Color grading is an essential part of the post-production process.
It's one of the final stages in which the colorist can tell a visual story
and create an emotion through manipulating the exposures
and the colors in film.
In this video I wanna show my color grading workflow
inside Adobe Premiere Pro and share some essential tips.
[Cinecom’s intro music]
Hey guys, my name is Jordy for cinecom.net
and welcome to Creative Tuesday!
Before we jump into the nifty tips and tricks,
I’d like to thank Loupedeck for sponsoring this episode.
They have provided me with the Loupedeck+ control panel,
which is used for color correction and color grading tasks.
I've been working with it for a little month now,
which I always do prior to accept any sponsor deal.
And I can honestly say: I love it.
I've had some previous emails in the past from companies
asking me to review their video editing control panel.
But this is actually the first one that intrigued me.
I'm actually using it.
I have a few other control panels that were send to us in the past,
but they just lay in the closet, I don’t really use them.
Now, it's definitely not perfect.
But it's one of the most affordable panels on the market
that offers such a wide range of dials and buttons, that actually work.
So, Yannick and Lorenzo got a little bit jealous, and guess what?
They got their own Loupedeck now.
Alright, now let's jump into my color grading workflow.
By the way guys, you don't need to have this control panel to follow the video.
Color grading or color manipulation starts with your camera.
Assuming that you're not shooting raw,
every setting that you record in, is baked into the file.
That means, if you set a wrong white balance and your shot looks way too cold,
then it's gonna be hard to fix that in postproduction.
Now these are the obvious things about your camera,
but almost any DSLR type camera also has picture settings.
These define how much contrast, saturation, sharpness, etcetera,
should be added to the image.
Now, if you wanna get the most flexibility while color grading,
it's advised to shoot flat.
Flat means decreasing the contrast, decreasing the saturation.
With every brand of camera it works a little different.
Some have more options than others,
I would suggest to search on Youtube for your type of camera if this is all new to you.
Now some cameras even have the option to shoot in Log.
My Panasonic GH5 can do that and they call it V-log.
Sony cameras have their Log flavor, which they call S-log.
Essentially a log picture profile does the same.
It lowers the contrast and all, but it does that in a specific way
to get the most out of your precious camera.
The Loupedeck+ is initially designed for Lightroom,
a photo editing application.
But they recently made it work with Adobe Premiere Pro too, which is awesome!
As you guys know, I'm working on my travel video about Iceland right now.
Now, color grading should be the last step in the editing process,
however I believe that a specific color tone could be really beneficial during the editing.
It's gonna create an emotion, helping you to choose music, sound design,
visuals and of course the shots that go together.
That's why I always start by creating an adjustment layer from the Project Window
and drag that on top of my edit.
Usually I put this adjustment layer a few tracks higher, to keep room for editing.
On this adjustment layer, I'm gonna apply a very quick and basic grading
that sits somehow in the tone that I like everything to be.
Since I shot everything in a log format,
I'm gonna start off by going into my basic correction
and choose the VLOG REC709 input LUT.
Or I can also just press the L-1 key on my Loupedeck,
which goes a little bit faster.
And by the way guys, you don't even need to have the Lumetri panel open
to use the Loupedeck, which is pretty awesome,
as you can save some space.
This LUT here is specifically designed for my panasonic V-log,
which I can find on the Panasonic website.
If you're using a Sony camera then you can probably find a LUT
that goes together with your camera.
Essentially, what this LUT does is transform your log shot
back into something that looks nice.
But you're still retaining that log information underneath that LUT.
So we can pull our shot way more in all kinds of directions.
I'm starting off with a few corrections in the Basic tab.
All of these controls can also be found on the Loupedeck itself.
For starters, I make sure the exposure of my shot is where I want it to be.
The exposure doesn't always have to be perfect.
Sometimes you like to have a dark tone
or maybe a bright tone throughout your scene.
In this case, let’s for example say I wanna make it brighter
to keep the shot positive and warm.
Next up comes the highlights and shadows controls, which are super important.
When you're making your shot brighter, the highlights tend to be over exposed
which is very typical for video.
But if you wanna make your shots look cinematic, like film,
you'd better decrease those highlights, preserving them.
The shadows, on the other hand, can also be decreased,
as we're making our shot flat again, doing this we're creating some more contrast.
As a final touch I would work on the blacks and the whites.
These are the absolute darkest and brightest parts of your shot.
Usually when you have overexposed parts,
such as a practical or natural light in your shot,
they tend to turn grey if you lower the highlights control.
So by increasing the whites, I can make those parts white again
while retaining a dimmed highlight.
And that's usually the only thing I do there.
The next part will be within the Color wheels.
On the Loupedeck, it works a little bit different here.
Here you can see that the panel is initially designed for Lightroom, but it works.
Basically you have these three buttons right here
which will switch between the shadows, mid tones and highlights.
For example, you can select the shadows.
With the wheels here on the right
you can control the X and Y axes on the color wheel.
It's kinda weird in the beginning, but you get used to it.
I actually found out that you have more detailed control over the colors
using these dials instead of your mouse.
Anyways, in a lot of my work I tend to go for the teal and orange look.
Now, there are thousands of flavors within the teal and orange look,
so it doesn't always have to be that typical action movie look.
But by introducing some teal or blue into the shadows,
you make them appear deeper without having to underexpose the shadows.
And you can make them pretty teal or blue, don't be afraid to exaggerate here.
And you can create your own flavor of the teal and orange look right here.
Maybe you wanna lean more towards the teal or maybe more towards the green.
How much color are you gonna pull in to it.
Very interesting things which you can experiment with.
Then for the mid tones, we're gonna go the opposite, which is the orange.
So I tap on Saturation, which actually means mid tones.
This is kinda confusing.
You know what, I'm gonna create some labels, hang on.
There, that's better!
Your shot looks pretty blue now,
but because we're going to increase the orange for the mid tones,
the entire shot will neutralize itself and even be a little warmer near the skin tones,
but we keep remaining that beautiful teal in the shadows.
Now, here's a nice tip that I've seen in one of the videos from Matti.
Blacks should be black and whites should be white.
It makes it more polished, more cinematic.
In order to do that, we are first gonna have to create a new Lumetri color effect,
which can be done from the top.
This is important as we’re gonna make a global adjustment
to the previous color grading,
because we're about to make some changes into the Curves tab.
But this tab actually appears before the Color wheels.
So that means any adjustments on the Color wheels,
will ignore what we're doing within the Curves tab, or anything above.
Locate Luma vs Saturation.
This allows me to pull down the saturation for the shadows on the left side
and the highlights on the right side.
It's a very subtle change, but it’s those details that count!
Thanks for the tip, Matti!
So, that's basically what I do.
Let's say, 80% of our videos are color graded just like this, nothing more.
No fancy LUTs or anything like that.
I will then go ahead and lock that adjustment layer,
so that I can't make adjustments to it anymore.
Because I'm gonna edit my video now
and instantly have an idea of how my film is gonna look.
The Loupedeck has some basic controls for editing too,
however, since I'm using many short keys
and my hand sits on the normal keyboard anyways,
I don't tend to use it that much.
But you know, it's there.
Some people might like the possibility to add cuts or trim clips
using the Control Panel too.
While editing, sometimes I enable the adjustment layer back
and make slight adjustments.
Usually these are gonna be color adjustments
and not so much exposure corrections.
When I'm done with editing,
the color grading look that I wanna go for is usually there.
When it's not there, then I make some final adjustments.
Now obviously, not every shot is the same.
Some were exposed differently,
with other shots I forgot to change my white balance, etcetera.
So, now instead of changing my color grading on the adjustment layer,
I will apply a Lumetri color effect on each individual clip.
With the control dial I can easily go back and forward between the shots.
You can also use your Up and Down key for that.
Look at each individual shot and try to match it with the rest of the film.
There're tools like the Comparison View,
which helps you to compare two clips with each other.
During this process, I'm mostly using the temperature, tint and exposure dials.
In some occasions, the saturation is altered when changing the exposure drastically,
so that's something I would tend to dial up or down too.
And that's it!
That's my color grading workflow inside Premiere Pro,
which I hope you've learned some new insights from.
If you like to learn more about the Loupedeck+,
you can follow the first link in the description below.
Thank you Loupedeck for the support,
thank you guys for watching,
and as always:
Stay Creative!
-It’s December, that means it’s time to decorate for Christmas.
I’m decorating our live subs-counter.
-It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!
-And last but not least, our Cinecom Snow Man.
Look how pretty!