Website Tips Blog Posts & Teasers

Talking with a friend the other day and he said "I am surprised you know this stuff!" Referring to my 'color' assesment of his paint splatter pattern. My friend specializes in automotive paint specification applications (i.e. a paint salesman).

"You see," I said "paint mixing and color grading are very similar. Color follows a universal pattern. it is pretty much the same in all fields. Once you understand color, you can apply it anywhere, paint, video, art and culture."

In paint there are base colors, tints and additives that are used to mix batches. In video color grading there are base channels (red, green, blue) and luminance channel that are corrected to render color images.

Perfecting color science is an important artform needed to get professional color grading done (and paint mixing). But that is only the half of it. The other half is understanding all the equipment needed. Digital signals are displayed on the monitor and scopes, and are used to fine tune the grading process.

Timothy Koen studied electronics up to getting a USA federally issued 1st class FCC Radiotelephone Licence. (He knows what he is talking about.) Tim has 5 years experience as a Sr. Film Colorist. (He knows color science.) And, Tim has 15 years experience as a Sr. video engineer. (He knows video production.) Tim works from home and owns a business called Best Website Tools, LLC. (He is a professional.)

Did I forget to mention that BWT Videos Color Service has pro grade equipment? Tim uses DaVinci Resolve and Camtasia (latest versions) in his home built powerful color/edit suite. With huge storage capacity and an extensive content library. Tim edits any length videos with color grading, special effects and sound mixing...

Here is a basic color grading session to explore the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel. DRMCP features 3 trackballs with adjustment rings to control all the essential parameters of color grading.

Additional controls are arrayed around the panel in a user friendly manner. With function buttons on the left and navigation buttons on the right. Up top is a row of enhancement controls to further tweak the heck out of your beauty shots.

This video demonstrates what a real time grading session is like. I can say it was way too much fun making it. Check out the video...

As for grading video this long awaited tool finally made it to a reasonable consumer price. It has many features normally hidden or hard to use with just a mouse and keyboard. It's central feature are three trackballs aka roller balls. Used for making superfine adjustments during color grading.

DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel will change might change the way you do color grading. It evokes a more eyeball vs. fingers and viewer vs. controls feel to your grade. The touchy feel of the trackballs allows you to concentrate more on the viewer and see in real time how your changes take effect. Also reaching for controls is easier on the panel than with a mouse and keyboard.

Whereas with a mouse/keyboard approach you tend to look more at the controls and scopes than the viewer. Also having the most needed navagation and function control buttons on the panel relieves the need for mouse and keyboard actions. Which tend to pull your eyes off the viewer.

Color grading by Tim Koen of BWT Color Service. Black Magic Design's DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel is at BWT Videos...

Hooray, it's here. And it only took 33 years. That is, the time it took to get my hands on a DaVinci Resolve color corrector panel. I used DaVinci back in the 80's and 90's when I was a young man. But fortune didn't fall my way and I moved on. Years later cost and technology caught up with affordability. And once again I can afford a DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel. Best toy ever, oops I mean tool.

When I used DaVinci that was the name of the product and the name of the company. At that time, there were no Advanced, Mini or Micro color corrector panels. DaVinci didn't have in-built scopes and the signal traces weren't displayed on the monitor. You had to own a "line scope" and a "vector scope," to dispay traces and values. And those were old CRT type oscilliscopes.

Color science was still being discovered. A good color suite cost a million dollars and you needed one or two large air conditioned equipment rooms. Now-a-days all you need is a good computer and DaVinci Resolve to do professional color grading.

Well late in 2025 BlackMagic Design (current owner of DaVinci) released the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel at a very reasonable price. This device is a paired down full blown color grading machine. I color corrected the images below with it.

Color grading is a science and an art. A Colorist is an artist that practices color science. The Micro Color Panel combines science and art into a digital paintbrush for a color grading . Finally after all these years an affordable color science tool...

I don't know why they (webmaster gurus) call it year-end maintenance when you do it at the beginning of the year. A good time to clean out the clutter and refresh your website. Not to mention updating your copyright notices. Here are three high impact tasks the every website owner should do every year:

1. Update key pages like About, Index, Contact and Services. You will want to include new portfolio items, testimonials and achievments from the past year.
2. Rewrite or remove out-dated content. This may seem like a duanting task but you could give a priority ranking to what you want to update now or in the future. Bring old pages up to new standards, clean out outdated ads, check spelling, grammer and puncuation.
3. Optimze performance, speed and stability. Take a good look at your coding. Is it modern or contain old or unused bits. Clean out code that you no longer need or has been updated. Minimize CSS and Javascript. Compress and optimize images. In general, less more precise code will improve speed for both the user and search engines. Use lazy loading for images and video. Finally; re-load every page in bulk if you can. This last task gives the search engines fresh timing of the website as a whole. A kind of "Like New" polish.
4. Security and Back up. Update any CMS, plugins or add-ons to the latest version. Review user accounts associated with your workflow. Create a backup of your website. And check expiration dates of any subscriptions and renew if necessary.

Updates to Best Website Tools website this year include; Full website re-upload, New "Contents" menu added, overall template standardization and Archive update.

Bonus Tip;. A little maintenance now can save you from headaches in the future. Wish I had of thought of that 6 years ago when I first implemented this website design. If I had I would have paid more attention to the archive pages. But, this year I did. See what I mean about prioritizing tasks.

Happy New Year From Best Website Tools.

Inside 3d Animated Avatars

3d Animated Avatars a cast of characters with text to speech engine that translates into any language. Discover a new way to get your message out. Imagine the perfect AI generated spokesperson for your business, product or service. Create an animated 3d avatar video(s) today. Check out this video we made...

3d Animated Avatars are the solution for many tasks. A personal AI assistant spokesperson that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? We use cutting edge technology to promote your product or service quickly and easily.

Build your own 3d avatar tailored to your design. We can create that special 3d avatar just for your niche, business, product or service. Change outfits, colors and hairstyle to convey mood, age and choose between voices and language.

Thats right folks our 3d avatars can translate between about 26 different languages and dialects. As a matter of fact our 3d avatars can say just about anything. Simply type in your text, then click "auto-translate" button and voila multi-national world class translation in up to 26 languages.

Our team has assembled many templatized promotional videos for the following niches. These 3d animated avatars are the culmination of years of development. We thought you would like to see a list some of the niches we included in our template library. Check out this impressive list.

I call it BWT-ToC, Table of Contents Flyout Menu button, (in the upper left corner) on most pages in Best Website Tools.

What's cool about this button menu is it changes with the content of the page. Instead of painstakingly going through the page and writing code and creating links and chasing my tail.

I use a javascript and CSS to do the work. And I made a button that pops out a table of contents using H2 headings in order. Have you tried the "Contents" button yet

About BWT-TOC.js

It all started with a visit from a friend. Who said "I have a table of contents that works from the headings on the page, but it takes up a lot of space." Then explained that it scrapes the page for all the H2 tags to create ToC menu of links to each section on the page. Also it's a quick synopsis of what is on the page, nice.

Wish I hadda thought of that! But then I realized after seeing her example it would be better if it were a sticky button on the side of the page with a flyout menu that was scrollable, highlighted where you were in the table and looked like the rest of the buttons on the website.

As you can see the TOC on this page is a popout menu that is sticky, scrollable and highlights the current position in the menu. I can't decide if I want to just keep this little gem of a best website tool or package it up for scalability. Whadda ya think?

Or, I could make a training tutorial on how to make your own flyout ToC. Or I could just keep it for myself. I will probably do all three at some point in the future so stay tuned for that. Need more website tips...

Hi all Tim here. BWT did a study a few months ago of like minded website creators and came to the conclusion that excellent imagery is better for website growth than just ordinary images alone.

Then I thought I need an image to represent this category. Something that shows what it is about. The following image is a screenshot from a video creation tip tutorial I made...

About this image

It is called "davinci-tim-edit-screen-1080x608.png" and is a screenshot of a tutorial I made in Camtasia about DaVinci Resolve. The tutorial is about creating quick stills in DaVinci Resolve 20. Screen capture and editing in Camtasia. With color correction in DaVinci Resolve.

Completely shot and edited by yours truly, me, Tim Koen. I am particularly proud of this shot because every idea (except for the Turkey Dinner) was concieved, carried out and confabulated in house. I made all the screen captures, a-roll, b-roll, did the narration, titling and background layout (with the help of a good cook).

More Website Tips: December 2025 « 

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