(bright upbeat music) - What's going on guys? This is Qazi, welcome
to another epic video, this is part of the color
grading basics series. So if you're a beginner, if have, you know, messed
around with color grading, but still are kinda up in the air with like certain concepts like primaries versus log wheels, when to use which. This video is gonna break it down in a way that it's gonna
make the most sense to you, I'm gonna give you practical examples, and then you can obviously, as always, take this, and run with it, and start applying it
to your current projects that you're working on. And for those that wanna level up their color grading game, check out the link, in the description, one hour long free training, where I will show you how to
get the perfect skin tones out of your Sony S-Log 8-bit footage, how to get the clean white look. It's the go to commercial look. How to get the creamy film look, how to fix the dreaded Gamma shift, and much more, link is in the description. Guys, if you're enjoying
the content on this channel, please smash that Like button, the only way on YouTube do blow up, and you know, your boy loves to blow up, and watch this brand new merch just dropped it a couple of weeks ago, you guys can pick it up, link is in the description. You've got to work hard, and then when you work hard, you gotta own it, you gotta brag hard. This actually means to inspire people, let them know what you're about, so you can actually create
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dropped every single day. Let's roll the intro. (bright upbeat music) Before we even start grading, let me just give you a
quick behind the scene on what is really going down between primaries, and log wheels. And this is the best
way to explain it, okay? I can try to, you know, talk through it, and commentate, and grade, and try to tell you the difference, but this is gonna make
it black and white, okay? So this is a gray scale image my scopes are right here, so focus right here, I'm gonna talk you through, what's going down right here. So let's start with our Gain, and just focus on this guy right here and see what happens, okay? So if I take this right here, in my wheel and increase it, look, what's happening to all
of my parameters right here. They're moving in unison, okay? And then if I bring it down, like, just look at how organic the curve is when I'm doing this, okay? Now let me just go to log wheels, this is my log wheels right here Highlights, look exactly the same almost everything is the
same besides the wording. So you might be like you
know, they're the same thing. And I feel like a lot
of people are mistaken, and that's why they use one or the other, but I'm here to literally reveal something that's
gonna change your life. So now we're in Highlights. Here, it's called Gain,
here it's called Highlights, and I'm gonna try to do the same thing, but just look what happens here, okay? What is the difference? What's really going on? Look what is happening
to the entire image, look at this like this line
that's happening right here. This can translate to
insane amount of banding when you're working with
10-bit, 8-bit images, something that's not,
you know, 12bit or more. You're gonna see so much banding, and people are usually just driven crazy, and they're like Qazi, what's going on with my images? How to get a good look. Well, look at how much breakage that's happening right here, okay? Because this is very finite control I mean, what you're doing here is the complete opposite to what you saw we were doing with the Gain. And then when we take
it the other direction so basically what that tells you, is that this is for more granular control than overall control, you know, or affect your picture. Now, let me just show you really quick what Gamma does in our primaries wheel. So I'm gonna take this, I'm gonna move it around, and look at how gentle
this curve is, right? I just look at how gentle this curve is let me reset this real quick, go back to my log wheels,
and Midtone, which is, you know, their version
of Gamma quote, end quote. Let's see what happens
when I try to move this, just look at what is going on. Look at this gunk that's happening here. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it because if you just wanna get in there, and make a granular change and maybe, you know, push or nudge
your skin a little bit here, a little bit there, then there's nothing better than using your log wheels, okay? But as an initial look, no way, this is one of the biggest amateur mistakes people make people think that, oh, should I be using I'm a color wheel, I'm a primaries guy, I'm a log wheel guy, that's not how it works. I'm gonna show you exactly how it works, but let me just show
you the last one here, which is Lift in our primaries wheel. Look what's happening. Basically the opposite of
what was happening with Gain, but everything is moving as one compared to when I go
under the log wheels, going to Shadow, and it's
gonna do the same thing that, you know, we were the
results that we were getting in Highlights, and look
at how controlled it is. Now, one more thing we can do here is that we have finer control right here with our lower
range, and high range. Now, if I wanna limit this even more, I can come in here, and I can go, hey, really
just affect this part, like affect this part, leave everything else alone and I can do that here, or I can make it more gentle and say, hey, affect a little bit more, give me a little bit closer to the kind of results I
can get in my primaries, but still having a bit more control. If now, if this is all confused you, instead of helping you,
don't worry about it. Now we're gonna jump right in here, and you're gonna see all the things that I just blabbered about in action, okay? So this is my hero frame, at two seconds, so I'm gonna pick this, and I'm gonna show you what
I meant by all of that. Basically here's the big reveal primaries come first before log wheels. Primaries are used to dial in your base before you go in, and start making changes,
or create a look. Log wheels are perfect
for creating a look, and giving you a little push or a nudge, but primaries or what sets
the tone of the entire look DNA, if you will. So let me show you what I mean. So now in my primaries, I'm
gonna start with my Lift, so I'm just gonna bring this down somewhere around here, okay? And I'm gonna go into my Gain, and I'm gonna keep raising
it until I hit the top, and then I'll just pull it back, you know, a little bit. And now in my Gamma, is gonna determine how much juice do I want in the skin. So, maybe let's keep it
somewhere around here we wanna make him look like a villain. So something like this, not
too much, this is great. So, let me just go in my
actually, you know what? I'm gonna keep my Lift
somewhere around here. Now I'm gonna go to my second node, the beauty that you're
gonna see right here of the log wheels in combination
with the primaries is this, let's say we wanna do like a typical teal and orange sort of look like a really cool look so we wanna create that. So I'm gonna start with my Left, I'm gonna pull it down a little
bit, something like that. And now my skin is outta whack. So let's balance it out with my Gamma. So I'm gonna raise it up a little bit, I'm gonna add like that warmth, I'm gonna bring that back in, and you know, that does
not look too bad, right? So that's pretty good. But the one thing that
I'm noticing is that, you know, this Offset on the black points at the bottom is a bit too harsh, and this is where I go into my log wheels, and look what I'm gonna do with my Shadow, I'm gonna balance the image out, just look what I just did. So if I do before, and after how much I balance the image out, now, you might be thinking, but dude, you made it very different
than what it was. But if I turn this on, and off and look at the DNA is still there. Let's say we go back
into our Lift Gamma Gain, and we do a push and
pull a little bit more so now I brought it
down a little bit more, and now I take his skin, and I, you know, put it in
that world a little bit more. And if I go on my log wheels, what I can do now is in my Shadow, I can lift it a little bit, right? So it's not super crushed
and I can put it right here. So now if I do before and after, just realize how much of
the look DNA we created with Lift Gamma Gain, in conjunction with the log wheels. And this is what I meant when I said you have to use them together. One does not come after the other. And let me show you one more thing. So I'm gonna create another node, and let's say, overall image
needs a little pop, right? I mean, it's just a bit
on a, on the dull side. So I'm gonna go click
on my editable splines, I'm gonna click right here, and I'm going to start raising it up I'm only looking at his
skin right now okay? So I'm only looking at that, and this is looking pretty good to me. And then what I can do
is I can click right here on the bottom end, and I can start pulling it down
a little bit, not too much, something like that to keep
the drama in there right? So I'm doing that, this
is looking pretty good, but the only thing that happened here, that's detrimental to my
images look, what's happening. We're clipping up top, like right here, we're clipping. So how do we handle that? We handle it with our log
wheels in our Highlights, I can just go in here, and just watch what happens right here. When I go in my log wheels, in my Highlights and I just pull it down. Boom! Just a little bit. Look what I just did before, after. I just hold it down a touch, and this would have been not possible to do just that in our primaries, because it would have affected
the entire image here, you barely even notice the difference and we pulled the Highlights back, and we protected our image
just like that, okay? So in these two nodes, look at how far our image has come from this, to that, with
the help of log wheels, you know, partnering up with
primaries and custom curves. And this is what I meant in the beginning when I said, that people
got that idea backwards where they go, they're the log wheel, you know, guy or a primaries guy, that's not what it is you have to learn to use them in conjunction to create
really cool looks, but you know, we're not gonna stop here because we never stop at what it is, we keep milking it and
take it to the next level. So now I'm gonna do three new nodes, which are gonna be more
like a complimentary nodes. They're more like extracurricular, you don't have to do it, but I'm gonna do it
because it's really gonna, you know, put a new life into this image. And the first one is gonna be where I'm just gonna grab his skin, right? So I'm gonna go in here,
I'm gonna grab this, and then because it's red and shot on really high bit rate, like
we have a lot of information. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm going try to yo know
try to mess around with it, open it up and try to
grab as much as I can, and then actually leave that as is, and then restrict this a little bit, move this around, and I
just wanna really keep it in this world, maybe actually
tighten it a little bit. Okay, so this is good enough. And then I'm gonna come in here, I'm gonna denoise it to around 10 ish. And now what I wanna do is I just wanna go in my Gamma, and I wanna give it a
little bit more juice, you know, so if I turn it on, and off is just giving it a little bit more, which really separates them from the rest, from the background. So I really like it, I'm
gonna leave it there, but now I wanna do a few
more things like really grunge this image up, and one thing is gonna
be the Midtone detail. I want to take it, I want to
crank it to around 50 ish, and just look how much it's
giving him this villain look, gives them so much more power. So I wanna keep it right there, okay? So there was a little
effect, but when a long way. Now I wanna go right here, and what I wanna do is I wanna
sharpen up my entire image. So I'm gonna keep it
somewhere around here, and that sharpens up the entire image once again, just add so much more, and if I do before and after, I'm really gonna pause for a second so you guys can see it, you know, on YouTube and
just focus right here, and then I do before, keep your eyes right here after. So big difference, okay? Big difference that's happening here. And the final one is gonna be my glow, and I'm gonna bring it in, I'm gonna go in here, I'm gonna set it to soften, and it looks like garbage
at first, but that's okay. I'm gonna go in my threshold up here, I'm gonna crank it all the way, and then here is my focus is in his eyes when I move this spread slider around. And basically, I'm just trying to get the most minor information in his eyes, which is right around here, okay? So that's looking pretty good. Then I wanna go into my brightness, and I wanna kinda crank
it a little bit, okay? And then another thing that I wanna do is I wanna click on colorize, and look what happens
when I move it around. I'm just focusing on his face, and I wanna not make it so red, and just pull some of
that out, and like really, maybe keep it somewhere around here. Give him a little bit of red back, you know, maybe a little bit more somewhere around here, and now if I do before and
after that kind of thing. So, overall we're crushing
it at the bottom a bit much. So I'm gonna show you
a really cool technique to kinda save our image from that, okay? Overall, I'm really happy with it, I would lock it in here, but let me just show
you a quick technique. So in my qualifier, I'm gonna go and I'm
gonna take my low soft, and get it to around 15, 16 ish, and now I'm gonna start raising this up. And I'm gonna hit Shift H so you guys can see what I'm doing. And basically what I'm trying to do is let's just leave the ultimate shadows, and start affecting everything after that. So that's what I'm doing, okay? So now you can see what is happening. I'm basically leaving the
shadows and everything as is, and then I'm affecting
everything else, okay? The top end and I'm leaving the bottom end pretty much as is if you will. And maybe we can just get
it somewhere around here where we can really see what's happening. So I'm gonna leave it something like that. If I turn these three on and off, you know, the look,
the, basically the nodes that we wanted to have fun with and really take it to the next level, you can easily see that it made all the
difference in the world, and that's the thing
about color grading guys. Like a little goes a long way, and you've gotta keep massaging it, and it's just layering you know, it on top of one another until you get to something that looks like this, from that. So, let me just kill all of these and, you know, go from where we
started, to where we ended up. So right here, we started
with our primaries, and it looked like, man, we've made such a huge
difference here, right? Then I showed you the
dance that you gotta do between your primaries,
and your log wheels to create a really cool look, and then after that, we did our custom curves, which really gave it a lot of juice, and then showed you how
by using your log wheels, you can control your Highlights that might get damaged
by adding extra contrast. Then, I pulled out a skin, and added tons of detail in there, to like really grunge up the image, and give them a lot of him character. Then added sharpening to our entire image, must have node right there, and then finally, added
my special glow technique, and it just makes all the
difference in the world, and it just makes everything come to life, and less check out the
final look in full screen. (bright upbeat music) So, I hope you guys had a ton of fun, and learned a lot primaries
versus log wheels. There is no such thing as
versus these work together, and you have to understand it, to take full advantage of it. So most of you out there, that are working with 8-bit footage that might be working with Sony cameras, and getting a lot of macro blocking, and you guys don't know
what is really going on you might be using your log wheels, you know, against you then, you know, to actually help your images get to the next level. So make sure to check out the link to the training one hour long training, I say it all the time, but I cannot emphasize enough for those that haven't seen it, the value that's jam packed in that thing that I've created. Check it out, smash that
Like button if you haven't, subscribed to my channel
for more awesome content, I will see you guys in the next video. (bright upbeat music)
