Tuesday, April 1st, 2014 Posted by Jim Thacker

Red Giant Software unveils Magic Bullet Looks 2.5


Red Giant Software’s Color Suite: a bundle of tools including Magic Bullet Looks. The developer has announced a free 2.5 upgrade to Looks, building on the same GPU-acceleration system as its new Universe platform.

Red Giant Software has announced Magic Bullet Looks 2.5, an upcoming free upgrade to its colour-grading toolset for After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Vegas Pro, Motion, Media Composer and Photoshop.

The update uses the same GPU-acceleration system as Red Giant’s new Universe plugin library, with the developer quoting speed boosts of “up to 95% on Windows and more than 25% on Mac”.

Aside from raw performance, there is a new keyframable overall strength slider for overall Looks; a new S-Curve tool for adjusting contrast; and support for LUTs in .cube format.

Pricing and availability
Magic Bullet Looks is available for Windows XP SP1 and Mac OS X 10.6 and above, price $399. You can see a compatibility table for its host applications on the Red Giant website. Looks 2.5 will ship later this year.

PRESS RELEASE (Excerpts)
Today, Red Giant announced Magic Bullet Looks 2.5, an upcoming free update for current users of Looks and the Red Giant Color Suite. The free update includes new color correction tools, better previewing of presets, and a major bump in speed.

Rather than continuing to build Looks on old code, the developers chose to spend the last year rebuilding it entirely from scratch – preserving the hugely popular Magic Bullet Looks experience while giving it new life and a bright future.

“A few weeks ago, we announced an entirely new development platform and effects library called Universe,” said Red Giant co-founder Andrew Little. “That technology allows us to quickly create new effects and update existing ones quickly. Magic Bullet Looks has been rebuilt on the same flexible, GPU-enhanced technology, and it opens the door for us to do a lot more with Looks and other existing products in the future.”

In the meantime, you don’t have to wait to get new features out of Magic Bullet Looks. The free update includes the following enhancements:

  • Speed increases of up to 95% on Windows® and more than 25% on Mac®.
  • Improved Looks Previewing: allows users to hover over Looks to preview the results.
  • Strength Slider: control the overall strength of your entire Look with an easy-to-use, key-framable slider.
  • LUT Tool: allows users to import .cube LUTs as well as 12 new LUT presets.
  • S-Curve Tool: makes it easy to add contrast without losing detail.
  • Better Custom Looks Management: makes it easier to share your Looks with other editors.

Pricing & Availability
Magic Bullet Looks 2.5 will be available in Q2 as a free upgrade for current users of Magic Bullet Looks 2.

Read more about the new features in Magic Bullet Looks 2.5