- If you're a beginner to color grading maybe you're new to Final Cut Pro 10. This is the perfect video for you. I'm gonna walk you through
everything you need to know about color
correction and color grading in Final Cut Pro 10. I'm gonna show you how to use these tools, and Final Cut Pro to make your footage look as good as possible. - You got to just press record. - Hey guys my name is
NolanMolt with think media, and I'm excited to jump into this video. Now, there is a difference
between color grading and color correction. Most people just call it color grading which is totally fine, but we're gonna cover both
of those in this video and show you how to do
that to your footage. Color grading basically
is adding a stylistic look to your footage to make it
look cinematic or vibrant, something like that,
where as color correction is kinda fixing the white balance, fixing the exposure, the
contrast, stuff like that. So we're gonna cover both of
those things in this video, so let's get right into it. Now, the very first
thing you wanna do inside of Final Cut Pro 10 is make sure that your proxies are not on. If you go to this view tab right here we can see that if we had
proxy preferred or proxy only, then we would want to change
that to optimize original, so make sure you just
hit optimized original. And that is going to bring
up your original files which is going to be
best for color grading. You don't wanna color grade
or color your proxy files, you wanna make sure you
have those original files to color grade, with that selected, I like to go to the next step and I like to open up my scopes, kinda get everything
ready for color grading. And I'll show you what those scopes are. If you go up to the view tab, you are gonna see video scopes out here, you can also hit Command
+ Seven to bring those up and if we click that, we're
gonna see these colors the red, the green, the blue and we're gonna change all this, but these things are going
to make it a lot easier for us to color grade and I'll
show you how to use those. But instead of doing this,
I actually like to change up my workspace just a little bit so that these are as big as possible. And the easiest way to do
this is if you go up here to window, you will we'll see workspaces, and right here, there's color and effects. If you pull this up, you are going to see this entire left side just go away, and this is gonna make
everything nice and big for you perfect for color grading
and color correcting, so this is a very nice
workspace that you can use, if you are color grading, and if you wanna change that back baby you're ready to go back to the edit, where you can do is go up to
window hover over workspaces, and you can go back to default and this is gonna put it
back just how you had it. So going back to my workspace
is going to color and effects, I actually don't need all four of these. So what I like to do is go up here to view and then I'm gonna
change this just to two, one on top, one on bottom. Now this is looking great, and if you want to use it like
this, which is how I use it you can go back up to window,
you can go to workspaces and you can actually save this workspace, we'll just call it color grading which I already have mine saved, as color grading but if you hit save, this is going to save
this workspace for you, so that you don't have to go in and mess with this every time,
you can just go to window workspace now and hit color grading, it is going to pull this
up, how you like it. Now, if you're beginner,
and you're just learning how to color grade the odds are, you don't really have a flat log image which would look something
like this right here. This is a flat image or what
they would call a log image. The odds are you're shooting some videos on your standard picture
profile on your camera. Now that's totally fine you can
still mess with these colors and I'm gonna show you how to do that, that's why I have some footage here where it's a bit colored already. This is just the standard picture profile on the Sony ZV1 and I have
some different clips here that we're gonna look at, this one right here with my face in it, show you how to kind of color when there is some skin tones in there, as well as just some random shots here with a lot of different greens and blues, different colors to mess around with. Now something you wanna get familiar with is your color inspector. What you can do is hit the
color board right here, And if you drag this onto your clip and this inspector right here you are going to see a color
board and you can open that up, and from here, you can
make some adjustments. But I actually do not like
to use the color board. Now instead of doing that
this is actually a shortcut as well you can just click on this little color inspector
triangle right here, and this is going to pull
up the same thing for you but this is actually
called the color wheels. Now odds are, if you click on that it's gonna pull up your color board, to change that, just
go into final cut pro, go to preferences, and
right here under general, we can see color correction
and it's gonna be set onto color board just naturally, but we want to set this to color wheels. With that's selected,
we can exit out of that, now you can see when you
click on this triangle it's just gonna pull up your
color wheels right here. Let's start by taking a
look at these four wheels and what they do and how
they can affect your image. This top wheel right
here is our master wheel. So this is going to affect everything. We have shadows mid-tones and highlights but the master is going
to affect all of those, all three shadow mid-tones and highlights. Now the left side of the
wheel is our saturation, you can see it's a bit more blue up here and it's a bit more faded out down here that lets you know that
it is the saturation. So as we go up, this
is going to make things a lot more saturated. You can see how much more
vibrant this image is, and if I bring it all the way down you can see that it's going
to turn to black and white, there is no saturation to these colors. Now each wheel kind of has the
same layout on the left side. You are gonna have that saturation. So let's go to shadows. And if I pulled those all the way down, you're gonna see that the
shadows are not black and white but we still have some
mid-tones and highlights a lot of these blues,
still have some color. Now back up here on master the right side of the wheel is going to be our exposure. You can see up here, it's
a bit brighter down here it's darker, so as we increase the master, it's gonna make everything much brighter, starting to blow out some of our image doesn't look the best,
but as we dark in it, this is going to darken our entire image, make everything a lot darker. Now, right here in the center we can actually move
this little point around, and this is going to add
color into our entire shot. So if I drag this up into the magenta it's gonna make everything
a bit more magenta. I can do the same, if I wanna
pull that into the green or I wanna make it warmer,
make it a bit orange. You can do that by these
around in each of these wheels. Now real quick, I'm just
gonna throw these all around. I'm gonna show you how to reset
these if you ever need to. So let's say you want to reset all of it. All you have to do is click
on this little reset button and that is gonna bring
everything back to normal for this one wheel, but let's
say you don't want to bring everything back you
just want to bring back maybe this piece right
here, if you double-click that is going to bring
back just that property. I can do the same with the
saturation by double clicking, It's gonna bring it back double clicking gonna bring it back. So that's how you can kind of
reset some of these values, as you are going through your color grade. Like I mentioned these are gonna work the same as the master however,
this is only going to affect your shadows, this is only
going to affect your highlights this is only going to
affect your mid-tones and so, you can mess with each of these by only effecting a
specific part of your shot. After I show you all of these do, I'm gonna walk you through
exactly how I color correct and color grade a shot. So stick with me we're almost there, these are the things that you need to know before you start color correcting. Down here we have
temperature, tint and hue. Now this was shot on auto
white balance on the Sony ZV-1, but if you mess up your white balance this is where you could
fix some of those issues by sliding these around. So this temperature if
you drag it to the right this number is going to increase and that is going to increase
the warmth of your shot, and the tint is going
to increase in magenta as you pull it to the right,
and as you pull it to the left it is going to add green to your shot. If you pull the temperature
left, it's going to be cooler and adding that blue tone to your shot. Messing with the hue is going
to adjust all of your colors and kind of swing them
around on your colors wheel, making it look a bit funky. This is not something that I ever used but maybe from shooting a music video or there might be an instance
where you would use this, this is where you can mess with the hue. Down here under mix, I
usually just leave at one, but if you wanna dial it back so that it's not a 100% strength, it's kinda like the
opacity of this effect. You can drag this to the left and zero, you can see that there
is nothing happening and to the right, you can see this is, with everything applied, I
usually leave this at one and I just dial everything
in exactly how I want it, but that is there if you
ever want to dial it back and forth, you can do that. If you also wanna see kind
of the before and after, what you can do is uncheck this box and this is going to disable it, and then if you check it again, it's gonna bring it back. Now that you know what these wheels do, let's actually color
correct and color grade this image to look a bit
better, a bit more vibrant maybe a bit more summary, but first we wanna take a look
at these scopes over here. Now these might be a bit intimidating but I promise you it's really easy, if you just take the time and
understand what these are, it's gonna help you so much. Right now, we're just gonna
ignore this vector scope which is this circle up here, and we are gonna kinda
save that for our part two of this video, which is
gonna be a bit more advanced where I'm gonna cover stuff
like lights, film simulations, adjustment layers, grading, log images getting correct skin
tone, stuff like that, is kinda be in an advanced tutorial where I will use the spectroscope. Once that part to advance
the tutorial comes out, make sure you check that out, 'cause you're gonna learn so much more but you definitely need
to watch this video first because this is going to
lay down, the foundations of color correcting and color grading so that you're not completely lost when it comes to the advanced tutorial. But for now, we're just gonna focus on this wave form down here,
which is our luma waveform. Now, if you ever want to change these, you can click on this right here, and change this from luma,
sometimes I use the RGB Overlay. Now this wave form right
here is actually showing us the values in this shot. So as I move this around,
you're gonna see this also moves because this is showing us
exactly what is on screen, and it's showing us the
brightness of the shot. Now on this way form,
we have some numbers. The main thing that you want
to look at is this 100 number, If you go above this line you are gonna start losing
information in your shot. So for example, if we go to our highlights and we boost these highlights you can see that the entire
graph is now moving up, because it's showing us
the brightness of the shot. So as I move these
highlights above a hundred you are going to see that
the sky is starting to lose a lot of its color, it just is white now, because it is over this 100 line. So you wanna try and keep things that you want to have color things that you want to be in the shot below that 100 line. This is the same with the shadows. As I start to decrease the shadows we are going below this zero line. And that means that we are losing color and details in the shadows. It starting to take colors
and just make them black. So typically you want most of
your colors to be above zero and below 100, as I move these mid-tones you are going to see that the way from kind of scrunches upwards or if I move it down and
starting to scrunch downwards and I really use mid-tones
for adding contrast. So let's go to this shot right here and I'm gonna color correct and color gray this is exactly how I would
do this for my own video. First things first you wanna make sure you have that clip selected and then we can start
making our adjustments. Now, when looking at the
shop, one of the things I want to fix is how dark
it is around my face, because it's a bit to contrasty for me, and so first thing that I would do is go over to my mid-tones
and on this right side we have that exposure, and I'm
just going to increase this, to bring some of that life
back into those mid-tones, so we can see what's
going on in the shadows. Now, when I did that, you can see that I actually lifted
this entire thing up. So even though I was just
messing with the mid-tones the shadows were a bit affected as well, and I still want contrast in this shot. So what I'll do is I will take my shadows and I'm gonna bring those
down just to the bottom of this graph to see how this looks. So far, that's looking pretty good. I'm gonna mess with my highlights, see if I wanna bring those down or up, but honestly where
they're at is pretty good, everything's at the top
of this 100 and so far I'm happy with how this looks. If I click this on and off, you can see how much we really
brought back into the face how much we brought back into the shot just by adjusting those mid-tones up and then bringing the shadows
back down to keep the contrast but also bring life to those shadows. When it comes to adding saturation, I like to use the master wheel so that affects the entire shop. So I'm just gonna increase it just a hair. Now that I'm liking how this looks I kinda wanna give this
a warm summer vibe, and so we're gonna mess
with some of the colors add a bit of warmth into the shop. First, I'm gonna start
with the temperature and just kind of increase this
and see what this looks like. And you can see as I increase the warmth it gets a bit green as well. So I'm gonna grab the tent
and I'm gonna bring it this way to add some
magenta back into this shot. Now the highlights. I'm
just gonna add some warmth to this by dragging it
towards these oranges, and now my skin is
getting a bit too orange and so what I'll do is
I'll go to my mid-tones. I'm gonna pull it in
the opposite direction adding a bit of blue to the mid-tones. I'm also gonna add a little
bit of blue into the shadows and maybe increase my
highlights even more. Mostly gonna bring my
highlights down just the hair. This is definitely more
of a stylized shot. Everything is a bit warmer,
it looks very summery, very warm, and so if I
click this on and off you can see the before and
after is pretty crazy, right? Look how dark this is,
it looks really cool. It looks natural, but
when I click this on, everything is much warmer,
the shadows have been lifted and I like the warmth that we're getting in the sky and those greens. I think it looks really awesome. When it comes to color grading, there's no correct way to do it. It definitely is just
finessing in the colors, messing with it, It takes
a while to figure out, where you want your colors in the shadows, the mid-tones the highlights, and so practice just
start messing the shots. There is no wrong way to do this, just start messing around with it see how it looks and you'll
get better over time. Now I'm gonna show you a really cool trick that you can do here in Final Cut. But first, let's copy over
these effects, Command + C. We're gonna paste them onto this by hitting option Command + V. Now we can see that it
copied everything over but it's not looking too good. So I'm gonna go back into my color wheels and make a few adjustments
to the exposure. I think it looks a little bit flat. So we're gonna add a little
more contrast to the shop. That's looking a bit better. I kinda like having the
highlights a bit lower, I think it looks really
cool for this shop. Okay, now that I like how this is looking it looks very warm, very cinematic, what I'm gonna do is
actually add in a new thing by clicking up this down arrow right here, we're gonna add an R
hue saturation curves. Now in this video, we're
just gonna take a look at these top three, the
hue vs hue, the hue vs sat and the hue vs luma, I'm gonna show you what these do and how they can really affect your image. If we click this eyedropper
right here on hue vs hue I can select any color I want and it is going to show me
what color it is right here. And as I drag this up and down, it's actually going to mess
with that color specifically. So it's not going to mess with the hue on all the colors like that
one little hue wheel did. This is going to mess
with just that one color. So if I want to make that
blue water a bit more blue I can drag it down like this, And it's going to add in some more blues and just change the hue of
what the pool originally was. I'm also gonna do this with the green. So if I click this little green right here there's some different colors
in this tree like this, is going to be a little bit different than say this green back here, you can see this green
has a lot more blue in it but I wanna mess with
these colors right here. So as I track these down,
they can get really bizarre really blue, and you can mess with these and kinda fine tune exactly the look that you're going forward. Let's say I'm really liking this shot, but I think the blue in the pool is just a bit too saturated. I like the color, I just
wanna less saturated. This is what the hue vs sat set is for, so if you click the eyedropper and then select the pool color from here if you drag it down, you can de-saturate the pool. And if you drag it up, it is just going to
increase the saturation. So I'm gonna keep it right about there, And I'm gonna do the same
thing with these trees, because the green is a really cool green. I just do not like how saturated it is. Okay now, this is looking really cool. So if I turn this off you can see what this looks like before. And then I turn it on, this is what it looks like after. So this is where you
can get really creative and really stylize a look and color grade, using this hue saturation curves is a really fun tool just to mess around with the colors and make
something that is really unique. Now that I really like this look, I'm gonna copy and paste
this image onto a new video. So far it looks pretty good but I'm gonna show you guys
actually the main reason why I use the hue saturation curves. And it's typically with skin tones and kinda decreasing maybe
some of the redness in the skin or if the skin is just too saturated bringing that saturation
down just a little bit. And I basically use this, in almost every single thing media video and what I do is I go
into the hue vs saturation use the eyedropper I select the skin, and then this allows me to really refine that saturation in the skin tones. If I wanna bring it
down just a hair I can, and usually the redness on my cheeks or my nose sometimes can
just get a little bit too red when I add in saturation, and
so I can click on my cheeks or my nose and maybe bring
this area down a little bit. You can see that the
lips now have no color. And so I just bring it back up until I think it has a
good enough saturation but not too much. This is before any of the
hue saturation curves, and this is after the
hue saturation curves. This is before the entire
image, and this is after. Click on the screen to watch another Final Cut Pro 10 tutorial or you can click on the bottom screen if you wanna watch our advanced part two color grading video. I'll see you guys in the next video. (upbeat music)
