The hallmark of Red Giant’s Magic Bullet software products are that they are designed to enhance or stylize images. As their banner states, they focus on “color correction, finishing and film looks for filmmakers.” You can purchase individual software products or a comprehensive suite of tools. I reviewed Magic Bullet Suite 12 a couple a years ago. A few months ago Red Giant released its Magic Bullet Suite 13 update. As in the past, you can purchase it outright or as an upgrade from a previous version. With each iteration of the suite, Red Giant shuffles the mix of products in the toolkit and this version is no different.
Magic Bullet Suite 13 is comprised of seven plug-in products, which include Looks 4.0, Colorista IV, Denoiser III, Cosmo II, Mojo II, Film, and the newly added Renoiser. The tools are cross-platform compatible (macOS or Windows), but depending on the editing or compositing software you use, not all of these plug-ins work in every possible host. All of the tools will work in Adobe Premiere Pro or After Effects, as well as Apple Final Cut Pro X. Magic Bullet Looks 4.0 provides the broadest host support, including some less common choices. Looks supports After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Motion, Magix Vegas Pro, Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve, EDIUS, and HitFilm Pro. Colorista only supports the Adobe and Apple hosts, while the other tools support the bulk of possible choices, with the exception Media Composer. Therefore, what you cut or composite with will determine what your best purchase will be – full suite or individual plug-ins.
New bells and whistles
The big selling point of this release is GPU acceleration across the board using OpenGL/OpenCL. This provides real-time color correction. There are plenty of refinements throughout, but if you are an Adobe user, you’ll note that Colorista IV has embraced Adobe’s panel technology. If you are comfortable with Premiere Pro’s Lumetri Color panel, you can now instead work with Colorista, in this exact same manner. I’ve dabbled a bit with all of these tools in various Avid, Apple, and Adobe hosts. While performance is good and certainly improved, you’ll have the best experience in Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro. Another advantage you’ll have is Adobe’s built-in masking and tracking tools. Want to isolate someone’s face and track a Colorista correction to it during a moving shot? No problem, since the Adobe’s features augment any installed plug-in. As an editor, I like to do most of my work within the NLE, but honestly, if you want the best total experience, use these tools in After Effects. That’s where everything shines.
Looks
I won’t dive into each specific feature, since you can download a free trail version and see for yourself. Plus, you can reread my Magic Bullet Suite 12 review, as many of the main features are similar. But let me note a few items, starting with Looks. This is the grandaddy plug-in of the group, which actually runs as a mini sidebar application. Apply the plug-in, click the “edit” button, and your reference frame opens in the standalone Looks interface. It includes a wealth of tools that can be applied, reordered, and adjusted in near-infinite variations to get just the specific look you desire. There are three helpful features – grading head starts, the ability to save custom presets, and a looks browser. The browser offers a ton of custom presets with a small thumbnail for each. These are updated with the reference frame and as you hover over each, the main viewer window is updated to display that look, thanks to GPU acceleration. If you want to start from scratch, but not sure what the best tools are to use, that’s where the head starts come in. This section includes six starting points that include a series of correction tools in a preset order, but without any tweaks yet applied.
Colorista IV
Colorista IV is another tools that’s received a lot of attention in this build. I’ve already mentioned the panel, but something really unique is the built-in Guided Color Correction routine. This is designed to guide novice and even experienced editors and compositors through series of color correction steps in the right order. Colorista also gained temperature and tint controls, RGB point curves, log support, and LUTs. The addition of integrated LUTs fills a gap, because Red Giant’s separate LUT Buddy tool has been dropped from Suite 13.
Renoiser
The other tools have also gained added features, but let’s not forget the new Magic Bullet Renoiser 1.0. This is designed to give cinematic texture and grain to pristine video and CGI footage. It includes 16 stock presets ranging from 8mm to 35mm. These are labeled based on certain fanciful styles, like “Kung Fu Fighting” or “Classic 35mm”. Renoiser’s settings are completely customizable.
There’s a lot to like in this upgrade, but first and foremost for me was the overall zippier operation, thanks to GPU acceleration. If you use these tools a lot in your daily editing and compositing, then Magic Bullet Suite 13 will definitely be worth the update.
©2017 Oliver Peters
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