Step-by-step Color Grading in Final Cut Pro | FCPX Tutorial

what's up everybody today's video is going to be a little longer than normal because i'll be taking you through my step-by-step approach to color grading in final cut pro color grading is a topic that can't really be covered in just one video but i'm going to attempt to give you as much information as possible and hopefully by the end of this video you'll be able to tackle almost any color grading situation my color grading workflow is usually a six step process but it's different for every shot because some shots need more love and attention than others and some just don't need that much in this video i'll run through those six steps on these three different shots from our trip to europe so that you can see how each adjustment contributes to the final color grade let's do it the very first step when i color grade is to set up my final cut pro workspace for grading and the easiest way to do it is to head on over to window workspace and select color and effects or just use the shortcut ctrl shift 2. in this view you'll see all your different video scopes and scopes are super important to understand because if you know how to read them you can easily tell if your footage is over or underexposed or if one color is too prominent or if there's a color tint in your shot or anything like that so understanding the scopes will help you to make decisions in terms of what needs to change in your color grade by clicking on the drop down arrow over here you can change the layout of your scopes but my go-to is always this three-way one over here by clicking on this little graph over here you can change what you see in that panel i want my top panel to be a waveform scope showing the luma channel this shows how bright or dark your shot is with 0 being totally black and 100 being totally white anything under 0 is clipped and anything over 100 is blown out if i just drag the exposure down in the shadows here you'll see how it changes on the waveform let's undo that and i'll set this one to a vector scope and i'll also set it to 133 so i can see things a little more clearly here you can see a distribution of your colors and this is where you can tell if your white balance is off if you have a color tint and you're also able to see if your skin tones are correct and that's what this line is for more on that later lastly i'll set this one to a waveform as well showing the rgb overlay this is similar to the luma waveform over here but with the rgb overlay you can see if a certain color like red green or blue is brighter or darker than the rest if i had some blue in the highlights here you can see how both the vector scope and the rgb overlays change i'm adjusting the sliders on this color board here but there are four main color correction tools in final cut pro which you can access over here you have a color board color wheels color curves and hue saturation curves we'll be using a combination of these now that you have a basic understanding of the scopes and how to read them let's dive into the six steps that i follow when color grading in final cut pro the first step is to set the correct black and white values for your shot i've got this early morning shot from prague shot on the sony a7 iii with a cine 4 profile which is naturally a little flat which is perfect for color grading i'm going to add a color wheels correction here and i'm going to darken the shadows with the exposure slider on the right here while watching my scopes i want to get the darkest parts of the shot the things that should be black like this door or this alley over here close to zero on my waveform i don't want it at zero just a little bit above zero so about there is good i'll adjust my highlight so the brightest parts here are around 100 on the waveform you see how the waveform has a straight line over here that represents blown-out highlights so there are parts of the sky that are slightly overexposed so i'll just line that up to around 100 like that if i do an a b comparison here you can see what that does it increases the contrast but mainly it gets your black and white values in the right place step two is to adjust the contrast of your shot this is usually where i fine tune the contrast and i feel like i get the best results with the color curves adjustment so let's add one of those by heading over to the drop down menu here and adding a color curves correction i'll create a slight s curve to bump up the contrast so to do that i'll create two points here and here then i'll drop the shadows down to darken the paving over here and i'll brighten up some of the highlights over here i'll turn this off and on again so you can see the difference that that makes there's a little bit more contrast and it makes the shot a bit more punchy step three is to correct the white balance and you can make that adjustment on your first layer of color corrections if you want but for the sake of this tutorial and to show you how to color grade step by step i'm going to add another color wheel over here you can move the temperature slider to make the image cooler or warmer as i move the slider here and notice how my vector scope changes i'm shifting the colors more towards the blue and orange sides you can use this as the visual guide to try and get an accurate white balance obviously if you have a shot of an orange sunset the vectorscope will lean more towards the orange side but for a shot like this i can see that it's a little bit too blue and i'll warm it up slightly by dragging the slider to the right if you feel like your shot has a green or purple tint to it you can adjust your tint slider to fix that this shot has a minor green tint so i'll move this a smidge to the right and about here looks good to me by comparing before and after you can see how we've warmed it up a little bit and now the white balance looks right step four is to create a look or a mood for your footage this is totally subjective and you can choose what direction you want to go in but i think that a typical teal and orange look will suit this clip so i'll go ahead and show you how to do that first i'll add another color wheel under my corrections here i want to only affect the dark shadowy areas so before i make any corrections i'll go up here click on the mask icon and add a color mask this will make changes to a specific color range so i'll drag over the shadows here in the pavement to select that range you'll see how your selection is highlighted in color while everything that's not selected is in black and white if you hold down the alt key you'll notice a minus sign next to the color picker and that allows you to remove certain areas from the mask or you can press the shift key to add certain color ranges to the mask now that my shadows are selected i'll drag the color dot over here towards till and see how my shadows change color i'll add another color wheel over here and this time i want to add a color mask to select the bright parts like that and i'll make my highlights a little bit more orange and i'll boost the saturation here as well let me show you the before and after for just those two layers of color correction and you can see the huge difference that it makes it's starting to look really good if i turn all the effects off and back on again you can see how far we've come step number five is to make a few creative tweaks our color grading is almost done at this point and these last two steps are really just minor adjustments for example what i might want to do in a shot like this is to darken the sky a little bit to make it look a bit more dramatic to do that i'll add a color curves adjustment before i add a mask i'll darken the shot by bringing down the mid-tones a bit and i'll also darken some of the highlights here somewhere around there then i'll add a shape mask here and i'll drag this dot to create a rectangular shape and i'll make it a little bit wider here and i'll sort of position it in the sky somewhere about there looks good if the position of your skyline changes in your frame you can always keyframe the shape of your mask but with a shot like this the sky stays in the same place so there's no need for me to do that this is before and after not a huge difference but i like the look of it and that's why these steps are just tweaks the last step in my color grading workflow is to make a few final adjustments if i have people in the shot this is where i would check the skin tone and i'll show you how to do that on the next shot but for this one i would just want to enhance the red and orange colors here in the buildings to do that i'll add a hue saturation curves correction and i'll use the color picker for hue versus saturation and select that range of colors i'll boost the saturation there just to make those colors pop a little bit more this is before and after and i think that looks pretty good let's have a look at how all of these different corrections come together to create the final grade this is the raw ungraded clip then we adjusted the black and white values then we adjusted the contrast with the curves correction then we fixed the white balance then we created the teal and orange look in the shadows and the highlights then we darkened the sky a little bit and lastly we boosted the saturation in these buildings let's go a little bit faster through the other two shots following the same steps starting with the shot of donna during golden hour in prague the sky is quite bright already so i'll push the highlights up just a little bit so that we're pretty much at 100 up here i'll bring the shadows down to crush those blacks right about there's good next i'll add a color curves correction to increase the contrast just a little bit i don't want the shadows to be any darker than this so i'll set a point here so that that doesn't change and i'll lift up the highlights here which will also bring up the mids just a little bit next i'll add another color wheel correction to tweak the white balance if you look at this building here the whites look a little bit blue and this was during golden hour so i definitely want more of an orange sunset vibe here i'll warm it up slightly not too much but right about there is good i want to enhance that golden hour look here so i'm going to add another color wheel correction and i'll push the highlights towards a yellowy orange color and i'll boost the saturation as well donna's jacket looks a little too tonal here and i want to keep her jacket closer to the original purple color so that it separates her from the background to do that i'll push the shadows towards a blue color and i'll boost the saturation as well i'll add another color wheel correction so that i can tweak her skin tone here i only want to change that color range so i'll add a mask and select her skin tone you can click on view masks over here to see what range you've selected i don't mind if it affects the walls and the roof slightly i want to keep her skin tone along the skin tone indicator line here so i'll add just a touch more red in the highlights lastly i'll just darken the sky a little bit that'll draw more focus to donner too i'll add another color wheel correction and i'll add a shape mask i'll make this rectangular and i'll cover the sky making sure that the bottom is nice and feathered out i'll drop the highlights here just a tad and that looks good to me this is before all of those corrections and this is the final graded chart after all the corrections we just made the third and final shot that i'm going to grade today is this shot from auschwitz in poland it was a terribly sad and eye opening experience visiting auschwitz and because of that the goal with this grade is to make it dark and gloomy let's add the first color wheel correction and i'll drop the shadows quite a bit to get down to zero the overall image looks pretty dark so i'm going to increase the brightness on the master slider and i'll drop the shadows down a little bit more and i'll lift the highlights to about here next i'll add my color curves correction and i'll make some minor tweaks to the overall contrast here something like that should work next i'll add a color wheel to adjust the white balance this whole image looks a little bit blue so i'll warm it up to about there i want to put more blue in the shadows and the darker areas to emphasize that gloomy look so i'll add another color wheel correction add a color mask and select the ground over here to select that range of colors that will select most of the ground these concrete pillars the trees and quite a bit of the buildings which is fine for now i'll push the shadows towards a blue color over here and i'll boost the saturation too i want to bring back some of the red in these buildings and on some of the stones on the ground i'll add another color wheel correction and a color mask to select the red and orange colors let's push the highlights towards a reddish orange color and i'll do the same for the shadows and then i'll boost the saturation over here now we have the red color back in the buildings and the red stones here but we still have that nice dark blue in the shadows next i'll add a color curves adjustment to create a fade in the shadows over here i'll add a point on the graph here at the bottom and i'll lift up the blacks to create that fade i don't want to affect the rest of the image so i'll add another point over here and straighten out that curve let's tweak this just a little bit like that if i turn this off and on again see how the deep blacks under the roof and in the barbed wire over here are not as dark it gives it a nice filmic kind of look lastly the grass looks a little too green and bright so i'll add a hue saturation curves correction and i'll use the color picker under hue vs luma to select the grass i'll darken it slightly to about there i'll select the grass again using the hue versus saturation color picker and i'll desaturate that i'll do that one more time using the hue versus hue color picker and i'll just make the grass a little less yellow and a bit more green this is the original shot before any corrections and here's the final grade i think i've achieved my goal of a dark and gloomy color grade i hope you enjoyed the six steps in the step-by-step color grading tutorial in final cut pro this video is quite a bit longer than my other final cut pro tutorials so if you made it this far thank you and i hope you got some value out of it what do you think of longer more in-depth tutorials like this do you want to see more or do you prefer the shorter videos let me know in the comments down below that's it for this video don't forget to like the video subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so that you get notified when new videos get posted on the channel and i'll catch you guys in the next [Music]

Channel: Brad and Donna

Views: 10,435

Keywords: color grading, color grading fcpx, how to color grade, cinematic color grading, cinematic tutorial, how to get cinematic footage, color correction, color correction fcpx, color grading tutorial, film look, how to color grade in fcpx, cinematic look, color grading final cut pro, video editing, fcpx color grading tutorial, how to color grade in final cut pro, fcpx tips, Final Cut Pro tips, final cut pro tutorial, fcpx tutorial, Final Cut Pro, fcpx, how to, Brad and Donna

Id: 0_3nBQasM9k

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020