Color Grading in Premiere Pro CC - Get Pro Film Look
Transcript
Intro
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Hey guys my
name is Denver Riddle, I’m a colorist and filmmaker and if you're wondering
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how can I
make the look of my films stand out through color grading in Premiere Pro CC
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and make my
films look big budget?
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Well I’m
going to reveal that here in this beginner crash course using the Lumetri color
tools
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found in
Adobe.
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We’re going
to create this amazing look, you can download the look as LUT or look up
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table and
easily apply this to your own footage.
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Also, while
YouTube is a fantastic resource for learning about so many different kinds
0:47
of subjects
if you are looking for a step-by-step guide that takes you all the way through
discovering
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the art of
color grading and getting the big Hollywood film looks I want to let you know
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about a free
training workshop I’m going to be doing where I reveal my top color grading
1:03
secrets, to
attend the just click the link below in the description and I hope to see
1:08
you there.
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Alright,
let’s do this thing!
Color
Workspace
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Here inside
let’s set up our workspace for color grading,
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we’ll choose
Color workspace and that will bring up the Lumetri color tools.
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In the top
section, we have the Scopes…we have the Program Panel, where we see the clip
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we are
currently working on, and the Lumetri Color panel over here on the side, where
we can perform our grading.
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It’s also
worth pointing out the Effects Control panel where we can do some other things,
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including
adding and tracking color masks but more on that in a bit.
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Before we
jump in and start grading this thing, let’s discuss basic terminology for how
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we define
color.
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The three
basic terms that we use to define color are Hue, Saturation, and Luma.
Basic
Terminology
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Hue is the
name we call colors.
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Saturation
is the intensity or vividness of a hue.
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And Luma is
the brightness or shade of hue.
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It’s also
important to know how to read the scopes, which can be super beneficial.
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If you’re in
the color workspace the scopes should appear but if not just click on the
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Lumetri
scopes tab.
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The three
scopes I always use are the waveform, the RGB parade and the vectorscope.
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The waveform
let’s us correct for exposure.
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If I overlay
an image on top of the waveform, you can see that the trace the stuff you see
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here
actually corresponds with the image of the girl dancing.
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The RGB
parade scope is helpful for correcting white balance issues, it reads similar
to
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the waveform
other than it’s broken out into the individual color channels of red,
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green and
blue.
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With this
scope, it makes it easier to spot imbalances if either the image is too cool
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or too warm. How that will show is one channel elevated
above the others.
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The
Vectorscope, corresponds directly with the color wheel, and I’ve overlaid it
here
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for
convenience.
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It shows
what colors are in the image as well as their saturation.
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The further
the trace extends from the center of the scope, the more saturated or vivid
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the colors
are.
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Here’s a
simple but powerful workflow for color correction: We first correct the
exposure
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or
brightness of the image, second the white balance or color temperature if there
are
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any issues
and lastly the saturation by either increasing or reducing it.
Basic
Correction Panel
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This will
make more sense as we actually do it!
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Let’s first
make a correction to the exposure of this image using the basic correction
panel.
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Now if you
look at the controls in the basic corrections panel you’ll see controls for
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highlights
and shadows, but also for whites and blacks.
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Lumetri uses
a terminology that’s slightly different than other grading applications.
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But here’s
how the controls work:
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The Blacks
control adjusts the darkest parts or the very bottom darkest point…and the
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Whites
control adjusts the brightest or the very top of the image.
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The Shadows
control affects the tonal range between the shadows and the midtones if say
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you want to
recover or darken details in the shadow areas and the Highlights control effects
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the tonal
range between the highlights and the midtones, or the upper part of the image
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if say again
you want to recover or brighten details in the highlight areas.
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We’ll adjust
the shadows first with the blacks control while watching the waveform.
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We want to
bring the trace in the shadows down until the darkest parts of the image
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sit right
above 0.
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Then we’ll
bring up the highlights with the whites control so the brightest parts
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of the trace
sits right about here near the top.
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Then let’s
darken the undertones or the area between the shadows and the midtones
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by pulling
the shadows slider to the left… this will help us remove that washed out look
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from the
talents face.
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And then
I’ll just adjust this a little more until we have good contrast and exposure.
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This is the
first step.
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Next we’ll
fix the color temperature since the image is looking cool.
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Looking at
the RGB Parade scope, the blue trace is elevated above the red and green.
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Our goal is
to “neutralize” or white balance the whites and we’ll want to find something
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in the image
that is white.
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In this
case, we’re going to use her sneakers as a reference.
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Now we can
do this manually with the temperature and tint sliders or we can save some time
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and use
Premiere’s auto White Balance Selector.
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To do that
we just need to select and click on the white part of the image and voilaaa…
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the
temperature and tint sliders automatically move to white balance the shot and
the traces
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are aligned
in the RGB Parade Scope.
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Now if for
whatever reason we’re not happy with the result we can still manually adjust
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those
sliders to our liking.
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In this case
I think we can warm up the image a little bit.
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And that’s
the second step.
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As our final
step let’s boost the color a little bit by increasing the saturation.
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And here’s
what the clip looks like before and after the correction.
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Pretty
amazing right?
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On the next
shot we’ll repeat the same procedure going for a nice balance of exposure with
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the the
blacks, whites, shadows and highlights controls…the color temperature in the
shot
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looks off
too, so we’ll use the white balance eyedropper, this time, over the truck in
the
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background.
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I’ll then
refine it a little manually.
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Lastly we’ll
add some saturation too.
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Moving to
the third shot, we wanna match it to the first shot for obvious reasons, since
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this is
pretty much a wide version of the same scene.
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To give us a
good starting point let’s copy the correction from the first clip to this
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one.
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We’ll go to
the first shot select it and use the keyboard shortcut command "C"
(if you're on a Mac) or control
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"C"
if you’re on Windows, we’ll then go back to this clip… right click on it and
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choose Paste
Attributes from the dropdown menu.
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Make sure
the Lumetri Color effect is checked and click OK.
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This copies
the correction and gives us a good starting point, but you’ll see that
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we still
have some matching issues.
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The image is
too dark.
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To help with
matching we can go to the Color Wheels & Match panel and activate the
Comparison
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View.
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Now we can
see a side by side comparison of our clip and any other clip in the timeline.
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There are
also vertical and horizontal split options, but we’ll stick to the side by
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side option.
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Now here’s
the really cool thing.
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In the side
by side view, we can compare them visually AND in the scopes as well so this
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makes
matching a breeze.
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To match the
traces better we’ll bring up the general exposure using the exposure slider
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and then
bring up the shadows with the blacks control.
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We can see
now in the Waveform that both traces look like they’re at the same level.
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That’s a
nice looking match.
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Now let’s
disable the Comparison View option.
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In the
interest of time I’ve already gone ahead and performed color correction to
these
Lumetri
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remaining
clips.
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But in this
last shot you’ll see that the yellow pole looks greenish compared to the
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ones on the
other shots.
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Well what’s
really cool, is that with Lumetri we can fix that one color.
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So let’s
open the HSL Secondary panel and then with the eyedropper, let’s click and
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drag through
the pole to qualify it.
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To see what
we’ve selected, let’s turn on the highlight feature by clicking here.
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Now clearly
our selection isn’t enough.
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So let’s
improve our selection with the hue, saturation and luma sliders.
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Then add
just a little denoise and blur to soften the key.
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Okay now
let’s turn the highlight feature off.
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We’ll then
drag the color wheels control until the pole loses that green tone… and
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Bam!
Doneski!
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As a final
touch, her face is looking a little dark so to lighten it we’ll accomplish that
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with a mask,
where we’re effectively relighting the scene, something really cool we can do
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in post.
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Now in order
to do this using Lumetri we’ll need to add a 2nd instance.
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To do that
we need to open the effect panel and then If we go to the Project Panel we’ll
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see a double
arrow located at the upper right side… go ahead and click on that and choose
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Effects from
the dropdown menu.
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Once we find
the Lumetri Color Effect we’ll drag it to the Effect Control panel… and
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this adds a
second instance of lumetri where we can now use a shape mask.
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I’ll go
ahead and add a mask and size and position it over here face like so… and
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add some
feathering so this doesn’t stand out too much.
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Then to
lighten his face, we’ll increase the shadows…and highlights…
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Playing it
back you can that the talent’s face moves so this is a problem.
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To address
that we’ll want to track the shape to her face, so going to the Effects
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Control
Panel, we can easily do this by clicking on the track forward button.
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And badda,
bing, bada bang!
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The shape
moves perfectly with the movement of our talent’s face.
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Really
amazing stuff!
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I love doing
color grading in Premiere Pro CC.
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Okay now
it’s time for the really fun part and that’s creating an awesome look for
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these clips.
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The
Orange/Teal Look is a really popular look because it uses principles of color
contrast
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to make the
skin tones advance or pop out from the background.
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And frankly
it just looks awesome so you’re going to love this!
Adjustment
Layer
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I’m gonna
show you a quick way to apply the SAME look on top of all of these clips
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and this
will save you time and ensure you have a consistent look across the board.
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To do that
we’ll go to the Project panel, right click and select from the dropdown menu…
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choose New
Item… then Adjustment Layer.
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A prompt
will appear and we’ll just click ok.
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We’ll drag
the Adjustment Layer to the second video layer over top of our video clips and
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any
adjustment or color treatments we apply here, will be applied to all the clips
underneath
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the
adjustment layer.
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Pretty sweet
huh?
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Alright now
let’s create the look.
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Make sure
the adjustment layer is selected and we’re going to skip and go straight
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past the
basic correction panel to the curves where we’ll have more creative control.
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And a quick
crash course on the way this works in case you haven’t already used these in
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Photoshop is
bottom point adjusts the shadows, the top point adjusts the highlights and we
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can make as
many points as we want on the curve in between to shape the tonal range.
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In this case
we don’t want to affect the highlights or the shadows too much so we’ll
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create
contrast in-between these areas known as the undertones and midtones.
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I’ll make a
point here in the midtones and drag it up.
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This improves
our exposure but makes the undertones look a little washed out.
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So let’s add
another point here and drag it down to adjust the density of the undertones,
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there that
looks nice, now we have a much richer contrast.
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For color we
need to push teal into the overall image but without affecting the skin tones.
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So let me
show you how we’ll do this, we’ll go to the HSL Secondary panel and use the
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eyedropper
to select our talent’s skin.
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We’ll then
refine our selection with the Hue, Sat and luma sliders.
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Then add
some denoise and blur for good measure.
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Then what we
need to do since we currently have our skin tones selected is to actually
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invert our
selection (like so) and now we can use the color wheel to introduce teal
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into the
image with affecting the skin tones.
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Now we are
onto something… right?
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But we are
not there yet.
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Something is
off.
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Because we
pushed teal into the entire tonal range our shadows also look teal, so we’ll
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want to
clean them up so we can have clean black shadows.
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To do that
I’m going to show you a really awesome trick.
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I’ll add
another instance of lumetri… go to the Hue Saturation Curves panel.
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Then go to
the Luma vs Sat curve.
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Now the way
this tool works is the shadows are to the left and the highlights are to
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the right,
and then anywhere that we place points on the curve, we are able to adjust
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the saturation
for that part of the tonal range by either pulling up to increase the
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saturation
or pulling down to decrease it.
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So this is
really cool way for selectively reducing the saturation in the shadows without
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affecting
anything else so we’ll place a point here so nothing above is affected and
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then we’ll
drag the left point all the way down to reduce the saturation in the shadows.
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Voila our
shadows are nice and clean and the skin tones and everything else kept their
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saturation.
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If I toggle
this instance of lumetri off and back on again… you can see the difference
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it made in
pulling the teal out of the shadows on the walls, her hair and the trash can.
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Okay, so
don’t forget that cool trick.
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Now, just to
play with these yellow poles to have them have a closer tone to her coat
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and skin
tones, so this is more orange teal we’ll go to the Hue Saturation Curves panel,
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and under
the Hue vs Hue curve we’ll use the eyedropper to isolate the yellow range.
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And drag it
up to introduce more warmth into the poles.
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As a final
touch, I want to apply one of the LUTs from Ascend that’s available
14:13
for download
when you sign up for the free workshop.
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Let’s add
another instance of Lumetri and go to the creative panel.
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From there
we can browse our LUTs and I’ll choose the 3strip LUT.
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Now at first
it’s too strong but that’s okay because we can dial it back to taste
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with the
intensity slider.
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What an awesome
look!
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Now if any
of this, has seemed overwhelming to you I want to let you know about a great
14:44
alternative
that we’ve developed as a plugin.
14:47
For content
creators who don’t want to specialize as a colorist but still need a professional
14:52
look with on
screen grading, lightroom style controls, false color mode for landing the
14:59
correct
exposure and real time preview of LUTs and presets, you can find out more about
15:06
Cinema Grade
I’ll have a link for it in the description below.
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So that’s
just an alternative.
Color
Grading Workshop
15:12
Now I know
that I covered a lot of things here, but my purpose was to help you get started
15:18
with seeing
a difference in your films today.
15:20
If you’re
looking for more guided help in discovering the power of color grading I want
15:24
to invite
you to our 1-hour color grading workshop where I reveal the top color grading
15:30
secrets used
in Hollywood and how best to do color grading in Premiere Pro CC.
15:35
You’ll find
a link to register for the workshop in the description below this video.
15:41
In the web
class I reveal how I went from being a wedding videographer down to 0 wedding
15:46
bookings
during the recession of 2008 to improving the look of my films and landing
client work
15:52
with some of
the biggest brands like Facebook.
15:55
I reveal the
same techniques that have had the biggest impact on my career, so if you’re
16:00
serious and
want to be guided every step of the the way you won’t want to miss it.
16:05
I also want
to point that if you want to learn more about our Color Grading Academy it’s
16:10
the only way
you can do that.
16:12
People ask
if we do formal training, well this is your opportunity to discover that
16:17
and we’ll
have a special offer for the it at the end of the presentation.
16:22
So be sure
to save your seat, click the subscribe button and then the bell for more
grading
16:27
videos!
16:28
I hope you
enjoyed this beginner crash course as much I enjoyed creating it for you and
16:33
I look forward
to seeing you at the training.
16:36
Have a great
day!
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