Advanced Color Grading in Final Cut Pro (Built-in Tools & Color Finale 2)

in this video i'll walk through my  advanced color correction workflow   we'll cover isolating colors with secondary  selections using the final cut built-in tools   as well as some new features introduced in the  latest update of color finale rafael and welcome   to the channel where our goal is to always fix it  in camera and then finesse it in post and i always   appreciate the early thumbs up because we all  want the colors in our videos to look fantastic   and if you haven't seen it already i did a basics  to color correcting and grading log footage make   sure you check that out it's a nice complement to  this video the link is in the description here's a   little rundown of what we'll cover in this video  secondary masking and selections using the hsl   hue saturation and luminance to make sure that  we're affecting only the colors we intend to like   skin tones or very specific colors we'll adjust  the hue versus saturation to ensure the blacks   are black and the whites are white so we don't get  any funky color tints in weird places and finally   those little subtle changes that i use to finish  off a color grade things that most people won't   immediately notice but your brain notices them on  a subconscious level these are the things that i   do on my client work to bring it all together  so one of the first things that we want to do   is make sure that we're using the latest final  cut pro anything 10.5.4 or higher would be great   so for this particular shot it was shot and log i  have a whole video that is dedicated to the basics   of color grading c log without any plugins but  i'm just going to do that really quickly right now   just walk through the steps so i'm going to add in  a color wheels i'm going to bring down the shadows   again i want it to be close to zero here for  the shadows i'm going to bring up the highlights   and i can tell this part right here is the skin  tone this is all the hat on top and i'm just going   to bring down the shadows again to make sure that  it is kind of nicely balanced right now i'm just   going through this quickly i'm adding in a little  bit of contrast overall just some separation i'm going to add a crop and i like choosing a  piece of the skin just to make sure that we got   the highlights right where we want them between  40 and 70 rie that's a good place to have it   but on the skin tone indicator this is the skin  tone is definitely leaning a little bit to the   red and sometimes it's a little bit further  and sometimes it leans to the yellow depending   on which lights you use and and how your  camera is set i'm going to turn off the crop   without adjusting it any further and just turn  off the crop right now and make sure that this   is deselected otherwise it's going to prevent us  from doing the next step so make sure that this   isn't blue so this is a base grade and i have a  whole another tutorial which talks about how to   color correct log footage with no plugins and  in that one i would just do a quick general   skin tone color correction where i would adjust  it but the problem with that workflow is that   if i adjust the skin tones in a broad stroke like  this i would adjust all the other tones and colors   in the shot but i just want to affect the skin  tones so this is where the advanced part comes in   i'm going to go back to the color in the inspector  and i'm going to add another color wheels but i'm   going to add in a mask but i only want to select  the skin tone make sure that the eyedropper is   selected and we're going to select the skin  tone and try to get a good selection without   getting into too many different colors i'm also  going to push shift and then select the other side   view masks and that's a pretty dirty mask  you want to definitely tweak with the hsl   to make sure that you're getting only the skin  tones you can always expand that out if you need   to see a little bit more and this is by pulling  these little handles right here it's going to it's going to soften it out   so the more refinements you do the  better it's going to work out for you and if it's getting parts like this that's okay  because it's falling within the same color so   we're going to be affecting it all but you can  always add another mask on top of this later   to only isolate the skin tones or mask these  out from the background i'm going to turn   off the mask and so now we haven't actually  done any adjustments to it we just selected   the color now we can just affect that  color and go and wherever we want to go   so i'm going to just reset that i'm  going to go back and turn on my crop   and go back to the color wheels and now i  want to make sure that the skin tone falls   on the skin tone indicator as  close as possible and because   it was exposed right and it was shot with the  right color temperature it's a pretty simple fix so i'm just going to turn off the crop for this  shot it's not a huge change but you can definitely   see that the skin warms up and looks a  little bit better we're not affecting the   background like we were with the the basic color  correction so that's how you get the skin tones   and now what we can do is we  can copy and then paste the color wheel the second color wheel right back  onto that same piece of footage we can open   up that third color wheel and then we can just  invert the color selection so we're selecting   everything but the skin tone  so now i'm just going to reset   this parameter and now i can start adjusting  everything outside of the skin tone you can see so everything except for the skin tone is being  selected just going to reset that and now we can   add in a little bit of teal into all aspects into  the highlights into the shadows into the mid-range   we can also darken the background overall so i'm  going to bring down the midtones not too much   you can also bring up but now we're just affecting  everything except for the skin tone so it doesn't   matter if we want to add a moody look to it we  know that the skin tones are where they should   be we can also desaturate the the background  to make the skin tones pop a little bit more   but overall that's where i would tweak until i  find the look that i'm going for so let's take   a look at that together that's the  base grade right out of the camera fix the skin tones and then adjust the background and add a little bit of  a hue and tint to everything except for   the skin tone so i know that the skin  tones are exactly where they need to be   at this point i would add a little  bit of sharpen 2.5 percent looks good i would add a vignette overall so that's where we started  and this is where we got to   and then i would add in one  more thing after everything else that is a hue and saturation curves and i would  go to luma versus sat i would make two points   close to the edges i would drag down the darks and  i would drag down the highlights make sure there's   no color tints in the highlights especially over  here in the hat and there's no color tints in the   the darkest parts of the shadows over here and  over here i want to make sure that those are true   desaturated colors both here and there because  without that there's a little bit of a tint that   happens so we want to make sure that that is  removed it's one of those things that i like to   add to make sure there isn't a weird kind of cast  of color on on those specific parts of the image   i'm liking the skin tones i'm liking the overall  balance and at that point i would say it's pretty   much good to go and another great use for that  is to change specific hues to different colors   we're going to add some color wheels i'm going to  add a mask i'm going to select all that red push   shift and select even more you can use the hsl  or you can use 3d which is a simplified version   of doing the exact same thing  it's a little bit more streamlined   so i'm just going to do the same thing  i'm just going to keep adding until i have   the colors all the colors that  i want and push option and i'm just going to add the softening up quite a bit click view masks and now we can change that color  so this is really useful for scenes where colors   are really vibrant or too vibrant where you can  desaturate them just to tone them down because   in this kind of shot you want to make sure that  it's his face that we're capturing that we're   focusing on that that the viewer is focusing on  but in other instances you can actually bump up   that saturation so we could tone it down just like  that you can make it brighter and make it darker   if there's something that is distracting in your  shot this is a great way to tone it down and bring   it down there's a great example of zack snyder  doing that to all the the gas cans in army of the   dead those red gas cans are too red and so we had  to go back and isolate all the gas cans and just   take some chroma so now we're going to do the same  thing but we're going to do it with color finale   i just find it a lot simpler and everything is  in one place instead of having to add all these   different layers and it's even easier to copy  the masks now the way that they've designed it   so make sure you check for the latest update  for color finale make sure that you're on color   finale 2.4 or higher for all these features  to be available to you just click check for   updates to make sure that you are up to date and  you have to do this while final cut is closed   so add color finale drag it over one of my  favorite features right off the bat i don't even   have to do anything with log footage you can just  click assume log it brings it to a neutral place   right off the bat but obviously  this is not where we want to be so   we need to adjust this a little bit further so i  can definitely see that it's not bright enough and   there's not enough contrast overall so i can  do that here just add a little bit of contrast   but we're going to go into the layers  open up your edit layers palette and then you can bring down the shadows you can  bring up the highlights just to where comfortable   and i know that this was already overexposed but  i'm looking at this here this is the skin tone   and we're just bringing that  up between 40 and 70 ire   so i want that between here and here so in  terms of the contrast that's a little bit better   but again i want to affect the skin tone  separately from the background so i don't   want to adjust anything here because if i do that  it adjusts everything in the highlights or even in   the mid tones so what we're going  to do is we're going to add a group we're going to add color wheels into that group  and within this group i'm going to create a   mask and i create a group because then we can  add in multiple layers but it'll only happen   underneath that one mask so you don't need to  create multiple masks to work with a specific   thing click on the mask i'm going to click on  the image mask which brings up the hsl mask   i'm going to click on the color picker and i'm  going to select the color i'm going to click on   the plus the add range and click on it again  and just keep adding it until feel like we have   most of the colors you can just click down here  you can display the mask input and the mask so you   can see that we're getting the face but not the  eyes so at this point i don't want to try to go   in here because this is we're starting to get into  the darker shades so what i'm going to do is now   play with the hsl and i'm going to try to expand  that mask and just try to add in a little bit more it's starting to affect the rest of  it i'm going to add in a fall off   i'm going to add in a little  bit more of a fall off   and i'm just going to add in a one percent  blur i can go to the color wheels or selecting just the skin tones or anything that was the same  as the skin tones anything that's within the skin   tone range of the colors so i'm going to turn on  that crop we had from the beginning and the skin   tones are a little bit to the red still so i'm  just going to shift them over and the brightness   is where i like them to be so i can turn off the  crop again and again just affecting the skin tones   in that ever so slight way so now i want to  affect the background so i would name this   skin tones and then i would create   another group and i would call this background  and then i would add another color wheels   before i do anything i would add in a mask go to  this mask right click on the hsl mask click copy   go to the background mask click on the  mask and then click paste and then click   inverted so now this color wheel will only  be affecting everything in the background   not the skin tones so now we can add in a little  bit of teal can drop the shadows down a little bit   even in the mid tones add in a little  bit of teal and even the highlights then we can just adjust ever so  slightly just the balance between   the foreground and the background and then  overall i would add in an hsl curves click on   sat versus luma click on lock curves to point click in the shadows and in  the highlights and then drag   those parts down to make sure that we got rid of  any color casts that are happening in the darkest   part of the image and in the brightest part of  the image and then there's a new feature called   filter which which you can add  your sharpness right here overall or you can tone it down or crank it up but again  everything is about being subtle so i would add in   about 15 sharpness because we  have the mask for the skin tones   you can actually do the same thing and go into  filter in the skin tones click on sharpness   and color finale allows you to get a negative  sharpness so you can actually bring it down and   give yourself some softened skin if that's what  you wanted to do so i'm just going to turn on the   box blur you can see that it's only going to  affect the skin if you want to do any kind of   skin softening i would leave it with the sharpness  i wouldn't use the other ones since we're already   here we can add a filter effect and because  of the masks you can actually create your own extra bokeh create it on both  sides if that's what you want to do so before and after color finale has trackable masks you can actually you can actually create a mask that can follow a  subject this is a tool that is found in davinci   resolve so just add in for this one let's add in  a 60 feather we're going to adjust the brightness   of the face overall say if you wanted to  do that or if you want to track the eyes   just click on the mask click on the  ellipse and then just let it track this is why i really like color finale because of  these kind of features that just put everything   into one little tight package and they can just  turn it on and turn it off as you see fit and   i'm pretty sure that the tracking is part  of the color finale pro package so let's   do another example where we're going to choose  and change the color or make this a little bit   more saturated just to make it pop so we use color  finale put it on we're going to open up the layers add some color wheels we're going to add in a  mask click on image mask for the hsl mask we're   going to set our primary color we're going  to add some more the only thing that i don't   like right now is that you have to keep clicking  it's not like in final cut where you are able to   hold and click and just drag a larger selection  but it's still pretty good this is a new feature   so i'm actually quite happy make sure  that we're not choosing the hair color i'm just going to double check the composite  i'm going to add in a one percent blur overall this is going to be one of those cases  where having that track mat is going to be very   important so click on the result i want to  make sure that we're not affecting the head   so i'm just going to create a simple  oval or ellipse over over the head and then i'm going to be able  to track that so let that go and when it's done i'm just going to set  the mode to subtract to make sure that   it's not affecting anything else deselect  the mask and click on the color wheels   and this is where you can actually start affecting  the color you can change the color so we're just   going to bump up the saturation so if you take  a look before and after let's make sure we get   the mid tones definitely more saturated add any  curves i'm gonna add a new mask click on the mask   going to copy and then paste  it deselect the mask and now we can start changing the color so if you're ever in a situation where you need to  change the color of an item in your shot this is   a great way to do that really make sure that the  audience is focusing where you want them to focus   where do you want your audience to look and what  you want them to see really is up to you that   is the simplified version of my advanced color  grading definitely for the bigger projects i send   it out to the colorists when i'm working on mood  boards or concepts with clients this is a great   way to get exactly what you need but the beauty  of doing it all in final cut and with color finale   is that you can then save out your own luts and  use them throughout your entire project without   having to learn a whole nother system just to  get these kind of grading tools if you found this   video helpful make sure you give it a thumbs up  and here's a playlist with more color correcting   videos also i live stream on my second channel  where i do deep dives on the creative process   as well as freelance financials so make sure  you check that out as always thanks for watching

Channel: Rafael Ludwig

Views: 2,278

Keywords: canon, color grading, color grading tutorial, color grading vs color correcting, easy color grading tutorial, how to color grade without luts, color grade log footage, c log, how to color grade log, final cut pro x tutorial, final cut pro x color grading tutorial, color grade final cut pro x, EOS R, log footage, color grade log, color finale pro tutorial, color finale 2 tutorial, color finale essential, color finale 2, color finale, Secondary Color correction Final Cut Pro

Id: VDYmwNiHO_k

Length: 21min 59sec (1319 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021