ego hold me back from creating better work just because I wanted to do it all myself? I’ve see editors try to find a reason to use a cool effect they like even though it doesn’t really fit the mood of their story or project. It’s easy to get lost in all of the “cool things” that you can do with plug-ins and sometimes lose sight of the story you’re trying to tell. I looked down on using templates or prebuilt backgrounds because in my opinion I was good enough to make all of that from scratch and didn’t want to feel like I was leaning on the creativity of others. There was a period of time in my career that I wanted to create everything myself. When you edit 40–50 hours a week on a regular basis you really hone your craft and over time find a balance between getting the job done on time and making it look as great as possible. For over 20 years I’ve been making my living off of the profession of editing video.
