Color Grading in Final Cut Pro (Beginner to Advanced)

hey guys welcome back to another final cut pro tutorial and today we're learning all about how to color correct and color grade our footage so we're going to start with beginner and move all the way up to intermediate advanced i'm no colorist but i'm going to tell you the workflow that i follow so we're going to first start with our correction and fixing the colors and exposure in our clips then moving on to unique situations like we're underwater or when the drone is panning and the exposures or colors are changing and finally we're going to finish off with color grading and giving our footage a look and a final result something that we are happy with so let's get into it all right here is our editor it's completely empty except for some footage on the side first thing we want to do when it comes to color grading is open up our preferences and select here like i already have selected color wheels we don't want to use color board as it doesn't give us as much freedom as color wheels so select that all right next we're gonna drag a clip into the timeline for example this clip here of iceland now we wanna start correcting this footage so we're gonna go to view look at video scopes [Music] and here are the two scopes that i always select i have the vector scope and i have rgb overlay and the way you can change that is by selecting them on the side here also here by clicking view you get to select two one three or something like this but i always like just these two all right let's get a better look at this and a bigger screen what you want to do is bring these colors you can see here you want to try and bring them together and we do that over here in the color wheels so let me briefly explain on the right side of the color wheel we have exposure and that's on the master wheel that's the whole image on the left side we have saturation up and down and down at the bottom we have white balance on the right side we warm up the photo on the left we cool it down on the video sorry and the bottom is the magenta and greens on the opposite sides of the color wheel so let's go back to the master and if you notice on the other sides of the wheel we have orange and the opposite is teal so we have yellow then we have blue and on the other side we have magenta and green and notice how that affects the rgb overlay on the left side here the more saturated the color the higher it will be in the chart and the other wheels on the charts such as mid-tones shadows and highlights are for more control within our adjustments all right let's get started and color correct this footage starting with the white balance so by sliding it to the right you can see the colors come together so that pulls a bit of the blues out so as you can see the reds are still lower than the other ones so we can try and add reds in the highlights to raise them up there we go now you can see they're completely aligned so let's toggle that on and off to see the difference as you can see the clip was a little bit blue before and now it looks a little bit better colored with the white here is the luminosity or the luma and you want to bring this one this line here all the way up to close to 100 and the bottom down to zero usually you want to start with that so we'll bring down shadows the minute you touch the line that means you've lost information in the shadows and that's called crushing the blacks and then we're going to raise the highlights all the way up close to 100 sometimes you can go over if you want that look it's fine for example there's no information in the sky but if you like that look that's fine so we'll bring them just to 100. and as you can see there's still a little bit of darkness here so i'm going to raise the mid-tones that brings the detail back into the shot sometimes when you raise the mid-tone too high you can bring down the shadows again all right that shot looks better let's toggle it on and off so that right there is corrected footage let's move on to another clip as you can see in this shot it's a bit pink in these mountains so we want to correct this by pulling the magenta out of this tint as you can see right away it's looking better by adding green second of all we can bring down the shadows right down to the bottom we can raise the highlights a bit but as you can see we've got a bit of a green peeking over here in our highlights so we can pull highlights away from green because that is the opposite outside on the color wheel let's pull highlights away from green you see what's happening well that brought more pink into the photo we can desaturate the highlights to get rid of some of that pink all right let's bring mid-tones down get them down we're losing detail in this waterfall at the top here so we've got to bring those highlights down a bit there still a little too much pink overall in the photo so i'm going to pull the mid tones away from pink there we go so now we've fixed that problem of the greens and the highlights and we've balanced the color a little bit better let's look before and after so as you can see it was pink here the image is a bit flat looks much better now let's try another clip and let's say we're using this interview footage whenever you're using interview footage you always want to start by making a compound clip interview one because when you have this interview let's say you're cutting it up and you're fixing all of the errors in the interview if you're then you pull that out so let's say i want to fix this clip right here and i want it to affect all of my pieces i just double click and now i fix this bring the shadows down raise the masters that way when i go back into the clip that's affected all of them together alright next we'll look at some log footage here we have two clips one is a little bit blue and one is a little bit orange so as you can see here we've got the blue and the highlights and we need to correct that so right away we can pull some orange into the clip and all of a sudden you see our colors are lining up we got to put more reds into the highlights and as you can see they're lining up and we will bring the shadows down bring all the mid tones up to get more light in the shot highlights up we've got a bit of clipping here so maybe we won't go too high shadows down okay let's look at a really orange shot so the white balance was off on the camera here made a mistake if you want to correct for that we have way too much red so let's bring blue back into the shot as you can see the red is coming down and we're in the mid tone area let's pull away from red [Music] or we can do the whole thing all the way from red add some more blue to the shot and now let's contrast let's bring the mid tones up still a little bit too much red let's pull away from magenta add some green there we go let's that looks a bit corrected [Music] much better so as you can see there's some clipping here but that's no problem that's just the light in the windows that's no worries so that clip looks much better let's look at another shot here when we have the cup the white balance is way off if we have a scenario like this and we want to match these grades we just copy ctrl c and over here shift ctrl v and that will add the attributes so there we go color wheel add and all of a sudden we have matching clips so we've shared our color color correction onto the other clip excuse the background noise that's my mac humming to try and keep up with the screen recording here next let's look at two unique scenarios so one is underwater footage look at the difference in the color here so every time we shoot underwater we lose the reds so we have to bring back the reds in the shot because it's definitely blue dominant so right away let's add some magenta let's add red into the mid tones with this you kind of gotta play around with it to try and get the best looking image so bring we can bring the shadows down to the bottom [Music] you can raise it up a little bit highlights can go up a bit we're going to lose some but that's okay let's bring more red into the shot raise that right up bring that down we don't want to lose too much blue because of course we are under water after all so we don't want this color to be red or green we want someone to be blue however look at the detail we brought back into the subjects look at how much contrast and color back natural color back we can make this more saturated we just boost these colors and that way we can still hold on to the blue so next we have a drone shot what happens when drone pan is down is it's too dark right as we hit here we want to put in a keyframe right here we want to go to the middle of our clip and that's what we want to fade on some more exposure here and here and now watch our clip adjust as it pans down it's panning down and it adjusts all right so these clips that you see here i've actually got from storyblocks which is the sponsor of today's video storyblocks has 1 million royalty-free assets i've been using this service for 2 years now and it's awesome it's an affordable subscription with unlimited downloads it's a big time saver for example sometimes i'm editing winter footage in the wrong season i'm in a hot place storyblocks comes to the rescue and i can get some snow footage or whatever i need to fill in that spot if i'm in a different country and i am missing some b-roll of that country storyblocks has footage from all over the world which is amazing you can just get back to editing and finishing more projects if you're interested in using star blocks check the link in my description for more all right so here we are to the last portion of the video and that is the grading portion of the video giving it its final look so what we do here i have some clips from iceland i'm going to drag over an adjustment layer so i can apply the look to all of the clips now this only works after we've color corrected all the clips you can't just slap on a lut or a grade and expect it to fix all of your clips we have the color correct then we can put on our look and it can apply to all the clips if you don't have an adjustment layer in your final cut already link is in the description or you can download a free one so here we can adjust the colors of our clips let's say we want to bring our shadows into this range here and maybe our mid tones we want to make more orange let's say we want to make the master more colorful so here's where we can get a bit more technical we bring in our color curves we can if you want you can bring more contrast into the image by doing a slight s curve if you want more of a hazy moody summertime vibe you can add some fade to it that could that might be a look that you want for some films not typically travel too much bring that back now we're going to go to hue saturation curves this is where we can get really technical with the various colors so let's say we're adding just this single clip and we have a hue saturation curve we will select the hue by clicking on that let's say we want the yellow and now we can adjust the color of the grass so look more green more orange we're going to do it to the whole adjustment layer so let's go greens let's bring them more no we want to adjust like this so the yellowish greens we want to bring them into the more of a more orange range and then whenever you're looking at a color grade you want to look at the opposite side let's look at this color here click on it there it is and you can see i can make it more teal or make it more purple depending on how you like so that's where you have the freedom to work with the colors in the hue saturation and luma curves let's see we want to adjust the brightness of the blues we click on the eyedropper we click over here and we can bring up the brightness of the blues all right we have talked a lot about landscapes now look now let's look at some portraits so we have three portraits here and that's where our vector scope comes into play this line here regardless of ethnicity is the skin tone line and you always want to line up your luminosity and your color along that line so this one's a bit too orange needs to be a bit more along there so that's properly corrected now let's say we want to add a more of a grade to this for example let's say like a teal look and orange in the highlights what i don't like about that is his beard has kind of gone aqua let's have a look the way to fix that is we go to our hue saturation sliders we put option click this is our luma line so this is the shadows this is the highlights so if we pull that down you can see that actually pulls the color out of his beard see that because there's nothing worse than teal shadows all over a video just kidding kind of okay next one we're going to do color masking so click over here color mask and want to select your skin tone with the eyedropper tool then view the mask and we're going to slide these hsl bars all the way until her skin tone is completely white we're going to mask out her entire skin so once you've successfully done that then you're going to click on view mask again to see the image select outside and we want to change the color of the outside when we adjust the master wheel it's a bit aggressive so let's reset that do the mid tones and as you can see we're changing the background and the darker parts of the photo so this is completely subjective when you're creating looks it's completely up to you lastly i'm going to pull the color out of the shadows like i did last time and there we go i've completed it let's take a look at the before and after so once you understand how the color wheels work a little bit you can play around with the colors and pick a look that you like however if you want to try out the colors that i use in all my travel videos then just click the link in the description and you'll see my luts there for sale and you're looking at four of the before and afters of four of my luts in my latest pack they're super easy to add to your footage you just type in lut add that custom lot on top of your footage go to the drop down menu markers and luts and pick one of them and there boom done if i provided you with some value i'd appreciate it if you checked out that link all right that wraps up for today's video i hope you learned something in this color green tutorial make sure you follow me over on instagram give this video a like and subscribe if you aren't already and we'll catch you in the next one [Music] so this is um so with underwater and and do i

Channel: Mark Harrison

Views: 46,754

Keywords: Colour, Color, Grade, Correct, Tutorial, Final Cut Pro, Grading

Id: j_lIFBRscKw

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021