How I Color Grade My Videos in Premiere Pro! - 2021 Edition

hi there this is sun meish from picks and perfect i hope you're doing amazing as always and if you are feeling a little down let me tell you i'm so proud of you that you're taking the time to learn something well in this video i'm going to share with you how to color grade a talking head video just as we do here at pixem perfect now we have done a tutorial about it about three years ago but since then a lot has changed and my complete approach to its color grading has drastically changed and in this video we're going to use the three pass technique now you might ask question what is the three pass technique well in the first pass you're gonna take care of the overall color and the lighting and the highlights and the shadows and get the image to look all right technically all right in the second pass we're gonna just even out the skin tones because that's the most important thing in a talking head video the face is the source of information and the focus of attention in the third pass we're gonna add the most important thing actually i did say the second was the most important thing but the third pass is just the magic there and it is adding that pop i'm super excited to share these techniques with you so without any further ado let's get started back in the magical world of video editing this time and speaking of editing videos if you are in the creative business staying updated with what's going on in the world is super essential to keep your content relevant but as creatives we barely get time to watch traditional news which never seems to get to the point which brings us to our today's sponsor morning brew morning brew is a free daily newsletter sent monday to sunday covering the latest in business finance and tech everything you need to know in a condensed witty five minute read before subscribing to it i have been guilty of waking up to endless scrolling of social media which serves no purpose and distracts you in a million ways but these days morning brew helps me get up to speed with what's what and be an informed creator interestingly last week i learned about another creator through the newsletter who will sing and create a song for people's enemies for a very reasonable fee i was like where were you all my life there is no reason not to subscribe to brilliant writing and new status crafted to be relevant informative and most importantly fun to read and that too absolutely free click the link in the description to subscribe to morningbro it takes less than 15 seconds to do so so here we are in premiere pro and as you can notice we have one of our projects open from a previous tutorial and if you do want a sample clip check the links in the description now have a look closely this has been completely edited everything has been added from intro to outro and every possible thing has been meticulously edited however there's one thing left that is color grading this is how the image looks straight from the camera actually i should say video now if you look closely you would notice that there's just one clip that has been chopped again and again it has been placed at the top right here in the form of a small box and then other times it's also full screen now why am i telling you this there's a reason for it the color grading that we are going to do to this clip is going to be the same all throughout we are not going to change the color grading from one cut to the other cut does that make sense so if i have this clip right here and if i cut it from between and i have done it multiple times in this project we don't want a different color grade here and another color grade right over there if we did that it would be jettery so for this setting for our talking head video for the same source we want the same color grading all throughout no matter how many times we chop it no matter how many times we make it smaller and place it somewhere we want the same color grading all throughout and that's why it is essential that you apply the color grading to the source and how can we do that well if you click on a clip you would notice at the top effects controls are opened if you don't see it first of all let me refresh everything for you so right beside editing you would see three lines click on that and click on reset to save layout now click on the clip again and if it doesn't go to effects controls just go to effects controls and here you will have all of the effects right here now what will happen is if you go to effects and if you add let's say a lumetri color right over here so color correction inside of that there is lumetri color so if i just drag it right over here what will happen is let's do a little tweak right over here so let's increase the exposure by one and this is just for example so for this clip the exposure is one but for the other clips it is not so we would have to copy it and paste it on every clip right over here and it can take a very long time now you might think why don't you just apply to the clip and then chop it up wouldn't that be convenient yes that would be but kinda let's say i wanted to change the exposure later so i would have to change it for every clip there is so instead of applying the color grading to a single clip let's apply it to the source of the footage the entire footage so i'm just going to go ahead and delete lumetri color from here and once you have that clip selected you would notice at the top there will be a source section that is the source footage from which we have cut and brought out that particular section so just go to source not this source this will show you the entire thing source right over here inside the effects controls click on source and there you place lumetri color and now if i do any change right over here let's say i increase the exposure to 1 the exposure is increased for this clip this clip this clip the clip at the top which is squished down every instance of the same footage has the changes applied does that make sense so what do you learn from this apply the color grading to the source let's start with the first pass which is fundamentally getting the colors to look right and just right in the timeline let's go to a section where we can see it all and we're going to click on source inside effect controls and then let's open up lumetri color this is going to be our first lumetri color for the first pass all right let's reset the exposure first of all we need to set the white balance now you can use gray cards here you can use the eyedropper tool and click on an area which is neutral sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't my thoughts are little different and here's what i prefer you might prefer something else that's fine too this is not photojournalism neither this is a scientific experiment that we have to be absolutely accurate with colors just the way they are white balance to me is an artistic choice so depending upon your artistic expression you can choose to make it warmer cooler neutral that's up to you so it's always best to set it right in camera and that's what i do so here i don't think we need much of an adjustment so just a little warmth is what i want to add so let's go for three and it was very close depending upon what i wanted so let's set the tint to zero and then slowly and gradually choose a number that works for us minus three let's go for minus four all right just a little more tint and by the way if this is too small for you let's make it larger no big deal now let's come to exposure exposure is also something which i highly recommend to set it absolutely right in camera now you have to set an exposure in such a way that even if you want to increase it later we don't sacrifice the details in the highlights or if you want to decrease it later we don't crush the shadows so somewhere in between is fine and that's what i have done with this so we don't want so much of an exposure increase let's go with point two just a little bit now we're gonna work with highlights and shadows to add a little contrast and make it less dull and there's actually a very good reason why this is dull and that is so that we can work and tweak in the highlights and shadows according to our liking and the way to make the footage dull or in other words flat so that you have more details in the highlights and shadows is to shoot in a flat picture profile and i learned it from this video from gerald undone on how to set it for my sony a7iii or overall any sony camera so do follow him amazing guy one of my favorite people to look up to when it comes to camera gear since the footage is flat we can go crazy with highlights and shadows let's increase the highlights and set it to about 1920 let's set it to 20 and have a look what difference it makes here's the before here is the after adds a subtle shine to the footage let's decrease the shadows let's see what difference it makes see now we're talking now we are adding contrast let's add a little bit more to about minus 35 now for the extreme dark areas we're gonna deal with blacks so i'm not talking about the shadows or the dark areas we're talking about the extreme dark areas or in other words blacks so we can take that down as well let's try -10 and check if it's crushing the details you can also click on this drop down and zoom in to about 400 percent and check certain dark areas and continue to take it down if we take it minus 20 see it's just crushing it right over there we want to be a little light with it not even minus 10 let's go with minus 5. we don't wanna have the black so much right now because later we want headroom then we will add the pop to this footage also while we're at it if you look at the face there are some areas that are just too bright so to add the details back into those areas let's simply decrease the whites and as you do that let's set it to -10 we begin to have more and more details and less extreme shine we want a soft light there so let's go for about -20 this makes it overall softer if you want to look at the difference here's the before have a look we're completely blowing out the details in the candles as well and here is the after and by the way if one of the candles right here just stopped lighting up just know that the battery died i'm sorry about that so right now overall we have done the basic adjustment so inside of basic correction there is this check box right here so let's turn it off and on to see what difference have we made we have definitely come a long way now let's go to creative here keep in mind this is a 1080p footage so if i zoom in to 400 you would be able to see it see this is 1080p but we are rendering it in 4k because the photoshop screen capture is in 4k and i shoot in 1080p because of of course saving space and time guys i have a super old computer i really need to upgrade so if you could support me on patreon that would be very helpful anyway so the way to fake 4k right over here is to just increase the sharpening a little bit so i'm going to go with about 60 and just as soon as we do it have a look it just looks awesome now i know it looks very off right now because it's zoomed in too much but if i zoom in at about 200 percent or even 100 this is the proper zoom you would be able to notice that so here's the before see it looks all blurred out and here's the after if you don't want that much you can just decrease the sharpening let's go with 200 and let me share this with you so if i turn off and on the creative have a look here's the before it just looks like it's blurred out have a look here is the before and here is the after if you feel it's too much let's go with 40. all right 40 is a little better so here's the before here's the after it definitely is creating some halos but it's better than the blurred version let's just zoom out now let's make the colors come to life a little by simply increasing the saturation not too much at about 110 doesn't look like it made much of a difference but it actually did here's the before look at this area of the footage let me zoom it in for you before just look at this area and after we don't want it too much that the color starts bleeding or and we begin to lose details now if you want you can also add a shadow and highlight tint we don't require it here but if you wanted to do that you can make the highlights a little warmer and the shadows a little cooler so for the shadow tint we can go for a little bluish tone and for the highlights we can go for something warmer we could do that or we could do the absolute opposite for the highlight tint we could go a little bluer and for the shadow tint we could go a little warmer this also creates an interesting effect so let's take a look here's the after here's the before this was also interesting wasn't it we went to extreme but you can also work with these rings as well now you already know that curves is my favorite and right down here you can see curves but i'm going to make a very hard hurting decision here and we're not going to work with curves just hold on there's a reason for it the reason is we work with a lot of videos every other day there's a shoot and with curves if i wanted to change a little thing i would have to change the entire curves it might be amazing for one blockbuster movie or if there's a very important project that i'm working on but when it comes to regular shooting regular videos and you have to apply the same preset over and over again and yes we are creating a preset if everything right here is in values and sliders it's easier to dial it up and down and change it according to a very similar video which would be the exact talking head maybe with slight changes here and there if there's curves we have to probably change the entire curves and the points and the coordinates it can get complicated so as a preset it makes more sense not to use it because there are other controls right here which make it far more easier now comes an essential part of the lesson and this can be a little tricky and that is getting the skin tones right again it's an artistic call in a previous video i worked with formulas to get it right but it differs from image to image and the kind of artistic look that you're going for this will give you a good starting point let's zoom in first to the face now let's open up hsl secondary and here we will first target the skin tones so with the help of the set color eyedropper just select that and click on the skin now click on show mask this will show which areas are selected now we need to play with these ranges to select the skin tones first of all let's uncheck the other two and have just the first one turned on and just expand it and move it around just so that the entire skin is selected so at this point we can clearly see that the skin tones are selected right now you can even make it a little larger but we don't want to select all of the areas so let's fit it try to select only the skin tones but there's going to be other elements in the image which are going to be closer to the skin tones those will be selected as well try to be as conservative as possible and make sure that the other areas are not selected as much but that is unavoidable now this selection is a little harsher right i'm going to make it a little narrower so with the top triangle right here you control how narrow the range is with the bottom triangle right here you control the softness of the transition between areas that are selected and the areas that are not selected right now it's very hard so let's take it to the right and make it softer all right this looks about right now let's turn on the second one saturation what range of saturation are we working with and using all of these three we're gonna try to dial down just the skin areas so again make the transition harsh in the beginning and make it very narrow find a place where just the skin is selected and make it broader from there all right this looks about right and again make it softer this helps us not select these highlight orange areas all right now let's turn on the third one what range of lightness do you want to select and in here possibly i want to select all ranges except for the extreme darks so this looks about right and again we're going to make it softer alright so we have majorly targeted the skin tone so you can just uncheck show mask so if you check it it'll show you which areas are selected and which areas are being targeted let's uncheck that now we can apply some extreme settings here first of all let's zoom in just onto the skin or the face and come down and first of all let's add a lot of warmth to it let's try 10 20 let's go with about 40 ish yes that warmth looks good let's go with 45. now there's a hint of green on the skin so we need to increase the tint because if you increase it it becomes more magenta if you decrease it it becomes more greener so let's try 10. see it's becoming more and more magenta-ish let's try 20 20 is too much let's go with about 18. okay now as i said these are some extreme settings just kind of too extreme and just colors start bleeding all the way out so we need to decrease the overall saturation if you like it by the way i'm liking this as well you can stop right here but i think it's just too much so let's decrease the saturation to about 75 percent and it begins to look natural you can even go 90 if you want to but if you ask me i'm going to keep it a little lower let's go with 80. we can always come back to this later and after that there is vignette if you want to add vignette here you can it's a great effect to bring the attention of the viewer towards the subject but in this case we have some interesting lights around the corner so if we did add vignette a little bit it might take away those lights so i'm just not gonna add it i'm gonna uncheck the active and that concludes our first pass let's take a look at the overall before and after so here is the before here is the after massive massive change and right now if you go back to that if you go back to the saturation of the skin tones if you choose 100 right there it would look weird right now here's the before here's the after skin is just too saturated that's why i told you don't get too overboard with it let's go with 75 all right now time for us to move on to the second pass and in this we're just gonna even out the skin tones for different skins there can be different kinds of problems sometimes you might need two or more passes but in this case if i just zoom in there's one thing i need to fix the dark areas look darker and it's creating a kind of unevenness in the skin if we could find a way to brighten up the dark areas that would be amazing and that's exactly what we're gonna do here now in some cases you can have other kinds of problems like red patches on the skin yellow patches on the skin color cast so for that you will have to create separate passes right here to fix all of those problems in this case i just want to brighten the dark areas so we're going to add one more lumetri color here so just drag it and drop it right over there and in this we're just going to deal with hsl secondary and here we just want to target the dark areas of the skin similarly we're going to uncheck both of these the s and the l saturation and lightness and just work with this one you can choose this eyedropper to select just the dark areas like this and it's going to choose that area again uncheck that and click on show mask we just want to target the dark areas so let's try to take it a little more to the left and just at this position the extreme dark areas have a look right here around the corner are selected as well we want this to be as precise as possible we don't want much of a selection here now let's turn on saturation and again with this narrow slider move it left and right to see which areas are we targeting in this area we are targeting the less saturated areas and that looks about right for these dark areas so let's expand it let's take it to the left see only the dark areas are being selected of course we want this transition to be smoother there we go see mostly the dark areas right here let's take it even more left now let's turn on the most important thing and that is the lightness let's move it around to select just the dark areas so this is the place where most of the dark areas are selected in my opinion and let's make it a little broader and make the transition smooth all right let's zoom out and see how the mask is see we have mostly selected the dark areas right here isn't it looking pretty good so now let's zoom in again a little bit turn off show mask come down and to make it brighter just take this slider up and just look at the change have a look at the before and after here's the before here's the after and just that makes the skin so much more even before after just look at that now we want the transition to be smoother so that it doesn't create a very hard edge between the blue light and the skin that's coming from the side so make sure that the transitions are smoother also i feel that the dark areas are a little more greener so let's increase the tint a little bit let's go with five and just as you do that that goes away can you see the difference let me share this with you here's the before and here is the after you still cannot see it let's go for a higher number just to show you so this is 10 you're not going to use 10. here's the before look it looks greenish and here is the after better isn't it definitely this is too high so let's go with five and this my friend concludes our second pass let's take a look at the complete before and after here's the before here is the after just look at the second pass see what it did before after before after it just evens everything out so nicely let's move on to the third pass where we actually add the punch right here we're going to drag and drop another lumetri color now keep in mind the third pass adjustments are the adjustments that you touch every time you add this preset so this is a preset that we are creating the next time you have a similar video like this you would apply this preset and three passes will show up if you feel the overall video is a little too dark you would just go to the basic correction settings of the third pass and increase or decrease it a little bit if it's extreme case then you might have to definitely touch the first or the second pass but in most cases just touch the third pass and you'll be good to go if you feel that you want an overall warmth in the image just go to the third pass and increase the temperature so these are like the tweaking adjustments for the preset you can play with temperature to see what works for you maybe add a little more overall warmth for some videos you might create a mood by just increasing the temperature for this one i'm going to set it to 10 for some other you can go with -10 this is absolutely personal preference or even let's go five tint let's play with it let's go with plus five now we do want to add a little more punch so the shadows can be a little more darker let's try minus 10 or maybe minus 20 how do you feel about that that looks nice on top of that if you want to increase the overall contrast you can do that as well let's try 20 this is too much let's try 10. now by making these changes the overall image is getting a little too dark so let's increase the exposure by minus 2 or -4 yes that looks really nice and that my friend concludes the third pass i still feel i increase the temperature too much zero is fine so third pass before after this one is the one that really adds the punch to the image let's take a look at the overall before and after so here is the before here is the after and of course if you want to save it as a preset select the first one hold the ctrl or command select the second and the third all of them are now selected right click on it and then choose save preset let's name it fix imperfect 2021 and hit ok now this preset is saved under presets now all you got to do whenever you want to add it first of all let's delete all of this so with all of the three selected i'm just going to press the delete key all i have to do is to get pixim perfect 2021 right over here and we'll have all three right there so anytime you want to add it to a clip just drag and drop this preset so that's how i color grade my videos in premiere pro let's do a quick little recap first of all always apply the color grading to the source unless you want different color grading for every cut out part of the clip or the footage all right so apply it to the source inside of the effects controls now there are three passes in the first pass we overall correct the color and the lighting and everything and get the image to look decent with the second pass we even out the skin tones or fix skin problems with the third pass we just add that needed punch and drama and mood or whatever you want to call it that's spice okay so in the first pass we made basic adjustments and we also targeted the skin tones and got it right in the second pass for this example we selected the dark areas of the skin and made it brighter to even that out some parts were even greenish so we increased the tint a bit with the third pass we just added a little more contrast and a little more boost and punch i hope this video was helpful and if it was make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss any other feature tips tricks or tutorials i'll see you in my next one thank you so much for watching thank you for your time till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] you

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 347,644

Keywords: color grading, adobe premiere pro, lumetri color, correcting skin tones in premiere, color correction, video editing, 3 pass technique, 2021, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: tIDACzg-ugA

Length: 25min 44sec (1544 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 24 2021