Color Grading vs Color Correcting Video in Premiere Pro

Hello, it is time for Color Correction time. Before we get started I just want to quickly define two terms for you that are important. One is Color Correction, the other one is Color Grading, and Color Grading, grading, accent, is a term that gets used a bit flippity-flop, but you need to be reasonably clear about it, when you are working as a Video Editor. Somebody asks you to do some color correction or color grading, they're very different jobs. 

So Color Correction is fixing photos, Color Grading is giving a specific look, or a feel to it. So Color Correction would be things like, "Hey, the lights aren't great." We need to kind of play with the shadows or make it brighter, fixing broken video. Color Grading is adding an effect or a look. Think Instagram filters, think I want this film to look a little bit more cinematic, or I want to make it look like an all-time film. So you give it a look, that's Color Grading. So we're going to do Color Grading in this course but not right now. We're going to do Color Correction. 

So let's jump in now and I'll show you how to do it. All right, let's do some Color Correction. To do it we're going to open up a panel, under 'Window', and there's one called 'Lumetri Color', click on that one. Kind of open up on the side here. The next thing we need to do is, let's say we're going to correct 01 XD Intro. So what we need to do is put our Playhead in a position, that's a good general representation of the footage, and because mine's shot on a tripod and nothing's moving, it's pretty easy. You can pretty much have it anywhere in here, and color correct it, but let's just say for instance--

I'm going to drag in 01 again, so you can have more than one instance of this. What you can do is, no point color correcting there, because color correcting my back is not a good, you know, not a good way to color correct because it's going to actually look different where my actual skin tones are all involved. So remember, when you're color correcting different from Photoshop, you just do once, you know one shot, whereas video you actually have to kind of try and guess it for this whole entire thing, so you need to find somewhere kind of in the middle. 

So I'm going to delete that. I'm going to scroll down, find a bit, where I'm looking vaguely intelligent. What we're going to do is we're going to select 01. You might have to zoom in and out to kind of move your way along but have 01 selected, and all we need to do is click on, over here where it says basic correction, click on that word once. What will happen is-- click it again to close it. So there's a bunch of different categories in here, and it can look very confusing in here, I get confused too. So basic correction is the one we want. 

What we're looking for is we're going to do the quick and easy auto option. Make sure the actual clip is selected, click on 'Auto', and it didn't do a whole lot, what did it actually do? You can test it by going to 'Basic Correction'. See this little tick next to it, just to turn it off, on, off, on. Just did a little bit of work with the shadows and the blacks, so just minusing a little bit. The reason that is, is that I spend a bit of time getting my, kind of room set up, with the right lighting, I mess around with my camera to try and, not have to do a color-- all that color correction afterwards. Yours might be changing loads of different things. So that is color correcting this one. 

The one thing we might do though is that it's very small in comparison to the rest of it. So what we're going to do is, I'm going to show you how to kind of adjust your workspace, because this has kind of crowded it out. Yours might be looking a little differently, but can you see, in between any of these panels these little double lines appear. So this one here I can kind of, between my Source monitor and my Program monitor, I can click, hold, just kind of like drag it across. You can see how you just get more screen real estate if you will. Same with the Timeline, you can drag it down to get a bit more space, drag it out this way. So you will find the happy medium for your computer screen. I've got a really big 4K LG monitor, I love it, but when I'm working on my laptop, actually have to have a different kind of view. 

So drag it around to kind of something that looks nice for you. Now that it's done I need to kind of acknowledge that this one here is not done, nothing's been changed in this one, because I had this one selected when I did it, and this one hasn't been done, so I can do the same thing, find a good middle, a middle kind of shot. Then with it selected click 'Auto', and it's done basically the same thing. Why? because it was all shot at the same time. Work away long, is that any different? Auto. Same. It's like in-- it's the same. Same footage. If you've got, like Windows open, it's going to be different every time, because you're using the light from the window to change, it's clouds, the Sun moves. So that's the Auto feature, super easy. Let's look at doing it manually. 

So let's-- I'm going to-- so I've got this one here, I'm going to go to 'Edit', 'Copy'. I'm going to scrub along a little bit using the middle of the little rubber band thing. Bring my CTI along here. It's wherever this Playhead ends up being is where it's going to paste. So if you leave it behind, even though you've scrubbed along, it’s going to paste wherever this thing is. So we're going to go to 'Edit', 'Paste'. I'm going to use shortcuts from now on. That's 'Command V' for a Mac, and 'Ctrl V' for a PC. So I'm going to use those shortcuts from now on, pretty common. 

So I've got this one, which has been auto corrected. I'm going to duplicate it again. So I'm going to put one just next to it, and I'm going to go to 'Edit', 'Paste', I'll use a shortcut, look at that. I'm doing down here, just to kind of show you different ways of working. So you do the same, have two versions. This first version is being done with Auto, the second version here, we are going to-- let's go to 'Reset'. So I've got the second option selected, reset it, so it's back to normal. What I'm going to do is show you how I manually correct. 

I find, weirdly, that working from this tone, this is where you start in tone, and you start at the bottom up, I find it gives you a more, just it works more-- I find that's the best order to work in, working from exposure down I find is quite tough, but working up, doesn't matter, there's no right or wrong, but basically all you're doing is dragging it back and forth. So I've got that selected, grab blacks, drag it left, right, and don't be afraid to like, to give it a good drag. People in my class are like, "Oh just get it up a little bit, just going down a little bit, just…

Go forth and back, you can always go back to 0. And all I'm doing is, I'm not even looking where the slider is. You can't see me but my head is pressed against my screen, and I'm just kind of going back and forth. Then I get slower and slower until I find like, that feels good. So when I'm dragging it, it's blurry, it's because I've turned my quality down to quarter. Earlier on, because, while it's static it tries to go full resolution. It's only when it's either playing or you're manipulating it, it goes down to the quarter. I'm going to be, probably for the rest of this course go back to full, because my laptop's pretty good. You might have to toggle between half and a quarter, the whole way through this whole course, just to get the best out of your laptop. 

So I'm going to go to full, and drag it back and forth, close to the screen. There you go, that feels nice to me. It's a lot different than the -5. This is just like my preference. Same with the weights, I'm going to get up and down. I'm not caring where it is, I'm just kind of going back and forth in to there. So it's up a little bit, so the same, start big, start big, until I find it. You can see that one went up 5. I'm not watching the numbers, I'm just clicking, holding with my mouse. Looking crazy by getting real close to my screen, until I find what I'm looking for. 

You see mine is 6, what have you, 0.6? Why even bother. And exposure. Hey, I ended up at 0, that never happens, but, yeah, so you can see, my manual ones are a lot different than my auto. The difference is, let's have a look, click here, click here, click here, click here, which one do you like more? You’re like-- it was a big waste of time because they look pretty close. I like my one better, because I took some time to do it, but to be honest, when I'm doing this kind of-- I'll probably manually edit, or manually correct for an important video. If I was doing a documentary I'd spend a lot more time doing it, a short film, loads of time. These how-to videos, if I'm more honest, I just click on auto and just move on. Maybe not the intro, but definitely for the 100th video I just kind of click on auto. 

All right, one last thing we're going to do before we go is Saturation. So this little slider down here I ignored. We are going to look at saturation, we're going to go left and right. Do we want it more saturated, less saturated? Mine are pretty good, like the camera and the lens, and the lighting's all very nice. So I'm not going to mess around with it but there might be the last thing is, I often go in and just pump out up a teeny tiny bit just, I just want a little bit more, always a little bit more. So just a teeny tiny bit more saturation, and probably 105, you can--

Oh, I didn't show you that, did I? You can drag them, or you can click in here and just type over the top, '105' on my keyboard, hit 'Enter'. I can just bump it up a little bit. Basically in terms of this footage you can only go as high as my skin tone allow, because if you go too high I get a big suntan, or a sunburn. So I'm going to go 105. And when I said it was the last thing I don't mean it's the last thing, I mean, this is the third-to-last, we're going to look at Tint and Temperature. Don't worry too much about these words, it's blue to red, and then green to magenta. 

So depending on-- cameras these days are shooting really lovely balanced colors. So very rare that I actually have to go in and mess with temperature, other than when I'm Color Grading, giving it a certain look, but let's say you've shot it inside, and you are shooting in, somewhere that has like lots of florescent lights, those big long tubes. You might find it's just a little bit on the blue side, just a little bit like, "Yeah, I…

And it looks fine, there's nothing wrong with it being a little bit blue. It's called a Color Cast. Doesn't matter if you like it kind of bluey. It's great, there might be a sad moment in the film, but I often like mine quite warm for what I'm doing. So you could move it into the oranges or the reds, or way down here in the blues. So you can kind of find your happy medium again. I'm finding mine's, just up here in the middle. Same with magenta and green. This happens less, it's mainly to do with temperature. The tint is moving between these colors. Again, it'll depend on, sometimes a lens that you're using on your camera can give it to you. It might be that it's shot in a room with green wall, so greens cast everywhere. So you might have to do some adjustments to tint and temperature, but most of the time it's tone, starting from the bottom, working your way up. A little bit of saturation, and every now and again a bit of temperature and tint. 

All right, one thing before I go, that I want to just tidy up this Color Correction is, we need to do two things, first of all let's delete, three things, let's delete this. We don't need those, they were just like a trial. The other one is, we didn't actually add auto to this last one. So we did it to number 4, number 5, but not number 6. It's all still at 0, and this brings up a really good point. So my Playhead is over here. Basically my Playhead is displaying this, the sequence. So I'm actually looking at this, but I can actually have this selected over here but I'm still viewing that guy. You can kind of see, I have this one-- I can have lots selected, but my CTI displays it in the Program window. So that's confusing explanation, let's just demo it. 

I'm viewing it here but I've got that selected, so if I go through and I go, dip, dip, dip… why isn't it working? It's not adjusting. You start dragging it around. What's happening is, if I click over here, it has adjusted it with the one I had selected, so I'm going to hit 'Reset'. Another good point to drop in here, is reset only works for tone. Watch this, if I go yip, yip, okay, add your own sound effects. And I hit 'Reset' it resets all of this but not these guys. So 0 and 0, or just drag them close enough to it. 

All right, so we're back to this, we're going to click 'Auto'. Lovely. All right now, that is it for Color Correction for the moment. We'll do a bit more high core stuff later in the course, but for the moment you are Color Correction good enough. Let's carry on to the next video.