Today's video is sponsored by ViewSonic.
So what we're talking about is how you do color grading,
and I'm gonna break down step-by-step the basic things
that you need to know and the workflow to be able to get
better looking footage out of the shots
that you're capturing.
All right, guys let's get into it.
(dramatic impacting music)
So what I want to do in this video
is demystify the process of color grading.
It's actually more simple than it looks,
and you just have to understand what to look for
to be able to get the best look out of the footage
that you are capturing.
Now your camera does a great job
of getting good looking footage,
but what you do in post is tweak it just a little bit,
and then you can make that footage look even better,
and a lot of times people are looking at different creators
and seeing these insane color grades
and just wanting to buy like LUTs or presets.
When in reality, all it takes is a little bit of tweaking
and understanding what you're doing with the color,
and then you can get these looks.
You don't have to go and buy a preset,
and most the time when you buy a LUT or preset,
it will work to a degree, but you still have to have
a knowledge of understanding how to color grade
to be able to use those LUTs properly,
and we'll talk about LUTs and preset looks
towards the end of this video
because that is the third step of the process.
So once you start looking at your shots
and comparing them against each other,
you'll start noticing that not everything is shot perfect
shot to shot to shot to shot,
and even if you're a super skilled shooter,
and you're getting some of the best footage out of camera,
once you sit down in the edit,
you'll notice discrepancies between the footage,
and when you really see a video pop,
that's when the color gradient is on point for all the shots
and so it just flows.
So what you're doing with color grading
is correcting issues, matching shots,
and then creating a look so that your footage has more
of an impact with the story that you're telling.
So it's a three step process to be able to color grade.
Now step one is just correcting for issues.
This is exposure, this is colors,
this is everything that might be wrong in your footage.
So if something's overexposed or underexposed,
something has a blue or a green color cast to it,
that is the first step in this whole process.
Now step two of the process
is you wanna group these shots together.
So if you have a sequence like I have here,
it's four shots back-to-back
that you wanna have the same look to it,
you're gonna group these together.
And then the third step of this is you're going to create
a look that goes across all of these clips,
and the beauty of this workflow is that you're doing
all the heavy color grading at first,
and then when it comes to creating your look,
you're building that look over a batch of footage.
So you're not having to go shot by shot by shot,
and it makes the whole process much easier and faster
and a lot more enjoyable for you as the creator.
Now the tools that I'm gonna use are in Final Cut,
but you'll find these tools in most editing software.
If you're using a basic editing software,
you might have only access to some of these tools,
but I want you to continue to watch this video
so that you have an understanding
of the what you're supposed to be looking for
when it comes to color grading.
Before we get into the editing software,
I just wanna mention that having a good monitor
makes all the difference when it comes to color grading.
For me, I personally use ViewSonic monitors.
So this is one of them that I use.
This is a 4K seamless monitor.
Like it's amazing to work with this
because of the color accuracy and the ability
that you can just see all the colors
as they should be on this monitor.
I have another ViewSonic monitor.
I have the huge curved one in my office, as well,
and I use ViewSonic monitors because when it comes to colors
they're super on point.
If you don't have a monitor that's made
for people doing this kind of creative work,
photographers, filmmakers, graphic designers,
then what will happen is what you're producing
isn't gonna end up looking right
when you've finished the product.
So you wanna make sure that you have the best looking image
when you're going through this color grading process.
So I highly suggest
if you're in the market for a new monitor
and you really wanna enhance your workflow,
then check out the ColorPro from ViewSonic,
and I'll put a link down below in the description
to the monitors that I use
because I think these are awesome tools
that we need as creators,
and when I'm home, I am always working
off of one of these monitors.
All right, so let's jump into Final Cut,
and let's go through this three-step process.
Now there's three tools that we'll use
in our color grading software that allows us to see
the color values on a chart.
The first one is your luma waveform.
And what this shows is all your exposure values
from black to white, and so it's a visual representation
of the exposure of your image.
Now the second tool that we're gonna use is our RGB parade.
So this is showing your luma waveform,
but it's broken up into your red, your green,
and your blues within the image,
and you're gonna use this to help balance
the color of your footage out.
Now the last tool that we're gonna use is the vectorscope,
and this shows all the colors within your footage
and it puts it on this disk-like graph,
and the image in the center is your trace,
and the further away from the center
the more saturation towards that color.
So you can see in this footage right here
it has blues and yellows in it with a little bit of reds.
So you can use this to help match the colors in your shots
and also the intensity of the saturation.
So if something has a lot of blues in it
and it's highly saturated in the blues,
you'll be able to visually see this here on the graph.
Now let me show you a shot that needs corrected.
In the luma waveform, you can see that all the traces
at the bottom of the graph which means
that this footage is underexposed.
Now on the RGB parade, you can see that the red channel
and the green channel are pretty even,
but the blue channel is spiking which means
that there's a blue color cast on this footage.
And then on the vectorscope, you can also see this
because all of the saturation and colors in the image
are pushing towards the blue channel,
and so looking at these graphs,
you can see exactly what you need to do.
You need to fix the exposure
and you need to fix this color cast
that's happening on the footage.
Okay, so let's just do a quick grade
of this shot of me and an elephant.
So this is super dark so it needs to be properly exposed.
The tools you have at your disposal are your master
which is gonna affect all the exposure values
in your footage.
You have just your highlights.
You have just your shadows,
and then you have your mid-tones.
And so you're gonna use all four of these tools
to properly expose your image.
Start by pulling the highlights up,
and you just want to make sure
that you're not over exposing here at a 100.
So parts of my neck might start exposing eventually,
but we're also gonna play with the mid-tones
to bring up the exposure,
and it's gonna brighten up the image as a whole.
Now we'll keep our shadows near zero,
and then we'll use our combination of playing
with our mid-tones and our highlights
to get an exposure that looks much better,
and you can see that on our graph all the exposures
are slowly drifting up the more that we play
with our highlights and our mid-tones.
And typically I don't touch the master
when I'm doing these grades.
I use a combination of my shadows,
highlights, and mid-tones,
and you can see here this is before and this is after.
The shot is now properly exposed.
Now also with this because I shot with less saturation
I'm gonna need to add some saturation here.
So depending on which color profile that you're working on,
you might add saturation in this part.
So you can pull up your vector scope
and you can see where your exposures are lined.
This looks like the color is pretty good.
We don't have a crazy color cast on this.
We got some blues, we got some greens,
and we've got some yellows which is true to this footage.
I'm gonna pull up my saturation and you can see how those
are all expanding from the the center,
and I'm just gonna pull that up to my liking.
So I like it right around there.
It's not super saturated, but it's not super desaturated.
So let's pull up the RGB parade,
and now we would work on a color cast.
So just looking at this footage, everything's pretty close.
It might have a slight green tint to it.
So I'm gonna put a little bit magenta into it,
and that's using your tint tool,
and this goes from magenta on one side
to green on the other,
and then on color temperature,
you have either tungsten or daylight.
So that's your blue, your oranges,
your greens, your magentas.
So let's go back.
I'm gonna add a tad of magenta into this.
And that looks pretty good for the first shot.
Now let's do another shot that has a blue color cast.
So we're gonna go through that same process.
I'm gonna pull up my luma,
and I'm gonna do a quick fix on the exposure.
We're gonna pull up our vector scope.
and I'm going to add a little saturation to this,
and this is where you can see
where we have a major issue going on.
Everything is pulling towards the magentas and the blues.
So that means our color balance is off,
and you can also just see that by looking at the footage.
So I'm gonna pull up my waveform RGB parade,
and you can see very clear that it's towards the blue
like in the vector.
And so now I'm gonna use my temperature, my tint,
and I'm also gonna start playing with the colors
of your highlights, your mid-tones, and shadows
to try and get this color cast out.
So I'm gonna use a mix of my RGB parade,
and just watch as I make tweaks,
and then if you're working in a sequence,
you can start comparing this to another shot that you have
and start working on getting the color as close as possible.
Now this is where practice comes in
because you're gonna start noticing
some issues with your footage,
and it's just gonna take working with these tools
and playing with different types of footage
so that you can start understanding
where you need to drag the colors to be able to get
the proper exposure and the proper color for each shot.
Now I have two shots here that match really closely
when originally they were far off.
So step one is your basic color grade,
and step two is group these shots.
so I'm gonna work with these shots together
and group them so that they all have the same exposure
so that we can move onto now step three.
So now that I have these two shots that are matching,
let's put a look on both of them,
and so what I use is an adjustment layer
above both these.
This is just an empty layer file,
and what you can do is then create looks on this file.
So for example, if I was to pull up my color grading tools,
I can make adjustments, some crazy color,
and it's gonna affect both the same way.
So this is why you wanna set up all your footage
in step one and step two so that they match
and then group together because then the final step
is use these adjustment layers and affect all the images
and create your creative look.
So for me, I'm gonna add a LUT,
and like I said at the beginning of this video,
you can't just drop a LUT on
and expect it to work every time.
So I have a custom LUT that I made,
and it's super extreme in terms of reds and teals.
So with this LUT at full, it's like a crazy look,
but you can see what I've done to build this LUT.
I'm pulling in the reds, and I'm pulling into the cyans.
So I'm basically compressing all the colors
into those two streams of colors,
and the reason is that creates color contrast.
Now this creates a very distinct look,
and this might not necessarily be what you want
out of this footage, and so I'm gonna use this LUT,
but I'm not gonna use it at full.
I'm only gonna put it on say 25%,
and the reason is now I've created a look
over both the shots that has a very different quality to it
than the original shot has.
Now let's pull in another LUT here from CINECOLOR.
It's called Sunlight 11.
So they've developed a series of LUTs
that are for different lighting scenarios.
So they have a bunch for sunlight,
and you can see when I pop this on,
gives a higher contrast look to the footage
and it gives you a very warm color.
Again, if you don't like this look,
you could just dial it back at this point.
Maybe I'll do like 50%
and that creates a completely different look to the footage.
So if you don't wanna use a LUT
and you just wanna build your own look,
you can also use this adjustment layer
and play around with your colors
and create more of a distinct look.
And because we fixed all the footage on the front end
and got everything to match,
we can just play with these colors
and it affects all the footage,
and then we can see how it translates
to all the different shots that we've worked on.
What's really cool about these tools
is once you understand how they work,
you can pull up a shot of another creator
or another film if you really like the look of the grade,
and pull it into your software.
Just pull a screen shot
and you can see on the vectorscope where the colors lie,
how much saturation there is.
You can look at your RGB parade
and be able to start pulling apart
why you like that look.
Is it because the colors are warmer
or is it because the colors are more cooler, more blues?
When you look at the luma waveform,
where did the exposure sit?
Are they more in the middle and it's more flat
or is the image super contrasty
and there's a lot of darks and a lot of highlights?
And so start using these tools to start picking apart looks
that you like to see and you can use that to help start
guiding where you wanna push your looks
of the footage that you're creating.
So these are tools to be able to help you see the colors
and to be able to fix problems but also to be able to
create looks so you can have that cinematic quality
and create something distinct with the footage
that you are shooting.
All right, guys, I hope that was helpful in giving you
an understanding of how to start color grading.
Now if you're looking for a monitor,
I highly suggest the ViewSonic monitors.
They work great in getting awesome color accuracy.
And if you wanna see more videos on how to do color grading,
I'll put a playlist here on the screen that goes through
all of my color grading tutorials.
All right, guys, that's it.
I'll see on the next one.