Color Correction For Beginners - Basic Color Grading Concepts Tutorial In Davinci Resolve 16

[Music] hey guys Casey Farris here and thanks for checking out another video of mine here on YouTube today we are talking insanely basic color correction listen hey listen if you already know about color correction watch a different video this is so basic if you already know how to color correct stuff this won't teach you anything okay that said if you have no idea where you're even starting with color correction this will give you a really good basic overview of how it works and what the big idea is are we cool color correction all you're really doing with color correction is solving a problem your image looks a certain way and you want it to look different that's it if you like the way the image looks you don't need to do color correction just just do just move on to audio or something if you do want it to be different the very first thing you have to ask is why what is wrong with the image what do you want to change here's an image of a guy making some coffee I always look at an image and ask if there are things that I don't like about it the very first thing that I notice is that there's nothing that looks really really black there are things that I can tell that I know in my mind are supposed to be black things like maybe the shadows here and the handles down here maybe some of the darker parts in his apron but it's not it's like kind of dark gray so that's one thing that we need to adjust the other thing is that I don't feel like the colors are very bright everything's kind of muted like pastel tones which again if you like that is totally fine but if you want it to be bright and happy this isn't doing it so that's another thing we should probably think about another thing I'd say about this image is it doesn't look like there's anything that's bright white either there's some stuff that's kind of lighter but it's not like there's anything that's like super bright again all of this stuff is okay if you're okay with it but when you're talking about a normal image you want everything to kind of live where it's supposed to like it should look normal to your eye if something looks black in real life it should look black on video if something is bright white in real life it should look bright white if something is a bright color the color should look bright on the video makes sense right so anytime an image is different than normal life it's kind of flavoring that shot with an emotion if the colors aren't very bright it just doesn't come off quite as exciting maybe if the image is tinted blue it might seem like it's a little bit more cold or sad if the image is a little bit yellow maybe it feels like the weather's a little warmer or more sunny or a little bit more happy when colors aren't normal they convey an emotion and if it's not the emotion that you want it's not the color that you want so once we know what we want and where we're at it's just a matter of fixing it which really comes down to the tools I happen to think that DaVinci Resolve is pretty much the best tool for color correction currently available and it's free so that's cool so let's address these problems one at a time first of all there's nothing that's black that means that the darkest parts of the image and maybe the whole image altogether needs to be a little bit darker there's a couple different ways to fix that but the easiest way to darken the darkest parts of the image is with the lift which is down here in the lower left hand corner this is in the color wheels section of resolve each of these color wheels adjusts a certain part of the image lift is the darkest part of the image gamma is the mid-range and gain is the brightest part of the image offset is the whole image all together what I'll usually do is adjust the lift first and there's a couple different controls there's the color wheel which if you grab the middle of this changes the hue and the saturation of things when I move this around you'll see all the darkest parts of the image go crazy like it's some kind of disco you know there's also this little gray wheel here this is called the master wheel and that's pretty much the brightness of that part of the image so if I grab that and move it back and forth we'll see the darkest parts of the image get brighter or darker depending on whether I slide to the left or right if I want to reset either of these I can double click on them or I can go up or I can go up to this little circle arrow and click that and that'll reset both of them so I want black things in the image to look black so what I'll try first is just grabbing this brightness slider this master wheel and just dragging it to the left and I'm gonna look at my image until it looks like the black things are actually black well that's about where we're getting to there's also an aspect of this that comes in handy called color scopes I'm not going to go over all of this right now I have a very nice video about that and that's up here yeah right here if you want to learn about scopes go there long story short is this is a graph of the colors of the image and it's a lot easier to figure out exactly what the colors are when you look at the graph rather than just trusting your eyes on this image but you can definitely get a start just by eyeballing so now the blacks look a little bit more black what about things that are supposed to be white there are things that look like they're supposed to be white this part of the copy maker parts on his shoulder maybe these bags back here but they just don't look bright white they look kind of off-white or beige let's see what they look like if they're a little bit brighter again to change a part of the image I'm going to go to the color wheels down here and I'm going to go to the game this time the gain is the brightest parts of the image and again I'm just gonna grab and drag to the right on this master wheel under the gain and I'm gonna start boosting that up until the things that look like they should be bright white get to that bright white point that's looking a little bit better now I don't want to push this up too much because when you push it up too much things start to kind of glow and they start to lose detail you don't want that you just want to push them up enough to where they look natural again this is where the Scopes can help you because all of these little points on the Scopes that's data and if I brighten this too much it squishes the data at the top and that's where you get this nasty glow so we're gonna bring this back down keep it tasteful somewhere in there really what we've done so far is increase the contrast contrast in an image is the difference between the brightest parts and the darkest parts a lot of cameras nowadays shoot with the darkest parts kind of pushed up in the brightest parts pushed down and there's reasons for that but if you want an image to look natural everything has to be in its place that means black things should look black white things should look white now let's think about the colors here since we've increased the contrast that actually makes the colors look a little bit brighter but maybe it's not quite where we want yet there's a bunch of different ways to brighten these up but the easiest way to do that is with the saturation controls and resolve this down here under the color wheels there's a little number here right next to SAT if you grab that number that 50 your mouse will turn into two arrows and you can grab it and drag it to the right or left and if you drag it to the right colors get brighter drag it to the left it gets black and white and so you pretty much want to dial that in to look natural maybe something like that again a great way to remember this is everything in its place look at the image does it look like it should if there's a person in the shot does their skin look the way it should if you're unsure take a break look at something else and then look back at the image and see what you think it takes just a few seconds for your mind to get used to an image and start playing tricks on you so make sure to take a break every once in a while so let's take a look at before and after of this shot we've been working on here we are with our current color correction if I go into the upper right hand corner of this image and resolve there's a little button called bypass color grades and fusion effects it's a little rainbow circle with stars if I click on that we'll see the difference definitely a major change with just a couple of tweaks from here you can take these same controls and maybe push a little bit more feeling into the shot let's say we want this to feel a little bit more cozy maybe we'll go to our gamma and I'm just gonna push the colors a little bit warmer just a tiny bit and now we're starting to put a warm feeling into our shot here's what it looked like before and here it is with that warm push the one thing I'll say with this kind of creative part of color is less is usually more you only need to push things a little bit to get that feeling across so go easy so there you go there's a little overview of the basics of color correction open it up start playing with images there's a ton to learn about this topic I hope this has been helpful for you if it has make sure to leave a comment if you like this hit like and for more color correction tutorials post-production tutorials things on DaVinci Resolve make sure to subscribe to my channel here on YouTube my name again is Casey brass I will catch you next time [Music]

Channel: Casey Faris

Views: 373,082

Keywords: davinci resolve, davinci resolve 16, davinci resolve tutorial, davinci resolve color grading, davinci resolve 16 tutorial for beginners, davinci resolve effects, davinci resolve vs premiere pro, davinci resolve 16 color grading, blackmagic fusion, blackmagic fusion tutorial, blackmagic fusion templates, fusion titles, color grading LUTs, ground control luts, color correction basics, color grading basics, basics tutorial, color correction for beginners

Id: IJnMkchydrM

Length: 8min 7sec (487 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 10 2019