(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to the 44th video in this beginner's guide
to Adobe After Effects. In this tutorial, I'm going to demonstrate how to easily color enhance your video
footage in After Effects. Now, working with video you will always want to make sure it
looks the best it can. Sometimes, when we bring
video into After Effects it can look a little flat. Now, After Effects is really good at color grading and adding color enhancements to video footage. In this video, we are going to look back
over the video presentation we have been working
on up until this point. We are going to look at some of the video we have placed in the
video presentation so far and use some of the
helpful effects and presets in After Effects to enhance
the color and quality. And in this video, I'm going to demonstrate just how easy this could be done in After Effects. So, in this video we
are going to be covering the following topics using the auto contrast preset, using the edit levels preset, and using the edit curves preset. So, let's get into it. So here I am where we left
off in the previous episode where we completed these five sections. Up until this point on the project, we have mainly been
focusing on the structure of the presentation and getting all the animated sequences right. Now before we start working
on the last section to finish, I want to reflect back on
what we have done so far. So let's take a look. Now if you're watching for the first time and wish to follow along you can find this document
in the project folder which you can download. Link is in the description. The download folder comes with
lots of exercise documents we will be using on this course that have been carefully developed to aid your learning experience. The folder also comes
with document resources such as videos, graphics, and images you can use to build your
first video presentation from scratch later on in this course. To get the full learning experience, I recommend you get the project folder. Download link with instructions
is in the description. With the project folder open, click into folder S3 create the project then click into folder 44
color enhancing footage and open the color enhancing document. Now if you're continuing
on from the last episode, make sure you have your
document open and ready. So with our document open, let's proceed. So right now I have the main comp open and we can see we have our six sections. If I click and drag the time indicator right back to the start and slowly scrub along the timeline, here we can see our intro sequence section one which plays out and leads nicely into section two. We have section two with the
video and typed transitions and this leads into
section three the aquarium. Now looking at some of the
video in this sequence, it's nice but it does look
a little flat in parts. So what I want to do here is
quickly enhance the video. So to do this, I'll double click into
the aquarium composition. Now if we look towards the bottom of the timeline panel we can see the video layers
we placed in the comp in a previous video. So I'll click and drag my time indicator towards the start of the comp so I can see the first video
in my composition panel above. So the first video is the underwater scene and what I want to do is make
the blacks a little darker to punch out the blues. So I'll start by selecting the video layer in the timeline panel. Next, I'll come over
to the right hand side of the interface and click on
the effects and presets panel. This will reveal all the
effects and presets we can use. Now if for whatever reason you cannot see the effects presets panel, you can come up to window, scroll down, and click effect and presets. So in this panel I will
come and toggle down the color correct category and at the top you will see
three really useful presets. Auto color, auto
contrast, and auto levels. Now we could use these to apply simple and immediate effects to our video. On this occasion I'm going
to use the auto contrast. So with my video selected
in the timeline panel I'll click and drag the
auto contrast preset across and out of the
effects and presets panel and onto my selected video layer. Upon release, we will see a
subtle change to the video as the auto contrast is applied. Now upon release we should now
also see the effects controls appear where the project
panel is on the left. In this effects controls we can see that as well as the linear
wipe transition effect we applied earlier we now
have an auto contrast effect. Now if I come and click the effects icon, we can turn the effect on and off and see a before and after. So when you apply an auto contrast, it will apply contrast to your video but if you want to tweak this further, you can come up to the
effects control panel and tweak the settings. So here I'll come down
and drag the black clip over to 5% and if I
click the effects button we can toggle it on and off and see the before and after effect. Now, should you tweak the effect and feel you have overdone it
or it's not to your liking, we can come to the top of
the auto contrast settings and simply click the reset button. That will put the settings
back to what they were at the start but right now
I'm pretty happy with this so I'll just leave it for now and move on. So I'll drag my time
indicator further right along the timeline to see my next video. So again I want to boost the contrast here to make the blacks darker
to make the colors pop. So I'll select the video layer, come over to the effects
and presets panel, and again drag the auto
contrast preset out and drop it onto my selected video layer. Upon release I can see that
has had the effect I want. In the effects and
controls panel to the left, if I click the effects button, we can see the before and after effect. So moving on, I'll drag my time indicator
further along the timeline to see my next video. Again, I want to boost the contrast here to make the blacks darker
and make the colors pop. So I'll select the video layer, come over to the effects and presets panel and again drag the auto
contrast preset out and drop it onto the selected video layer. Upon release, I can see that
has had the effect I want. And again, in the effects and
controls panel to the left if I click the effects button we can see the before and after effect. So for this aquarium sequence, I'm going to apply the auto
contrast to each video layer. So moving on, I'll drag my time indicator further right to my next video. Again, I want to boost the contrast so I'll select the video layer come over to the effects and presets panel and drag the auto contrast preset onto my selected video layer. Next, I'll drag my time
indicator further right to see my last video in the sequence. I'll select the video layer, come over to the effects and presets panel and drag the auto contrast preset out and onto the selected video layer. Nice! So just like that I suddenly enhanced the contrast of each video
clip in this sequence. Overall, this makes the underwater video look more rich and
vibrant in the background. So once I'm happy, I can click back into the main comp tab in the top left of my timeline panel and I'm back to my main comp. So I'll drag the time indicator over the next section,
the Shoreditch section, and I can see that the videos and images here are looking fine so I'm not going to apply
any color effects to these. Now if I drag over to the Camden section, I can see that there
are some clips in here that could do with a little enhancing so I'll double click into
the Camden composition and it will open up in its own tab. If we look towards the
bottom of the timeline panel, we can again see the
video layers we placed into the comp in a previous video. So I'll click and drag my time indicator towards the start of the comp so I can see the first video
in my composition panel above. So what I want to do here is again make the blacks a little darker to punch out the colors. So I'll start by selecting the video layer in the timeline panel and I'll come back over to
the effects and presets panel and this time instead of using one of the auto correct presets, I'm going to come down the panel about three thirds of the
way and select levels. This time I'm gonna click and drag levels out from the effects and presets panel and drop it onto the video layer. Now, upon release nothing will happen because what we have to do now is come to the effects controls over on the left and tweak the settings. So here, I'm going to come and focus on the input black. So I'll come and drag this
in a little to around 15. Next, I'll come and tweak the gamma and push this up a little to around 1.3. And if I come and click the effects button for the levels effect, we can see the before and after effect. So using the levels has allowed me to manually tweak the
input black and gamma to enhance the video clip. So I'll continue to drag my time indicator over the remaining video clips and these are looking okay but when I get to the fourth clip here we can see it looks a little flat. So I'll start by selecting the video layer and I'll come back over to
the effects and presets panel and this time instead of
using the levels preset, I'm going to come and select curves. This time, I'm going to
click and drag curves out from the effects and presets panel and drop it onto my video layer. Now, upon release nothing will happen because we will have to now come into the effects and controls over on the left and tweak the settings. Now for any of you that are familiar with using curves in Photoshop, you will understand how it works here. So over in the effects and controls panel we will see our grid and the curve. Now I'm going to drop three
points on the curve here, one in the middle, one
towards the bottom left, and one towards the top right. I'll start by clicking and dragging the far right point up and I'll drag down the
far left point a little and drag the center point up a little. By doing that, we have boosted the colors and made the blacks deeper. This has created a more dynamic effect. Now, if I come and click the
effects button for curves we can see the before and after effect. So using the curves has
allowed me to create a more dynamic effect to the video. Now with curves applied, you can come into the effects controls and change the channel. For example, I'll click the dropdown and change the tab to blue. I'll click to dropdown three points like I did a second ago, one in the middle, one
towards the bottom left and one towards the top right. Now if I start to click and drag these, we can change the channel
of specific colors and change the color effect of the video. For now though, I only want to boost the blacks so I'll hit the reset button
at the top of the setting, I'll make sure the tab is set back to RGB and I'll click my three points, one in the middle, one towards the bottom left, and one towards the top right. And I'll click and drag
the left one down a little, the far right up, and the
center one up just a little again to enhance the video. Perfect! So looking at the next video, this is looking okay. So that finishes the Camden section so now I can click back into the main comp by clicking on the top left tab and now I am back to my main comp. So I'll click just after marker seven and press end, clip the
end of the workspace, I'll drag my time indicator back to the start of the comp and I'll click on the resolution factor at the bottom of the composition panel and set this to half. Now on this occasion, I don't want to hear the music so I'm going to come down
and click on the second icon on the audio layer to toggle this off. For now, this will mute the audio layer. But if you were following along, I recommend you leave this on. So with my time indicator at the start, I'll press space bar to
activate the preview. So now I can preview the entire video
presentation in real time. As it previews, I can see my intro which leads into the video sections. Now if you're following along you should also hear the music and see how the sections
cut nicely to the music. Also, we can now see the
enhancements we have just made to some of the video clips
in the aquarium section and the Camden section. So this is all looking good. So that completes the six sections. We are now ready to move onto
the last and final section in this video presentation. Now at this point, if you are following along
with your own document I would recommend you
save so we can continue on in the next episode. So what we are going to do next is build the last section
of our video presentation. This is going to be similar
to the intro section where we used some simple 2D graphics. In the next video, we are going to create a simple 2D scene consistent of graphics and type where later I'll be showing
you how to animate them. So see you in the next video. (upbeat music)
