POST PRODUCTION COLOR MACHINE ROOM HOW TO
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This is truly a great question as it outlines a common misconception in the world of video editing. How can I tell which my footage really needs? With its undersaturated, gray film look, the second image is a great example of how a video editor can color grade a project to instantly evoke connotations of a different style and feel to bring the audience into a new scene. Color grading before and afterĬompared to color correcting which can also be done subtly and with nuance, color grading is often what one thinks about when color editing where the differences in the before and after examples can be quite extreme.Ĭase in point: these two vastly different frames from the example video from above.Īs you can see, while the first image certainly has been corrected and even perhaps graded a bit to display a warm room tone, it’s the second image that clearly looks like it comes from a completely different film. From there, the name of the game is painting (or grading) your footage to look now as you’d like for it to be seen. Remember: color grading should really only be done after your video has been normalized and corrected so that you’re working off of footage that represents how it is meant to be seen.

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Double check skin tones and vectorscope.Make your color adjustments in your editing program of choice.Follow the steps to correct your colors.Normalize your folate as much as possible.Here are the five basic steps to color grading your video footage:

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Understanding color grading: how to color grade in 5 stepsīefore you start dropping LUTs into all your video edits going forward though, let’s go over some tips for understanding how to color grade. In short, these tools can be huge timesavers and - with the right use - quite powerful for your projects.

While we wouldn’t recommend just using LUTs for projects without understanding a bit more about how grading works, or how to tinker with your LUTs applied to your footage. What are LUTs you ask? Well, a LUT stands for “look-up table,” and is basically a quick cheat-sheet which filmmakers can use in camera, or more importantly, which editors can use in their edit to give their footage specific grade and look. Now, you might be asking yourself: how do you actually achieve some of the cool grades and effects as seen in the video above? While the answer will vary for each look and each editor, one trick we can share with you is that many of these grading looks are achieved by using LUTs. However, for a basic guide to quickly balance and correct any regular footage needs, this process should set you on the right path for beginners.

Normalize your footage as much as possible.ĭepending on your footage and editing experience, there are of course more steps which you could include for this process.

Here are the five basic steps to color correcting footage regardless of what type of editing situation that you might find yourself in. However, if the footage you shot (or perhaps was given to you to edit) was very improperly balanced to begin with, the process can be quite tricky to complete without at least a little bit of expertise. For example, if the white and black levels match what the human eye sees as white and black, then the rest of the colors should be balanced as a result as well. This is because raw footage tends to be oversaturated and the colors need to be balanced out.Īnd while there are several steps to the process of color correction, it’s important to clarify that the real end goal of color correction is simply to make sure footage looks exactly the way the human eye sees things. Let’s start with color correction because… well… because color correction is usually done first. Great! Now let’s focus a bit more in depth into these two different techniques… What is color correction? Color grading is the process of grading (or editing) colors in a video or film as a way to give them a stylistic look. What the heck is the difference between color grading and color correction? We’ll get into more of the technical and nuanced differences below, but for now let’s use this short differentiation…Ĭolor correcting is the process of correcting (or fixing) colors in a video or a film as a way to get them back to what they should look like for your project.

So, let’s tackle the biggest question of them all first.

What tools can I use for color grading or color correcting?Ĭolor grading vs color correction: what’s the difference?.

How can I tell which my footage really needs?.

Color grading vs color correction: what’s the difference?.

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