This is some of that magic that blows your mind. We especially love the Shadows/Highlight tool as it works very similarly to Adobe Lightroom’s adjustment tools. All the awesome original tools are still there, but newly added to the set are nine tools including Color Space, Colorista, Film Negative/Print, 4-way color, Mojo, DuoTone, Lens Vignette and Shadows/Highlights. Red Giant Software has expanded Looks to now have 198 Look presets and 44 tools to correct and grade your footage. You don’t have to know how it works, it just does. In many ways, the “magic” in this suite of plug-ins happens behind the scenes. In most every case, when applying an effect from this suite, the render was nearly instantaneous. Well now I can use these tools freely, knowing that the software is taking full advantage of the incredible power of the AMD GPUs in our MacPro, or whatever open-GL video card you might have. One of my biggest beefs with earlier versions of Magic Bullet Looks was the rendering speed. The headliner in this show is the venerable Looks now in version three. There’s much more to talk about than I have space for, but let me give you a bit of insight into each one. Seven tools, some updated and some completely new, that re-set the standard for video image manipulation. Now, we have Magic Bullet Suite 12, which in my eyes is an absolute game changer. The bundling of other complementary tools into the Magic Bullet Suite of plug-ins just added to that must-have product for any serious editor.

When I saw Magic Bullet looks for the first time in early 2008, I knew it would change the landscape of video image processing, and it did that in spades. As a video editor for the last three decades, I’ve certainly seen my fair share of plug-ins for color correction and grading.

Red giant magic bullet film