- Hey guys, welcome to Travel Feels.
Today, we're gonna take a look
at how to do five different color grades
without any LUTs or extra plug-ins.
Let's do this.
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So we all know how important color grading is,
it's so important I couldn't stress it enough.
Next to filming, it's probably one
of the most important things.
Especially nowadays, when you're shooting in LOG
or a flat profile the video clips just don't look all
that good without any color correction or color grading.
So you really need to practice color grading
to make your films better.
For me, when I'm color grading
I pretty much always start with a LUT.
Which is basically just a fancy word
for a preset in the video world.
But can you still make really cool color grades
without any LUTs or presets to start with?
And the answer is yes, it's actually not that hard
to make really cool looks without any LUTs or presets.
So, let's get right into it.
Today we're going to be looking
at five different color grades
that you can do right inside of Premier.
Now, you can do these in other programs also
but we're gonna be using the Lumetri color panel
inside of Premier.
So we have this little edit,
I filmed it a couple months ago.
It's some test footage with C200.
Back then, my wife was still pregnant actually
and now the little guy is screaming
over there in the next room.
Dad life, am I right?
And right off the bat, these clips looks like garbage.
I filmed them in CLOG so they're super flat,
no contrast, no saturation.
They just don't look very good straight out of the camera.
And that's done on purpose.
I filmed them in LOG on purpose so I could color grade them
in post and just have all that information
to play around with.
Kind of like a raw photo verus JPEG,
but a little bit different.
But a LOG profile does hold way more information
than normal video clips.
So first off, we're just gonna add some contrast
and we're gonna bring the blacks and the shadows
to kind of balance out the image a little bit.
And I'm really just looking at the wave form
and making sure I'm not really crushing the blacks
but I have a good amount of contrast in the footage.
And then, you're just gonna add some saturation because,
again, it's LOG footage so it has very little saturation
so you're just gonna bump this up like crazy.
And the first look we're gonna look at is,
of course, teal and orange.
It's the most popular and if you haven't seen
my teal and orange video already,
explaining why it's so popular
and why it just works you should definitely
go check it out right now.
Link is in the description.
And this is actually a really easy look to make,
it's not gonna take too much.
Usually when I'm color grading or color correcting
I'm using the three way color panels
and so you have a color wheel
for the shadows, the midtones, and the highlights.
In order to get the teal and orange look,
all you gotta do is take the shadows and bring them down
into the teal color and you'll keep going depending
on how strong you want the look to be.
Then the midtones, you're just gonna grab those
and move them over to orange.
And then the highlights, you're gonna bring them also down
to the teal area to combat some of that midtone change.
And there you go, simple as that.
That's how easy it is to get that teal and orange look.
All you need is some good contrast, some saturation,
and then do this correction in the color wheel.
Shadows to the teal, midtones to orange,
and then highlights to the teal again.
Easy.
This is a really quick way
to get a really cool look for your footage.
But you can also do some different variations
of the teal and orange look.
You can push the shadows towards the green more
and then the midtones to where it's red a little bit more,
and then again the highlights towards the green.
And this is gonna give you a little bit of a different look.
Or what you could do is push the shadows more
into the blue area, and then the midtones into the yellow,
and then the highlights again to the blue.
And again, this is gonna be a little bit
of a different look from the teal and orange
but it's in the same family of looks.
You're just changing up the colors just a little bit
but it's stilling using the fact that our skin tones
are orange and then we're using the complimentary color
of orange which is teal.
And that's why teal and orange works.
Next, we're gonna look at black and white.
This is super easy.
So we have our clips here
and we're just gonna bring down the saturation
all the way to zero.
Boom. Black and White. Easy as that.
Now, you do wanna fiddle around
with exposure a lot in black and white.
Because there's no colors, it really matters
where the exposure levels are.
So what the contrast is, where the midtones are,
where the highlights, where the shadows are.
So you really wanna be tweaking these a lot
when you're doing black and white.
Usually for my black and white I like a healthy amount
of contrast but then for the highlights I like
to roll them off using the curves tool.
This gives it a little bit of a different look
and it also gets rid of some of that digital look
that you really easily get in black and white I find.
But another popular look that a lot of people do
is this low contrast look.
And it's really easy, all you do is go into the curves
and then you just lift up the shadows, make this curve,
and then you drop the highlights.
That's how simple it is to get that low contrast look
where you have those raised shadows
and then you have those dropped highlights.
It's a really cool look.
I think it's more of a vintage vibe.
And let's check out what it looks like if we do
that same thing with the teal and orange look.
So we have the teal and orange look here
but we're gonna add this curves adjustment to it
to raise the shadows
and then we're gonna drop the highlights.
And now, we have a totally different look
from that original teal and orange look.
So that gives you a ton of different possibilities
and that's our third look.
Next, in the honor of Game of Thrones,
we're gonna take a look at a really cool temperature look.
So what you could do is just drag the white balance over
to blue, but that doesn't give you that nice of a look
and also it doesn't give you as much control over the look.
So what we're gonna do,
is use the three way color correctors again.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take the shadows over
to the blue area, of course, and then we're gonna take
the midtones and we're just gonna bring them a tiny bit over
to where it's orange so we keep the skin tones
looking a little bit more natural.
And then, we're just gonna take the highlights
and bring 'em way over to blue again.
And then, depending on how cold or how blue
you want it to look, you can just keep going
and bring these more and more over to the blues.
That's it. Super easy.
A nice Game of Thrones, cool look.
Winter is coming.
Use this in your films.
And then lastly, we're gonna take a look
at a warm color grade.
And here, all we're gonna do is bring the shadows over
towards the red orange area and then we're gonna take
the midtones, bring 'em to the same area
and the highlights also to the same area.
And you're just playing around with the different levels
a little bit to get it just right.
You don't wanna go too far with the look,
but depending on what kind of color grade you're going for
you could really take it to the extreme
or just make it really subtle.
So, there we go.
We have the cool look and the warm look.
So that's literally how easy it is to get really cool looks
in Premier or After Effects or Final Cut
or whatever program you're using.
You actually don't need any presets
or any extra plug-ins if you don't want them.
And I actually highly recommend you trying this out,
even if it's just for practice.
But it really teaches you about color correcting
and color grading and how colors work
and those small, little changes make a really big deal.
And practicing is really the only way
you're gonna get really good at color grading.
Remember also, that you can combine these looks.
So for example, if you want a teal and orange look
but you want it to be a little bit more cool
then use those same principles and bring the color wheels
a little bit further into the blues.
Or the opposite if you want them to be more warm,
then bring back some of those blues
and add more orange to the midtones.
Or you can bring different contrasts
like that low contrast look
and just have an infinite amount of different combinations
that you can do of your looks.
Now all that being said, I still highly recommend
that you start off with a preset or LUT.
It really speeds up the process and really helps you get
to a nice starting point where then you can go
and start tweaking the look from there.
That's why I sell the Cine LUTs Pack,
the presets down below.
And, I also made Lightroom presets
because it's just so much quicker and so much easier
to start off with a preset or LUT.
And thankfully, LUTs work in pretty much all programs
so they're really easy to just buy some LUTs
and then you can use them in any program
any time you're editing and just have a really nice
starting point to your footage.
So if you don't have any presets for your videos,
check out the Cine LUTs down below.
Or if you wanna do the same for photos,
I have the TF Lightroom presets down below, check those out.
So there we go, five really cool color grades
that you can do super easily, straight in Premier,
without any LUTs or presets or any extra plug-ins.
You don't need to spend any more money if you don't want to.
Guys, I hope you learned something in this video.
Hit that like button.
Subscribe to the channel.
And guys, enjoy the filmmaking process
and go get some of those Travel Feels.
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