Simply Color Grade ANY Clip

i'm not a professional colorist i color grade in adobe premiere which isn't the world's best coloring platform but it's good enough for what i needed to do like i'm not going to be doing anything crazy like you're going to see in a second just how simple my process really is when it comes to color grading so i have some of my favorite clips i've shot in 2020 here in my timeline and we're going to go through each of these one by one so here we are in adobe premiere and this first clip right here is from a commercial a beer commercial that i shot in mexico this clip was shot from my canon c200 it was shot in the raw profile and the one thing i like to do with the c200 raw light profile is i don't like the color grade cloud 2. like it's way too aggressive for me so what i do is i go into my raw settings of the clip and i change my color space to bt 709 which is like a rec 709 color space and then my gamma i change to canon log 3. unless there's a clip that's blown out that i really need all that dynamic range all that information i typically from experience tend to shoot my shots properly like i don't blow out anything in the process of shooting so i'm able to work with a less aggressive um curve if you will so the first thing that i usually do is i want to get my black and my white points right where they need to be so to do that first step i always do is i pull down saturation all the way so the only thing i'm seeing are the gray scale white and blacks and i come in my curves i grab my black point which is the bottom of this line and i drag it right until my blacks reach a point where they're almost at zero ire they're going to be the darkest parts of my image so just over here or just about touching zero ire far blacks and my whites i'm gonna bring them kind of close to the highest white point the brightest part of the image and now i'm going to come back to my basic correction where i pull down the saturation and bring back the saturation now i'm just going to dial back my blacks a little bit they're clipping i touch white balance is always kind of like a preference thing for me i don't know if that's the right way to do things but this image is looking a little blue for me so i'm going to add a little warmth in the color temperature my image is looking a little contrasty so i'm going to pull the contrast back a little bit now my blacks are a little flat so i'm going to bring them back down now i'm going to pull my highlights down a little bit get a little bit smoother highlight roll off into the shadows it's looking pretty good let's see where we're at look at that that's like already looking solid but let's see what else there is to do so something that i always do is i come to my curves next i come down to luma versus saturation and i put a point right about here and so the tail end of this is uh the darkest parts of the image so i want to take the saturation out of the blacks i want my blacks to be black this isn't the best way to do this but this is the quickest and easiest way for someone like me to do this so i put my point here and i bring the darkest parts of the image all the way to zero saturation just to bring out any color in the blacks and really like no one's even gonna notice a simple little step but it's just something that i like to do just for my piece of mind honestly so after i do that i come into my color wheels and the color wheels are really the place where i find the look and like the creative style of my image because there's like an endless possibilities of what you can do here this is really where all the color grading happens right here in the highlight mid-tone shadow color wheels so for this image i really wanted to feel like it's warm like the sun is producing this nice rich warm feeling so what i'm going to do is i'm going to add a little bit of warmth a little bit of orangish yellow into the highlights and see where that's bringing us nice i like that so that's before it's looking pretty blue looking like a cooler night boom that makes it feel like more like a night in mexico if you will and then for mid-tones i usually only really push a little bit of red uh into the mid-tones because the mid-tones are gonna be where skin tones usually fall and what i typically do with shadows is bringing the opposite direction that i brought the highlights and what that's going to do is cause a nice little bit of contrast and colors in your image so since i brought my highlight towards the the yellowish uh direction i'm gonna pull my my shadows in the exact opposite direction towards this like bluish region so that looks nice so before and after our color wheels it's super subtle but again it gives us a nice little touch might come back up here add a little more saturation to the image bring down the contrast a little bit i'm gonna pull down my highlights a little bit more pull my blacks a touch more touch more saturation honestly like that's it like that's all i really want to do this clip i don't want to overdo it this is looking pretty good this is before and this is after like a really nice looking clip like it's already shot really well there's already like cool composition it's a cool looking scene so you don't really need to do too much to it the worst thing that you can do when you're first starting out color grading is do too much like you already don't have a base you don't have the eye developed so the more you do to the image the worse it's gonna look so really just keep it simple like i didn't do too much like i didn't throw on any luts like i just wasn't like pushing pulling colors to the extremes cool so before we move on i'm actually gonna export all these looks so that if you want them you can check them out in my store below and you don't feel like going through this process you can just use this one but like don't think just because it works on this clip it's gonna work on yours like it might not it might it's up to you so i'm gonna export this now so for those of you who don't know already how to export a look or lut you just go up to the lumetri color panel here click these like three little line things go to export.cube and let's call this uh mexican sunset and i'm going to hit save that's it okay so moving on to our next clip here this is a scene from a short film that i shot uh it's like this old guy just like screaming in a trailer so again this was shot on my knee 200 and raw profile so i'm going to do exactly what i did last time i'm going to make this into a more manageable codec to work with so i'm going to go into my effect controls i'm going to change my color space into the bt 709 change my canon log into canon log 3. so gonna bring my black and white points to where i want them pull the saturation down go into my curves move past it grab my black point drag it down to where we're close to zero then i take my white point you don't necessarily have to always take it up uh to the highest level or the lowest level so i'm going to bring it to a point where i feel like it feels right i'll leave it just about there it's like what 85 iri i'm gonna bring my saturation back boom i'm gonna pull my blacks up a little bit they're clipping just a touch so the first thing i'm gonna do i'm gonna bring down the contrast a little bit it's super contrasty when i do that though i'm losing my d black so i'm gonna pull my blacks back down to a point where they touch i'm gonna bring a little more saturation in gonna cool down our image this clip's looking a little warm so i'm gonna cool it down a bit just with my my temperature here and again like i use white balance to taste i don't necessarily do it the right way so i'm gonna pull it down to a point where i think it looks good next thing i'm going to do pull the saturation out of the blacks using this curved line all right so next are my color wheels that's where i love to to put my look on the things this is where all the magic happens inside the color wheels so everything's looking pretty warm already i don't know if i want to add more warmth coming in through windows let's see what it looks like when we cool down the highlights that's pretty nice yeah let's do that let's add a little bit of this color into our highlights cool down a little bit add a little red into the mid-tones which is gonna hit his skin tones i think i think i like where the shadows are already honestly i'm not gonna mess with the shadows i think it looks good i'm gonna come back to our basic corrections just make a couple minor twigs pull the contrast down again a little bit take some of that that that that harsh contrast out there maybe add a little more saturation so i'm actually going to pull some of the yellow out here i'm gonna find that color using my eye dropper here touch it right there find these two points just bring some of that like deranged yellow just like out of the clip a little bit that's doing a whole lot it's pretty nice now i did that though i feel like the highlights are a little too cool so i'm gonna come back here and just dial this this back a little bit might pull the contrast down just a touch more there we go let me the highlights down i think it's looking great this is this is before this is after i'm really liking the look of this and uh yeah again for all the people who don't feel like going through this process themselves i'm gonna quick export this look for you and drop it into uh my store down below export.cube old man trailer getting real creative with these names tonight next clip speaking of the devil he was texting us earlier this is a scene from a music video i shot with noah guy we're out the field we're using sunlight as our natural light bouncing this light back with a gold reflector 709 gamma we're gonna go canon log three exposed properly there's nice balance between the highlights and the shadows take the saturation all the way down so we can work with our black point go into the curves grab our black point bring it way down all the way to just about when it's touching zero ire i'm just gonna give it some breathing room i'm gonna pull this up just a touch kind of like where the highlights are already sweet bring back the saturation it's looking a little contrasty for me i might actually just pull our blacks back just a touch and no shirt in this case is white so i'm gonna take my white balance selector touch his shirt okay don't love how warm that made it so i'm gonna pull that back a little bit i'm just gonna pull it all the way back to zero didn't like what that was doing first thing i'm gonna do bring in some saturation it's looking about right again like all this is like just like you get used to like taste like you you know how much saturation to pull back in just because you've done this a hundred times it's looking a little contrasty so i'm gonna dial our contrast back a bit that's looking good i'm gonna bring my highlights down a little bit give us a smoother roll off looking like good levels right there let me add a little more saturation here so this music video in particular was like really like otherworldly so bring out those colors and that saturation gives it a nice touch a little more saturation cool i'm liking that i'm gonna come in the curves take the color all the blacks probably not doing anything but we're gonna do it anyway color wheels so where magic happens uh i don't really know what i want so i'm just gonna play around here start with the highlights see what that's doing not a ton gonna add some red into the midtones [Music] i think that was good right does that look good i don't know looks good to me i'm gonna pull my highlights a little more blue there we go that's looking good so next thing i want to do i want to make the grass kind of stand out a little more from the yellowish orange look of nose outfit that's gonna got going on i'm gonna come down to my hue versus hue click on our grass color and i want to bring my grass and make it a little more bluish green than yellow i feel like that's really pulling noah out in the image a little bit more so the next thing i want to do i want to increase the color of the balloon the sky i want to give it a little more saturation a little more like not realism type look a little more fairy tail-ish hue versus saturation pull up the saturation in the sky a bit pull no away from this image let him stand out a little bit more i want to take some of the focus away from what's in the foreground here and put your attention just totally on noah so what i like to do is kind of create a gradient of darkness that leads from the bottom of the frame up so to do that i'm going to create an adjustment layer i'm going to drop that over top of my clip so on that adjustment layer i'm going to bring down the exposure as you can see it's darkening the whole image i don't want that so i'm going to come into effect controls and then on my luma tree control little color thing i'm going to click this little like eclipse circle thing and so that's going to bring whatever i do over here on this side of my control panel it's going to happen all within this area so i'm gonna make this super big feather it out a whole bunch bring it up and now i'm able to essentially make it like a power window that you would have in davinci resolve here in adobe premiere so i'm going to adjust this to my liking here look how much that's doing isn't that really cool uh it might be a little much i'm going to pull it down but before or after it's just kind of taking like the bright hot spot out of the grass in front of noah and drawing your eye more toward where you want the viewer's eye to be pretty much all i'm going to do to this clip i think it looks great here's the before and here's the after and then our very last clip here is an anamorphic shot this is not from my knc200 this is from the black magic earth mini i'm not really used to working with this profile i don't really know the ins and outs but i'm just going to work with however it is however it showed up as soon as i put it into the timeline so first thing i'm going to do like all the other clips i'm going to pull down the saturation all the way find my black point bring that down to zero ire or at least close to it ursa mini profiles are really nice i kind of like them more than my c200 honestly not gonna do anything with my white points i think they're already as high as they need to be i'm gonna bring my saturation back so i remember when i shot this i shot this with a really super cool color balance temperature i wanted things to feel like real icy and like secluded and i think the first thing i can do i'm going to bring some of that warmth back it's a little too blue for me so right there it's looking nice pull down my contrast just a touch hold down my highlights just a touch get a nice smoother bit of roll off gonna come in my color wheels here i think i'm gonna yeah the color here is looking a little purpley so i'm going to move that towards the greenish blue [Music] that's nice right there i think [Music] i'm gonna keep it there i'm gonna come back up to my basic corrections oh forgot to take the color out of the blacks wasn't doing anything but [Music] here we are i'm going to come back to the top here bring down my highlights a little more get this a little smoother highlight roll off bring the warmth down bring back some of that core temperature add all green in there i don't think i want to do anything else i think if i do anything else it'll ruin it i think it looks cool the way it is it's an awesome frame this is before our color grading and this is after our color correction color grading yeah so i'll export this look for you if you want it it's not going to be free because i work hard at what i do yeah like there was no like secret formula to what i was just doing there like nothing really super unique or super technically difficult about that color grading situation most of it is just based off of personal taste and kind of just like what i've developed over color grading millions and millions of clips over the past few years so i hope you're leaving this feeling a little bit more confident as you work your way into the color grading world yeah thanks for watching as always i love you

Channel: Danny Gevirtz

Views: 67,544

Keywords: luts, color, color grade, grading, tutorial, premiere, adobe, how to, beginner, correct, peter mckinnon, matti haapoja, simple, easy, filmmaking, cinematic, teal, orange, curves, trick, tips, chris hau, daniel schiffer

Id: xQ5LWaguI70

Length: 20min 5sec (1205 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020