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!
