Larry Jordan, Color Correcting in FCPX using Scopes.

and here to talk about color correction in Final Cut Pro 10 please welcome Larry Jordan before we start I want to thank Heather for sharing her computer she was going to an all-expense-paid to dinner at Maxine's but she felt it was worthwhile to sacrifice the dinner to share her computer because we couldn't get mine to talk to the projector so Heather thank you very much buy an extra ninja just to say thank you for me michael has given me 25 minutes to do a color correction demo on Final Cut 10 and the only way that you can do color correction is to understand scopes there are some very nice scopes inside Final Cut 10 and so I'm going to go through the process of reading the two most important which are the waveform monitor which tells us everything we need to know about black and white and the vectorscope which tells us everything we need to know about color I normally do this presentation in about two hours so what I've decided to do is to drop every third word and we'll be able to we'll be able to squeeze it down into 25 minutes final content has a lot of controversy associated with it and I'm not here to defend or explain everything but the color corrector really takes a lot of elements from color which ship with Final Cut 7 except makes it much more understandable I like everything about the color corrector inside Final Cut ten especially when compared to Final Cut 7 except Apple changed the shape of the color wheel to a color board which I still have problems with just to confess a small thing but I tell you thus the color correction inside here is pretty cool let's start with a quick description if we go up to if we go up to the window menu we have the ability to display scopes and the keyboard shortcut to display scopes is command 7 and I can never figure out where the heck they are on the monitor display so I'll just type command 7 there's the scope it's in the window menu somewhere we're going to just open this up just a bit to be able to see what we have to work with there are three primary scopes inside final cut the first which is the histogram is exactly like the histogram inside Photoshop it shows the distribution of pixels from super black on the left to super white on the right scaling from dark to light the histogram is incredibly valuable inside Photoshop it has almost no utility inside Final Cut 7 that's the last thing we're going to say about the histogram the waveform monitor tells us everything we need to know about black and white with the waveform monitor we can say things like the left hand side of the picture is brighter than the center of the picture and the center of the picture is brighter than the right hand side of the picture we can make left-to-right statements that way but we can't make up-and-down statements with the waveform monitor down is dark up is bright and we divide the waveform into six sections down here at the very bottom is super black this is an illegal value you cannot have black levels down into super black they need to stop at zero which is black from zero to 33% is shadow detail sometimes called blacks which is not politically correct so we're going to call it shadows from 33% to 66% they can't decide what they call this some people call it mid gray some call it mid-tone some call it just mids and give up we're going to call it one of the three then the top third is from 66% to 100% is called highlights then the white line is exactly a hundred percent and above white is also an illegal value which is called super white the only problem with super white is every single digital camera shoots into the super white category which means that if you don't color correct your images they are already by definition illegal for all broadcast and cable work and if you decide that you're just going to wuss out and put it to a DVD it causes the DVD to cause the television set picture to warble and puts a buzz in your audio so these are you got to pay attention to this stuff the range from zero to a hundred percent is really a percentage we could argue that it's the same as I re but that would caused a fistfight among engineers so we're going to call it a percentage again this is the waveform tells us everything we need to know about color nothing about sorry everything about black and white nothing about color the vectorscope tells us everything we need to know about color and notice that every single shade of black white and gray is a single dot in the center of the vectorscope because black and white is actually perpendicular to the monitor think of a knitting needle every shade of black white and gray on a six-inch knitting needle black down here white up here in every shade of gray in between take that knitting needle plunge it into the North Pole of a grapefruit and push it down until it hits the South Pole of a grapefruit the grapefruit is the color space all the black and white values are a vertical line that goes from the North Pole to the South Pole through the grapefruit if we cut the grapefruit at the equator we end up with the vectorscope there's the edge of the grapefruit going all the way around here there is the knitting needle perpendicular with every shade of black white and gray and as we go around the grapefruit our hue changes we have red magenta blue cyan green yellow back to red opposite colors which are called complementary colors cancel to gray so the opposite of red is cyan meets in the middle at grey the opposite to magenta is green meets the middle at gray the opposite to blue is yellow meets in the middle at grey so adding opposite colors cancels that's why when we have a green screen shot you add magenta the way you take green out is to add the opposite color magenta and it takes it to gray also equal amounts of red green and blue equal amounts of red green and blue equal gray now if it's dark red dark green dark blue then equal amounts of red green and blue equal a dark grey or a light gray or a mid-tone gray I can see everybody's just unbelievably overwhelmed with that statement so let me turn it around because a rephrasing of this statement makes color correction possible and that rephrasing is if something is supposed to be gray then it must contain equal amounts of red green and blue that statement makes color correction possible so let's just take a look this is the we'll go through the waveform really quick and I'll show how we do color correction waveforms already expressed left-to-right etc etc take a look here this could be a square could be a triangle could be a pipe could be a circle all we can say by looking at the scope is that the center is brighter than the edges or it starts dark fades to medium bright barely above the shadow detail back down to dark again but I can't I've been reading scopes since the beginning of time I can't look at the scope and say ah that's a soft edge blue circle sitting I can look at the soft edge blue circle and see the scope and get a relationship but that's it take a look at this image a little bit of water in front oK we've got black levels which are sitting right on the black line we got some dark Gray's right around 25% that's the shadow detail on the rock we got some blue sky over here that's the blue sky we got the highlights on the snow notice that the snow doesn't even go to 100% it's bright white snow but it stops at about 90% the black levels are just a little bit above where they need to be they're sitting right at black that shadow detail right there all right we can say that it's pretty even it's called a high contrast picture by the way high contrast means there's a lot of pixels between the darkest and lightest pixel this is a night shot it's supposed to be night but look at the range of pixel values there this is the arc of the sky right there the river sort of hovering right around in there we've got all these bright pixels now you would think that this is night it's supposed to be dark the principal grayscale value is dark but the actual grayscale value ranges quite widely yet there's no question that's a daylight shot and that's a night shot but night shot doesn't mean that you don't have any mid-tones and highlights there's a really rich spectrum of grayscale values here look at the lack of spectrum here we've got essentially a foggy day means there's no blacks there's no whites it's all mid-tones our black levels if you take out this truck right there our black levels are hovering around 25% that's extremely washed out thinking of washed out look at this shot even more washed out black levels hovering around Oh 15 to 20 percent white levels starting ending rather right at 75 percent this is the arc typical definition of a cloudy day if you shoot on a bright sunshiny day you want it to make it look cloudy raise the black levels if you shoot on a foggy day you want to make it look like the fog isn't there pull your black levels down it's a really cheap way of making fog instantaneously without a fog machine or take a look at this look where the black levels are way up here and the white levels right at 100% perfectly safe image but look at how dark this image is whoa black levels now this is a blue balloon so it's not going to sit right at zero it's not black it's blue but look how close to black that blue actually is and try to say that sentence with black and blue that quickly one time when make it through and notice we've got yellow hovering right around 60% except for that specular right there which has got a little spike that goes up to about 80% I love this picture this picture one would argue that she's white but she isn't white her sweater is white her top is black she's a mid-tone gray I have spent extensive amounts of time researching this issue and there are no white people anywhere in the world to be politically correct there are no black people there either we're all mid-tone gray people doesn't make much sense to say hey you're a mid-tone gray person it causes a fence but in point of fact when we're doing color correction when we're doing color correction it is in fact a mid-tone gray person her skin tone is right around 50% we'll talk more about that in just a second well let's take a look at this exact same concept from the vectorscope because this is going to talk about color correction vectorscope single dot because we have no color now we've got color and look at shades from almost zero saturation to fully saturated by the way there are three fireable offenses for an editor one is audio levels that exceed 0 DB second white levels that exceed 100% and 3rd chroma levels that are oversaturated you can have naked people running around your screen as much as you want nobody but your white levels go over 100% they take you up back and flog you how do you determine if your chroma levels are okay connect the tops of each of those targets if your color levels are inside that six-sided polygon it is a generally safe assumption to say that your chroma levels are okay if they exceed a line connecting those tops your chroma levels are oversaturated and you're in trouble okay so here a little bit of saturation toward blue look at the saturation here strong blue strong green very strong orange very limited saturation we're mostly picking up well actually that's pretty good saturation it's about 50% strong yellow magentas reds blues almost nothing a foggy day is no blacks no whites and very little color very lack of saturation a little bit of color shift toward green a little bit of blue the basket really is coming up more green than anything else look at the color spikes here yellow balloon red balloon blue balloon blue sky back to our mid-tone gray person for those of you that actually do get cleaned up every so often you notice when you have dead skin in your hand you look at it and you say you know that dead skin doesn't have a color it's gray this is why we get a grayscale value with our our skin tone because what gives our faces and bodies color is not the skin but it's the red blood under the skin this line right here called the flesh tone line represents the color of red blood under skin and whether you're black Hispanic Indian Asian American white green purple blue whatever we all have the same red blood under our skin and this is the color of red blood under skin if you're color correcting anyone except Asian their skin color needs to be on the red line or two degrees above it which means pretty darn close to the line if you're color correcting an Asian skin it's on the line to two degrees below it a red lipstick parks right there a brass opera glass parks right there the difference between the color brass and red lipstick is 12 degrees skin tone parks on the skintone line well let's take a look at how we would go about color correcting this we're going to open up the inspector and with the inspector I'm going to just sort of check this the principal thing that I most often have to do is grayscale adjustments so we go to the color corrector click this right pointing arrow it opens up the color board the color board which is command 6 has three components to it exposure which translates to grayscale exposure which translates to greyscale color which translates to hue and saturation which is the amount of color each one of these three settings in the color board has three as four pucks to change the highlights to change the mid-tones to change the black levels and to change everything to reset you click this hookie thingy up here that resets the color board let me illustrate if I go to this grayscale value watch what happens to the waveform as I pull the white levels up and down video is extremely interactive I'm adjusting the white levels the most but notice that the mids are also shifting but not as much and the blacks are also shifting but not as much as the mids if I grab the mids I put a bow into the curve it's no longer a straight line however both the blacks and the highlights are affected if I pull the black level up or down the mids are also shifted and the highlights are shifted but not as much as the mids it's all interactive which means when you do color correction you always want to do it in the same fashion all the time set the black level first set the white level second then you adjust color and the reason is if I go to a color clip and adjust the black level changing the black level changes the color you don't want to make a color adjustment and then go back and do the black levels you're going to be chasing your tail the other thing that's important to know at sea got to think about this for a second it's a really important thought it'll come back to me so notice here that whatever I want to do with the hue command does it well it does l right in Y UV which is the form before we went to RGB and y UV change in the color does not change the grayscale value in RGB which is what we're color correcting in here and how we color correct and resolve change in the color does affect the grayscale so the rule of thumb is set the OLT that's it set the black level first set the white level second then adjust color black level adds richness adds vibrancy adds thickness adds warmth highlights the white level adds energy adds punch mid-tones change the time of day or change the emotion you'll do a mid-tone adjustment to make an emotional adjustment but not generally a color correction adjustment you'll do black level set the black level to zero set the white level to 100% and then if necessary to set the right emotion adjust the mid-tone level then move over to adjust your color so let's fix this first picture here black levels are a little elevated who knows what the color of that shrubbery is so I think the colors are perfect so all I have to do is go to the exposure pull my black level down but how far do I pull the black level down the answer is the stupid histogram it has one valuable function it allows you to set the black level so what you do is you adjust the histogram such that the low left side of the histogram bumps right up against the zero line it's easier to read zero with the histogram than it is to read zero with the waveform monitor and I've just pulled the black level down so it's parked right at zero remember you don't want to go into super black that's an illegal value and it gets clipped after nine percent you pull the black level down watching the histogram so you can just have it touch the edge of that zero line that says your black levels are perfect then when we go back to the waveform monitor our white levels are a little low so I'm going to pull the white levels up just a bit right about there and we're done with that with that clip with the color corrector turned off it's okay but it's got more punch it's a bit more vibrant when we turn the filter on and you can see the difference it's not big but it's enough that it makes it worthwhile to color correct take a look at this night scene black levels a little high again go to the color board always start with exposure pull the black levels down make that a little bit darker go back again that turns the black levels on look at the sky you can see the distance the difference in the sky and in the river now the projectors crushing the blacks a little bit on my system I still have shadow detail in the clouds I can still see detail which is lost on the projector but what I did is I took my black level from about 8 percent down to zero and it added richness and thickness and drama to the picture same thing here let's take a look if we go to this always adjust your gray scales first so I'm going to set my black level down right at zero because this the shadow under the truck is zero so we'll pull that black level down I'm going to leave I'm going to pull the whites down just a bit because I want to pump up the mid-range and just add some spice to the balloons and notice that as I do that it's like the Sun is setting or the Sun is rising it's midday it's evening this is a gross exaggeration but it shows that what we're able to do with the mid-tones has changed the emotional time of day content of the shot and yet I'm not doing anything to make my whites illegal by going too high or my blacks illegal by going too low so we'll just put that right about there well foggy day we could make it a foggy day or we could take the fog away pull the fog out pull the white level I'll punch this up just a bit pull that down little there we go okay so take a look at it this is without the fog sorry fog no fog not exactly no fog but it's a whole lot better and if I wanted to make it a foggy day let's pull the black levels up pull the white levels down and look at that instant foggy day let's try something different okay here my black levels are elevated pull this down this is a romantic getting ready for a balloon ride a romantic balloon ride in the evening evening bringing on the evening pull the white levels up just a bit there we go black levels up a bit and we can pull the mids up a bit and we've now taken that without even adjusting the color we made that more evening like okay here I've got a problem I want to make this a little bit brighter so we'll take the clip and let's see we'll pull the black levels just a bit down just to say I can pull the white levels up I'm not going to worry about the specular at the moment adjust that except that red balloon is supposed to be green this is a really cool feature if I go if you remember the limit effect inside the final cut seven where you want to be able to select the color red we have the exact same thing I can select based upon a shape or I could select based upon a mask now let's do the shape for instance gives me the ability to draw a shape if I grab this I can turn it into a square or a circle change the size of the circle add the I just put it up here pull this down pull this over the outer circle represents feathering I could feather that and I will just a hair not a lot of feathering just a little go over to here I'm not going to adjust the grayscale just going to adjust the hue and we'll just make that green and we now have a green balloon as opposed to a yellow balloon except I want this red balloon to be a different color maybe dark green so we'll go back to here select the other mask which is called notice how I've got this I'll click on the color sample mask and click the eyedropper tool and click and drag as long as the eyedropper tool does not extend that little white circle does not extend outside the balloon right there I've now selected that red go over to here and it says do you want to change it inside the mask or outside let's see I got to be on the right one here go back oh I see we have the ability which is what I've done here which is just totally wrong to have a shape mask inside a color mask inside a shape mask in other words I can nest my masks which is just going to drive me completely nuts because I don't want to do that I want to create an all-new correction so I'll click the plus button here it says there's my second correction now I get to select my color go here okay now when I go over I want to have the red balloon be let's make it a yellow balloon orange I'll buy orange because yellow is a pastel I can change the color but I can't change the grayscale so you don't want to necessarily go with the pale yellow because I've got a dark red to start with let's move farther over okay this is perfectly okay but I want to illustrate a situation where the skin tone is not okay here we've got good skin tone we've already seen that by looking at the vectorscope okay right on the skin tone line we go to this shot right here look at this everything is shifted heavily toward yellow and green and as I continue analyzing this as I look at the waveform monitor black levels are high white levels are okay but I don't know if my levels are even close to alright for those of you who insist on taking notes at presentations like this I'm about to give you a series of numbers it's going to make your color grading a whole lot easier if you are trying to set the white levels and there's nothing white and nothing black in the scene all you adjust all you need to adjust is your skin tone our brains are programmed to know three colors they know blue sky they know green grass and they know skin tone with our eyes closed to know exactly what normal skin looks like Caucasian women have a grayscale value between fifty and seventy percent so if I don't have anything black or white on the screen all I need to do is to set my grayscale level on well lit skin to between 50 and 70 percent and a woman would look great men are slightly darker manner between Caucasian men 45 and 65 percent Asian and Hispanic matter between 35 and 50 percent black men are about 15 to 35 and black women about 20 to 40 I got these numbers from Alexis van hurkman who wrote a wonderful book about this called the encyclopedia of color correction so first thing I want to do is I need to set my grayscale level for this how do we do it I go back to the inspector I twirl down and show crop and I crop in the left side I crop in the right side if I can't crop in enough I'll click in the numbers and just drag up because the the numbers will go farther than the slider will drop down and will roll down a bit crop up I now have an isolated picture of what her skin tone is and look at this it's pumping up close to 80% she's a little bit overexposed so I'll go to my correction go to exposure pull the whole thing down just a little bit to get her inside the ballpark remember she's white Caucasian somewhere between 50 and 70 percent she was around 80 I want to pull that let's see I won't use global I'll use just the white level there we go then I go back and I say what's she look like on the vectorscope well she's supposed to be on the skintone line she's actually way the heck over on yellow go to color I'm going to do a global adjustment I want to remove the yellow so I drag it down now I go back to the cropping and turn cropping off look at that I now have the waveform monitor ok black levels look good her skin tone looks good we go over to here pull the saturation down just a hair on global we went from something which looks like this to something that looks like that he's not amazing there is a lot of power in the color corrector that's built into final cut 10 but in order to understand the power in any color corrector you need to read scopes never ever make decisions with your eye because your eye can make a mistake and many monitors are not calibrated I wanted to show you tonight what you could do when you understand how scopes work and the tools that control them my name is Larry Jordan thank you very much

Channel: Michael Horton

Views: 136,479

Keywords: editing, NLE, LACPUG, Avid, Adobe, Apple, FCPX, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, \Color Correcting\, Grading, \Larry Jordan\, LAFCPUG, \Final Cut Pro X\

Id: jX45Yi1spY4

Length: 27min 45sec (1665 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/paul89]

Great guy and great instructor. I had the pleasure to attend a couple FCP classes he teaches.

You can also subscribe to his free newsletter on his websites, he always sends FCP tips, reviews and stuff : http://www.larryjordan.biz/