“‘One of the distinguishing features of great films is their use of colour to convey moods, atmospheres and feelings. Even a novice can tell the difference between, say, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie and any Spike Lee film simply by looking at a single frame. That’s because of how these films use colour’, explained the creators of the company LUCID Technologies.

Nevertheless, to date, achieving good colour correction in every shot is something only major productions have been able to do, as it requires devoting considerable resources to the post-production stage. 

LUCID Technologies, a UPF spin-off led by Marcelo Bertalmío, Gino Bollaert, Tobias Webster, Jordi Joaquim Recort and Bart Huisken, was founded in January this year with the aim of automating – and, thus, democratizing – this entirely manual process.

LUCID Technologies will bring computer products to the audiovisual market designed to streamline the film post-production process

The company will leverage two internationally patented technologies developed by the Image Processing for Enhanced Cinematography (IP4EC) research group, led by Bertalmío, from the UPF Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) to bring computer products to the audiovisual market that will streamline the film post-production process by enhancing films’ aesthetic appearance automatically. 

‘We decided to start the company because the technologies our group was developing were yielding better results than those available in the film industry. We realized there was a major market gap we could fill’, Bertalmío explained.

The founders of the new spin-off hail from the audiovisual sector, specifically film and digital video. This is important because their technology is targeted ‘at a very professional, very niche market; it is not yet a consumer solution’, said Jordi J. Recort, one of the co-founders. Specifically, it is for film and video colour correction.

Colour is an important part of cinematic language

‘When a professional camera captures an image, it seems “undeveloped”. This is because it maximizes quality optimization, but does not in itself provide colour. So, the image needs to be given colour, as well as a specific aesthetic’, explained Bertalmío, scientific director of the spin-off. For example, dramas tend to use predominantly dark colours, blues and contrasting colours. In contrast, children’s programmes use more vivid colours and a lot more light. ‘Colour is an important part of cinematic language’, he said.

The company’s first product will be a computer programme to help film professionals perform technical grading, an essential task in the post-production process of any film, quickly and simply. Technical grading consists of reviewing the entire recording and fixing anything that needs to be fixed to ensure that the images look natural to viewers’ eyes in terms of lighting, colour and contrast. It is a process that requires long hours of work. ‘All of this is done in the post-production stage and requires very expensive equipment operated by highly specialized professionals, so only large-budget productions can afford it’, said Bertalmío.

The LUCID Technologies software can correct colour automatically 

Additionally, because the monitoring tools used on film sets do not emulate visual perception well enough, the company aims to develop a second product that will allow film professionals to view a true representation of what the film will look like once the technical grading has been done. ‘This will allow cinematographers to control the appearance of images more quickly and accurately and materialize their ideas in films more faithfully’, said Bertalmío.

The LUCID Technologies software can correct colour automatically. Recort stressed that the company’s goal is to use technology to ‘democratize’ this technique. Additionally, the software is already adapted to the new generation of high dynamic range (HDR) screens. This technology, which has become popular in recent years, offers higher-quality images because the contrast is greater than on conventional displays, with darker blacks, brighter whites and much more vivid colours.

Recort noted that the company’s product ‘generates this natural or technical baseline’ automatically, so that people unfamiliar with this technique can achieve a basic correction for their productions. Nevertheless, he added, it is aimed at professional colourists, as automating the initial stage of the manual process ‘saves a lot of time’, freeing these professionals ‘to focus on finding the best artistic style’ for the production’s aesthetic.

These corrections are actually mathematical formulas for creating basic colour curves. To date, technology has only made it possible to create a base correction for the entire film. This correction was always the same, whether the frame was shot during the day or at night, outside or indoors. With the LUCID Technologies product, ‘the colour curve, or LUT (look up table), is generated automatically after each frame is analysed, so there is a specific adjustment for each lighting situation’.

According to the LUCID Technologies co-founder, the company’s software is thus able to ‘use the professional camera’s best options for the specific lighting of each shot’. However, Recort warned that the more artistic touch will remain something that only skilled professionals can deliver. In fact, this technology is already available to them. Professional colourists are currently trying out the software in the lead-up to its market roll-out later this year.

From basic research to knowledge transfer

Bertalmío, who is the principal investigator of the IP4EC research group in addition to the spin-off’s scientific director, devised a theory based on how the human eye captures colour and light. He was able to develop the idea thanks to a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) and two ERC Proof of Concept grants for the GAMMAVISION and VIPERCON projects.

‘UPF saw the opportunity to develop software and move from theory to practice by launching it on the market’

To develop the technologies, the company used funding obtained in the first edition of the UPF INNOValora programme, launched in 2018. This programme, co-funded by the Catalan government and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), provides support for proofs of concept linked to applied research projects at UPF. The project also received a grant from the 2019 Innovators programme, promoted by the Catalan government and co-funded by the European Union via the ERDF.

UPF has supported the start-up as part of its commitment to knowledge and technology transfer to society. It has done this through its transfer office, the Innovation Unit - UPF Business Shuttle, and the innovation management company UPF Ventures, founded and partially owned by the university itself.