Adobe® After Effects® CC Visual Effects and Compositing Studio Techniques

Chapter 12. Color and Light

Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties.

—Emil Nolde

There’s more to light than physics and optics, although those are certainly essential components. The work of a compositor is akin to that of a painter or cinematographer, in that a combination of technical knowledge, interpretation, and even intuition all contribute to getting a scene “right.”

Other areas of digital production rely on elaborate models to simulate the way light works in the physical world. Like a painter, the compositor observes the play of light in the three-dimensional world in order to re-create it in two ...