Ahoj! This is Zdenka. How to color grade
LOG or flat profile in Adobe Premiere
pro
all the way? I'm talking no LUTs, no
presets, no help. Doing it from the ground,
from 0, from the scratch.
There are several ways of doing it and
in today's video I'm gonna be sharing
the way
I do my own color grading. I have placed
timestamps below the video in a video
description in case you need to return
to certain chapters later on.
That way it's gonna be much easier. What
is LOG or flat profile? When you are
filming on your mirrorless camera or
smartphone
you are most likely filming in standard
picture profile. That means
that your video is very contrasty and is
very
colorful. The problem is that if you are
going to film on a very sunny day,
you will have a hard time trying to make
the video look good.
You will end up with blown up highlights.
There is simply not enough
data to work with. So solution to that
would be filming in LOG
or flat profile. What is that? A LOG
profile
or logarithmic profile is a color
profile or gamma curve
which has a wide dynamic and tonal range.
It means that all data when it comes to
highlights and shadows are there.
They are not last like they would be in
a regular standard profile.
The video you will take in LOG profile
will look very
washed out. There will be no contrast and
almost
no color. This has to be color graded in
post.
Flat profile is not LOG profile. The
camera turns down contrast,
sharpness and saturation so you get this
flat looking profile which also retains
lots of data in highlights and shadows.
It is a bit easier to color grade. Where
to find it on your camera or smartphone?
Each camera is different. Some cameras
have it already built in,
others don't. I have Sony A7Siii
which already has it built in. I just
go to settings and
select LOG profile. Next I have Canon M6
mark ii
which didn't have this profile in the
menu, however
I did install it myself. The same thing
goes if you have Canon M50, pretty much
the same.
You can download the free profile from
Technicolor and then just install it on
your camera.
I'm going to link it below in the video
description. So now when I go to picture
profiles
it is there. If you are filming on your
smartphone, you can film in Filmic pro
app which allows you to film in flat or
8-bit LOG version 2 profile
or newly edit 10-bit LOG version 3
profile.
I also like to use the Protake app
which allows me to film in LOG-C
profile. Simply enable and you are
ready to go.
Let's talk about LUTs. You can do two
things
to fix this video. You could apply
LUT. What is that? large stands for lookup
table.
Think of it as a preset. Those are
already pre-made looks which
when you apply over your LOG footage in
programs like Adobe Premiere pro or
DaVinci Resolve,
it will give you a certain look. Then you
can
color correct that further. I have made
few of those myself, I'm gonna link it
below the video in the video description.
The outdoor pack is coming up soon as
well. Or
you could forget the LUT and
color grade your footage from the ground
zero, from scratch, from nothing.
Some of you might get confused because I
said two different terms. One
is color correcting and the other one is
color
grading. What is the difference? Well, very
simply put,
the word correct means that we are going
to fix
some sort of a problem. So color
correction is meant to make the video
look exactly the way your human eyes
see. She right white balance, the right
colors. Color grading on the other hand
is adjusting color and contrast
to give the artistic feel. This is where
you change the video to get a certain
visual tone
or mood. Let's go ahead and open up Adobe
Premiere pro which is my preferred
program.
Let's go from editing to color. This is
where all the work will
happen. First of all, you have to ensure
that you have
correct lumetri scopes selected.
Go to Windows, make sure your lumetri
scopes are checked.
Somewhere in this area I'm going to
right click and pull out vector scope
and parade. Why do you want to look at
these? Parade which is
the left one will show you everything
when it comes to brightness.
The 0 line is where your blacks are.
The 100 line is where your pure
whites are. So if I'm going to stretch
the image down
until black hits black, this is how it's
going to look like.
Let's look at the other scope which is
the vector scope.
The scope shows colors. Center is where
the grey is and if you are going towards
the edge, this is where it gets more
saturated.
Reds are here, magenta, blues,
cyan, green and yellow.
So now that we have our setup in place,
first thing we need to do is
color correct the video, meaning, as I
said before,
that we need to get the video to look
like what our eyes are normally seeing.
To get the right
brightness, the right contrast, the right
colors.
Before we actually start color grading,
giving it a certain tone
and feel, you can do it 2 ways. Either
do it
in color wheels and match, where you
would be stretching shadows
mid-tones or highlights, pull these
sliders
up and down,
or you can do it in basic correction
panel which I personally prefer.
I'm going to drag the blacks down until
I see that some pixels from my image are
almost
touching 0. Then I'm going to drag the
white until I see that again a few
pixels almost hit
100.
Every video you're going to work on
might not have something white or
something black in a frame.
Don't only look at the numbers but
rather how the image you see
really looks like. For example, in this
video I cannot go all the way up
until it hits 100 pure white. It will
look blown out. So I'm going to keep it
just under 100.
Next, I'm going to drag the shadows down
a little bit until I see that
this looks balanced. To give it more
contrast,
I'm going to go to the next section
which is curves.
Here we can control overall contrast or
individual
colors. Here are your whites. When you
drag the curve above the line it is
going to get lighter.
Under the line it's going to get darker.
Here are your reds. Drag reds above the
curve and it's going to get more red.
Drag it under the curve and you are
going to take away the reds.
And the same thing goes with the greens
and blues. We are going to select whites
because we are going to be adding more
contrast to the video. We are going to be
creating what is called the s-curve.
I'm going to add two points to the curve.
One here
in the lower portion which I'm going to
drag down.
The image is going to get darker. I'm
going to drag just a little bit. You
simply don't want to overdo it.
Next point I'm going to create at the
top and drag it
upwards until I create this nice smooth
curve. It will add more brightness. The
image has now more depth.
You want to double check that the blacks
are not hitting the
0 line. That will mean that it's
crushing the blacks.
If that happens, just go back to the
basic panel and lift
the black tiny bit. And the same goes
with white. If you see it way too much
on the 100 line, then just bring the
whites a little bit
down. You just need to go back and forth
until you are happy
with what you see on the screen.
Saturation would be the next
step. I like to add a little bit of it so
I'm going to increase it a little bit
to about 109.7
in this case. I'm going to keep an eye on
the vector scopes.
When you see that the color is going way
too much out,
then it is way too much. But also I'm
using my eyes looking at my skin and
pillow here. I don't want to look orange
and I don't want
the pillow to be over saturated. Next
thing we are going to correct is white
balance.
And if I'm not wearing something white
on me, I actually always have
in my bag somewhere piece of paper. So I
pull it out and I just hold it in front
of me like this.
This will help me later on in the video
because I can set the correct white
balance
or sometimes it's gonna help me if I
accidentally forget
to set the correct white balance in a
camera like when it's cloudy and you
have it accidentally
set to sunny. To fix the white balance
I'm going to use
the white balance selector and click on
something
white in the frame. And now the white
balance has been adjusted.
If I feel that it is way too much orange,
I just adjust it a tiny bit more
to the left. Again, use your judgment, use
your eyes.
If you run into a situation that you
have no white paper with you and you are
not wearing
anything white but in your frame is a
person, what you can do you can select
just the skin to correct the skin
tone. I'm going to go to editing, effects,
create ellipse mask and only select the
face,
the skin.
take a look at the vector scopes. Right
on this line we have skin line.
If it is growing too much to the side,
then it means it has to be corrected. To
bring it back
on the line. I'm going to go to Hue vs
Hue curve. I'm going to click on yellow
and red
and I will drag the between up and move
left or right until I get most of it
perfectly on the top left line in vector
scopes.
Now I'm going back to effects and delete
the mask
and now we should be seeing the right
skin tone.
Now we are ready to start playing with
the video
to create unique look, the tone, the mood.
Let's go to editing and add another
lumetri color effect.
This is so we don't mess up the whole
color correction we did up till now.
This will be strictly color grading.
This way, if you do end up not liking the
whole look at all, you can just delete
and start fresh without having to do all
the steps we did
until now. This would be a disaster, so
you do
want to open up another lumetri color
effect.
To keep track which one is which, you can
rename them.
So right click on the top one which is
our first one. Rename and
type in LOG color correction.
Right click the lower one and rename to
grading.
Now you will know which one is which.
When it comes to color grading there are
no rules. It really depends on what
look, what unique tone you want to create
to your image. What you have in your head.
And you just have to transfer it
on the computer. So let me show you what
I would do with
this video and let me show you all the
tools you can use or what I'm using
to help with. First I'm going to work
with colors in
RGB curves panel. I'm going to start on
the red
line. Create 3 points which represent
shadows,
midtones and highlights and slightly
drag them
up or down. I'm going to start with mid
tones.
When I drag them up, I'm going to add red
a little bit.
when I drag them down I can reduce the
reds, so I'll play until I see something
I like.
I can do the same with highlights and
shadows.
If I really want to remove reds from
shadows, I'm going to drag the corner
point to the right.
Or if I want to add more red, I'm going
to drag it
up to the left. Next I'm going to play
with greens. The same thing.
I'm literally letting my senses, my eyes
navigate me to come up with the look.
There are no
rules. Lastly I'm going to play with
blues.
I could also play with whites again if I
want to add more contrast to it. I can,
by dragging the mid-tones up or down
if there is a certain color I want to
change. For example, if I'm filming
outdoors in the nature and I want
the greens to be deeper, darker greens,
this is where all is happening.
If I drag the whole line up and down, you
can see how crazily the colors are
changing.
Well, I don't want to do that. I'm going
to select for example just the greens.
The greens on the pillow.
So I'll click around the green and then
drag the green
up or down depending what I wanted to
change it to.
If I feel that the color is still a
little bit too strong
like those green pillows, I can
definitely turn them down a little bit. I
can tone it down.
So I'm gonna go to Hue versus Saturation
panel.
Here again I'm going to select the green
on the pillow
and drag it down to reduce the
saturation a bit.
Now it is not so punchy, not so strong.
It's more blended in the background.
Sometimes I run into problems when there
is
a little bit different color in certain
areas on the..
in the frame like for example the wall
here. I see a little spot here which is a
little bit
too red and I want to fix that. So what I
can do,
I can go to HSL secondary.
It is not going to affect all the colors
in a frame but only the colors you
select.
I'm going to click the color selector,
the pen with the plus sign and click on
the problem
area as it is quite difficult to see
what I selected.
I'm going to click on the color gray and
now I can
only see those colors selected. And then
with the arrows
I just drag left and right to make the
selector larger or
smaller. Now that I have it selected
I have to make an important step. Go to
refine
and push the denoise and blur all the
way to the right,
all the way to maximum. If you don't do
that, once you change the color,
you will end up with very ugly rough
edge.
Now I'll uncheck the color gray and go
to the correction
section where I will correct the problem.
So I'm going to move the temperature to
the blue
a bit and perhaps reduce the saturation
a bit as well.
And now there is no more colorful part
of the wall.
There is one more panel which I like to
use pretty much every time when I want
the video to have very clean
professional look.
That will be the very last step. This is
when I want the blacks to be pure black
and
white to be pure white. I'm going to go
to luma versus saturation panel.
Select the blacks, click here and drag it
down.
Select the whites and drag it down as
well. You will basically desaturate the
colors. Sometimes you're not going to see
much difference.
Sometimes you will see a huge difference.
I got into a habit of doing this every
single time to see
if it helps to clean up the look a
little bit.
And that would be the way I color grade
my videos. Like I said,
there are no rules. You can completely
use your imagination, play with the
colors. Put on some calm music,
go and have fun with color grading your
video.
Create something unique, some different
tones, some mood.
Whatever goes. Well, this was a long
tutorial. Hit the thumbs up if you found
it informative and useful. Subscribe to
future videos like these
and if you have any questions, comments
or simply want to say Hi
or suggest topic for future videos,
you know what to do. You can leave it in
a comment section below and I'll see you
my friends
in the next video.... Cau... Ahoj...