- If you're wondering why the colors in your videos
just don't look as good as some of the other videos
you see on YouTube, then the chances are
you need some simple color grading.
And that means you're also in the right place,
because we're about to give you the complete 101
on how to color correct your videos, right now.
(techno music)
Hey, it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video.
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to everything we mention in this video
you can find linked in the description box below.
So, let's jump into it.
Colors are a huge deal in video.
They're a big part of what grabs
your audience's attention, reels them in,
and gets them engaged with the whole experience.
A flat color profile, or something that's off in your color,
is incredibly distracting, and it looks not good.
But there's actually professionals out there
who just do color correction for big budget productions.
Fortunately, though, you don't need that
for regular marketing or YouTube videos,
and there's a few quick pointers you can use
that will get you most of the results
without much of the effort.
In this video, we'll take a crash course
on color correction for videos,
covering the basics you need to know to pump up those colors
and get your videos looking great fast.
And if you're noticing issues with the colors in your video
and you're wondering how you can prevent them,
then stick around, 'cause after we're done,
I'm gonna share the three camera settings
that you can lockdown while you're filming
to fix most of your color issues before they even happen.
So, on to the color correction.
Now, in regards to the amount of tools or what tools
you've actually got in your specific editing application,
this is definitely going to differ.
What you'll find in cheaper or low-end editing software
is gonna be totally different to what you'll find
in professional grade video editing software.
So, I'm gonna give you a quick run through
on the tools to find and use in your editing application
whether you're on a cheaper or low-end application
and a professional application as well.
So, for the examples in this video,
I'm gonna show you in ScreenFlow
and I'm also gonna show you in Adobe Premiere Pro.
So, if you're not using one of those two programs,
then you should still be able to get enough from this video
to go and apply what you've learned
to your editing software.
Okay, so we're here in ScreenFlow and we've just got
our video clip dropped down into our timeline here.
So, looking at our color correction tools,
if we come over under the Video tab here
down to Color Controls, you've got a couple
of really basic settings here: your saturation,
your brightness, and your contrast.
But what I would suggest is that you
don't jump straight into these three.
Go down to the Video Filters and hit the plus,
and the one you should always start with,
in my opinion, would be a Color Adjustment,
and start with the White Point Adjustment, and hit add.
Now what this will let you do is adjust,
essentially, adjust your white balance.
So, if you press on the white, you get the color wheel
that pops up, and you can grab this marker in the middle,
and when you click and drag on that,
just move it around ever so slightly,
you can adjust the colors, to either add more green,
add more red or pink to your shot to fix any mistakes
that you might have had in your filming.
So, this is, again, subjective, personal preference,
but you wanna move this around until your shot
looks good or looks the way that you're after.
You might wanna add a bit more blue
to make the shot a bit cooler,
or a bit more yellow to make the shot a bit warmer.
So, again, just really small movements here,
but this should be the place that you start
to get the colors looking the way that you want it.
So, we'll make it a bit warmer, about there,
and if we turn this on and off, you can see the difference.
Okay, so we can close out of that one.
And under Video Filters, what you've got in here as well
under Color Adjustments is your Exposure Adjustment.
This is where I'd suggest that you look at second.
So, add that down into your timeline,
and again, a really touchy one, but as you move this up,
you can brighten your shot.
Really, really touchy.
You don't wanna go that far.
Or you can darken it down a little bit if it's too bright.
So, you can see that we're only talking increments of .1
to brighten it up, just a little bit.
Okay, so that was a before and after,
made it a little bit brighter there.
And we've also adjusted our White Point Adjustment,
or our white balance.
So, once you've got your White Point Adjustment
and your Exposure Adjustment sorted,
you can also add in a Gamma Adjustment as well,
which will allow you to really tweak
the darker areas of your shot.
So, Exposure Adjustment will brighten the shot up
or darken the shot down as a whole,
but the Gamma will adjust the brights or the dark areas.
So, you can see we're brightening up
just the lighter areas of the shot
by lowering the Gamma, and if we increase this,
we're darkening the darker areas of the shot.
So, we can start to get a bit of contrast
back in there now by increasing the Gamma.
Before, after, that's a subtle one.
And the White Point Adjustment, just a different feel
by adding more warmth to the shot.
Now when that's done, we can come up here
and start playing around.
If you wanna boost the saturation, bring a bit more color
into your shot, you can add that in here or take it away.
So, we started at 100, let's add
a little bit more, maybe 107.
And if you wanna make minor adjustments
to the brightness or contrast from here,
you can do that as well.
Again, it's all just personal preference and going through
and finding out what looks best for you.
So, I think that's a decent improvement
in our shot from where we started.
If I turn all these off now.
So, you can see how quickly with just a couple
of really simple tools we're able to totally change
the look and feel of our video files
in really basic editing software.
All right, so here we are in Adobe Premiere Pro.
We've got the same video clip
dropped down in our timeline here.
And the effect that you'll wanna use
in Adobe Premiere for your color correction
is called Lumetri Color.
Now, you actually don't need to manually apply
the Lumetri Color effect to your clips anymore.
There's actually a panel at the top here,
and when you start making changes,
it will automatically apply the effect to your clip,
to whatever clip you're making adjustments to.
So, all we need to do then is to come over here
to Lumetri Color and start making adjustments.
Now you can see this is broken into tabs.
Basic Color Correction, Creative, Curves,
Color Wheels, HSL Secondary, and Vignette.
So, there is a huge amount of control
and advanced control for your color correction in here.
Now we are not gonna run through everything advanced.
This is a 101 color correction video.
So, the areas we're gonna focus on are
the Basic Correction and Creative tabs.
So, where you should start, same as we did in ScreenFlow,
is adjusting your white balance,
or correcting your white balance.
So, the first thing to do, then,
is to grab the white balance selector,
grab this here, and then select something
as close to white as you can in your scene.
So, we'll pick this white wall here in the background.
And below that we've got our two sliders
for temperature and tint.
So, as we select this and slide it to the left,
we're gonna add more blue.
As we slide it back the other way, to the right,
we're going to add more yellow or orange
to make the shot warmer.
Again, personal preference.
Make this shot a bit warmer.
Somewhere around there.
And the tint slider below it, we can either
add some more green, or add some more pink.
Now these are minor adjustments
that you would make to fix any color cast from any lights
in your scene, or if your camera settings were way out.
So, move these around until your shot
looks the way that you'd like.
After you've got your white balance sorted or close,
you can jump down to your exposure.
Again, this is the brightness of your shot.
So, as we increase it, it's gonna brighten the shot,
as we lower it, it's gonna darken the shot.
So, again, we don't wanna make huge adjustments here,
these are just minor adjustments.
O.2, so we've brightened that up a little bit,
and after you're happy with that,
then I would jump down to the shadows.
Now in the shadows here, this is where
we're going to be adjusting the dark areas,
or the shadows, of our shot.
So, we can darken those down a bit here
to make the shot a bit more contrasty.
You can see as we go all the way down,
it's a totally different look.
Though probably won't go down that far,
but we will go down just a bit here.
You can go up and down, move it around
until you find that sweet spot that you're happy with.
That's a technical term right there.
Somewhere around there looks pretty good.
Now if you want further control or refinement from there,
then you can either go back and start again
and keep refining down your white balance, your exposure,
or you can start playing with some of the other sliders
here as well, things like the highlights,
the whites and the blacks.
The blacks is one that we could darken down
a little bit more.
You can see it's a lot more of a slight adjustment here.
So, as I've kept saying in this video,
it really is personal preference
to get the look and feel that you're after.
So, you might wanna run through these
a couple of times each and tweak them back and forth
to really hone in that look.
So, once you're happy with that
or you get pretty close with that,
then you can jump down the Creative tab.
And, in here you'll be able to adjust that look further.
So, the overall vibrance and saturation of your shot.
So, we might add a bit more color
by boosting the vibrance.
Obviously, you don't wanna go too far here
or you'll look like an Oompa Loompa.
But, let's just bring this back here.
So, zero is default.
That looks really washed out now.
Let's add a bit of color in here
so I look a bit more tanned.
Somewhere around there is looking pretty good.
Now, if you wanna do a before and after comparison,
then come over here where it says Lumetri color
on our effect and hit the little fx.
Now, this'll toggle the effect on and off.
So, this is how it was originally.
And, this is how it is now.
So, there's a huge difference between the two.
Probably the last setting here
that you might wanna tweak with ever so slightly
would be the sharpen.
So, if we take this all the way down,
you'll see that we've softened our clip right down.
And, if we boost it all the way up
then we've added a heap of detail.
It really sharpened it up so you see every grain of hair
in my beard there.
So, you don't wanna go too extreme with this,
but depending on your shot, if you wanna
have a bit more detail in it, then you could increase
the sharpness here.
All right, so that wraps up
the 101 color correction in Adobe Premiere Pro,
sticking with the Basic Color Correction
and the Creative tab.
Now, obviously, as you can see,
there is so many more settings and options and control
that you have here in the rest of the Lumetri color effect
or plug-in so, feel free to jump in and have a play around.
But, in order to get you started, stick to
the Basic Correction tab and the Creative tab
and you'll be able to get some amazing results.
We're about to get to the part where I show you
how to prevent most of your color issues upfront
with a few simple camera settings.
But, there's just one more critical thing to remember
when you're color correcting your videos
that I see a lot of people forget.
Once you've finished color correcting your video,
it's a great idea to test it on a couple
of different devices.
So, if you've got a second computer
or a second computer monitor, you can check the colors on
or even better, if you can check it on your mobile device.
As most people these days consume content
using their mobile device, if you can make sure
that your videos look the way that you want to
on your mobile devices or on an iPad or a tablet,
then that is gonna be ideal
because it's a good representation
of what the masses or a heap of people
are going to be seeing your content looking like.
So, it's a good idea to test it
on a couple of different devices wherever possible.
The biggest reason you wanna do this is if you're editing
on your desktop or laptop then the screens can be
totally different between makes and manufacturers
and, also the different brightness and contrast
and color settings that you can apply
to each of them as well.
In top level productions this isn't a problem
because they're using special monitors
that are calibrated specifically for color grading.
But, obviously most of us here won't have access
to monitors like that, so testing on a couple
of different devices is a great place to start.
So, you've got the basics
on how to color correct your videos.
If you're keen to take things further,
I'm gonna share with you a link to a great tutorial
on some more advanced color correction techniques
in just a minute.
But first, let's take a look
at those simple camera settings
to prevent a lot of color issues altogether.
So, there's three settings that you can dial in
and lock down on most cameras to help you
get the best color while you're actually recording.
The first one is your white balance.
White balance is the setting in your camera
that will let you adjust the color temperature
of your shot.
So, you've normally got presets
built into most cameras out there
for things like filming on a cloudy day,
for filming outside in a sunny day,
for filming indoors under incandescent lights
or under tungsten lights as well.
So, you've normally got a heap of presets
and they're normally the best place to start.
Now, some more advanced cameras will actually
let you dial in or manually adjust
the color temperature itself so that you can choose yourself
if you want it to be more warm or more cool
to get the look that you're after.
So, I'd usually recommend to start with the presets
and cycle through and find the one that either matches
your shooting environment or the look that you're after.
If you've got the advance settings and you're not finding
what you want in the presets, then feel free
to jump in and tweak that to get the look
that you're after.
The second setting you'll wanna lock down
is the picture profile.
Now again, most cameras will have presets for these.
There's normally things like a cinema profile,
a portrait profile, a scenery profile,
and some cameras will also give you access
to what's called a Log profile as well.
So, a Log profile is where you're filming
in a flat color profile.
So, on the camera itself it doesn't look that good,
but you do all the magic and all the color grading
in your editing software to get the look
that you're after.
So, in most cases I would recommend,
if you're looking to dial everything in
and get everything right in-camera
that you look at the profiles first.
And, when it's for a starting point or which one
should you choose, I would suggest that you cycle
through the presets, look at the cinema profiles,
look at the standard profiles, and the portrait profiles
to see if one of those matches the look
that you're after.
If not, then use the standard profile
or the neutral profile and then you can then make
further tweaking to it in your editing later.
The third setting you need to lock down
in your cameras in order to get the best shot out of it
is the exposure.
Now, this is going to be a little bit different
depending on the camera or phone that you're using.
But, the exposure is essentially the brightness,
so how bright or how dark your shot is.
And, by kicking this out of auto and locking it down
in a manual mode, this'll stop any adjustments
for the light changing as things change in your scene.
So, if someone walked through your scene,
there's no chance that your shot is gonna get brighter
or darker based on that movement.
So, depending on the camera or phone that you're using,
your exposure could just be one setting
where you get to chose brighter or darker
or it could be broken down into three different settings,
a combination of your ISO, your shutter speed,
and your lens aperture.
Now, if you're after a full explanation and walkthrough
on those settings, then check out the video
linked up in the cards now where we cover
our best camera settings whether you're on
a DSLR point and shoot,
mirrorless, or just your smartphone.
So, to quickly summarize that up, the three things
that you need to lock down and set to get
the best results in-camera are your white balance,
your picture profile, or your video profile,
and your camera exposure or brightness.
Now, if you're looking for some more advanced
color correction techniques, then check out the video
linked on screen now and you'll get exactly that.
I'll see you soon.