ASSIMILATE today announced version 6 of SCRATCH for Mac and Windows, as well as SCRATCH Lab, a lower priced toolset aimed at rapid on-set and dailies work. Both will ship “during Q2” this year.

SCRATCH 6 includes many updates, the biggest of which is availability for the Mac. Long among the most highly regarded color correction tools, the software has until this point been Windows-only, and moving to the Apple platform at the dramatically lower price of $17,995 represents a leap forward in accessibility to a much broader pool of color correction artists.

From the press release, SCRATCH’s new compositing, color grading and paint features include :

• Advanced tracking and keying. SCRATCH Color delivers greater control over your grades than every before. New, state-of-the art tracking technology combines the accuracy of a point tracker with the ease of use of a shape tracker. Meanwhile, multiple keyers with fine controls, offer artists unlimited creative options to tackle the most sophisticated grades.
• Vector paint tools – for non-destructive painting. Paint set-ups can be saved and re-applied on different images, enabling versioning.
• Support for Avid’s new Artist Color, and Tangent Wave and CP 200 control panels with 150 map-able functions for auxiliary control surfaces.

SCRATCH’s enhanced 3D Stereo features include :

• Autobalance – to balance the grade of one eye to the other
• Bicubic controls – high-accuracy controls for fixing lens differences and distortions, to assist in making left and right eyes identical

SCRATCH’s extended input/output formats include :

• Multilayer timeline support – automatically reproduces multilayer timelines from EDLs, saving huge amounts of time
• Widest range of input formats including 5K RED Epic, ARRIRAW, Phantom, SI-2K, Panasonic & DSLR camera formats, output to DPX, MXF, DNxHD, TIFF
• AAF and FCPXML import – allowing multi-track timelines to be exported and rebuilt, with metadata-rich descriptors (such as Rec in/out, layer, reel ID, Source in/out, transition parameters, flip/flops and DVE moves)

SCRATCH Lab is a completely separate product, also cross-platform, priced at $4,995, the lowest price yet for an ASSIMILATE offering in this space. It’s toolset and functionality includes:

• Broad range of input/output formats for 2D/3D stereo (native REDCODE RAW.R3D, ARRI RAW, Phantom, Panasonic P2, DSLRs, plus MXF, AVCHD, DPX, MXF and QT ProRes)
• Real-time playback at up to 5K and beyond
• Audio synch
• Unlimited, non-destructive versioning
• Fast, accurate and flexible conform with Dual-View, Half-Mix and Side-by-Side comparisons, plus Quick Keys for moving through timelines and Edit tools for shot manipulation
• Sophisticated, interactive color grading tools
• Support for Avid Artist Series and Tangent Wave and CP 200 panels
• Powerful, integrated 3D stereo tools
• Automated deliverable templates to simultaneous outputs based on format, metatdata, and LUTs/grades

How exactly will these changes play out in the post-production colorist space?