What Nobody Told You About Colour Grading

when I started color grading I tried to learn every technique I found on YouTube unfortunately YouTube videos usually equip you with the knowledge how to do things and not necessarily why or when this led me to make one of the most common mistakes almost all beginners make this mistake makes 80% of what you're doing basically pointless which in turn wastes a ton of time and is really really frustrating very fast it almost feels like gravity holding you back and no matter what you do you just cannot get it right so today I will show you

what this mistake is and also why it is so bad then I will show you an easy way how to fix this quick disclaimer even though I demonstrate everything in Final Cut Pro the concept applies to thein resolve Premier Pro and pretty much all of the other analy as well keep in mind we want to learn Concepts and not just how to push buttons what many beginners usually do is this they jump into a clip and apply a color space transformation it doesn't matter whether it's the color space transformation and resolve or a color space

transformation lot with the color space transformation in place they start to adjust exposure and contrast like this something like that and maybe they do something like this opening up this image just a little bit more I think let's park it around here little side note I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you know the proper order of operations and that you don't think that you need to grade your lock footage manually whatever that may mean I already made a whole video on that topic the link is in the video description then they may

add another instance of color wheels like this and try to take care of their white balance so we want to run away from that yellow just a bit I will just eyeball it for now and I think I will park it right here after that they usually grab some Hue saturation curves slide them in and adjust skin tones and whatnot so for example they want to correct the skin tone they may sample the skin tone and shift the Hue by no means I'm doing an accurate job here it's just for the sake of the demonstration

what they usually do next is jump back out and usually apply an instance of color curves or color wheels to give this a certain look so maybe we're trying to go for a teal and orange look so they pull their Shadows into the teal something like this the highlights in the opposite way something like that and maybe balance out those midtones just a tad let's have a look at the before and after so this is before and this is after and let's say this is the teal and orange look they're going for last but not

least they maybe want to add a little bit of film grain so I will just leave it at that with the default settings and maybe even a little bit of pation because this is the wipe they're going for once they're satisfied with what they've done they want to move on to the next clip and some of the beginners try to be clever and copy their adjustment select the next clip and paste the adjustments there so let's have a look and surprise surprise nothing works works out really well but still they try to make it right

and go into their initial adjustment for exposure and maybe just pull back those highlights but as you can see nothing works out and basically it feels like starting from scratch for example now the look might not be prominent enough so they go in here and just adjust it a little bit more but now they mess up their color scheme so if they compare it to their first clip they graded okay it looks a little bit different now then they go back to their first clip and try to make it right so what is the Hue

I selected with my next clip but then everything starts to fall apart after hours of this back and forth frustration kicks in and they start searching YouTube for color grading hacks because it just can't be that hard okay let's pause for a minute if we want to fix what's going on we need to understand it first let's oversimplify the process of color grading and break it down into three main parts the first part is where you make sure that everything looks somewhat consistent you take care of exposure and contrast white balance and overall image balance

let's call this normalizing and balancing secondly you would perform any adjustments that involve masking or keying or any adjustments that are targeted so if you want to darken one specific part of an image or you want to change a specific Hue this is way you do it let's call this second R last but not least you would take care of giving your footage a certain Vibe by stylizing it maybe you want to add film grain maybe you just want to do some split toning to achieve a teal and orange look or whatever let's call this

third step look development imagine these three Lego breaks are your individual Clips so you have clip One Clip two and clip three in your timeline we start with normalizing and balancing here represented in blue so we might want to adjust exposure and contrast and then we take care of the color balance then we take care of our secondary adjustments represented in green we want to adjust a specific Hue or darken some parts of the image whatever you like to do lastly and because I'm running out of colors we do the look development which is red

again okay the first clip is now graded as you can see now we have a single tower that means we did three entirely different things in one go therefore switching tools and switching context multiple times for each clip this is mentally texting and very inefficient but okay we will let that slide for now then we move on to our next clip but now we constantly compare the unedited clip to our finished result which usually means that we want to go there as fast as possible so we probably half as our adjustment for exposure and contrast

then we do some kind of image balancing but when it comes to color we are now confronted with the question okay do I adjust the color now or is that something that I do with my look development adding insult to injury this is usually where beginners lose their patience and start to do hyper targeted adjustments like using masks or qualifiers to a degree that will just break their image so okay let's add this instance up here and last but not least they try to salvage it with look development okay now it might look half decent

because we arrived at somewhat a similar goal but as you can see our process is very crooked with that tramatic experience in mind we tried to make it better with the next clip but in reality it's just a different kind of weird also did you noticed that we do look development on each clip individually up here what happens if we want to tweak the look a little bit now we need to touch every single clip and as you can see everything just breaks this is the exact point where you get frustrated you open up YouTube

and watch color grading videos because it just can't be that hard there must be something that you don't know and you may be asking yourself how do the pros do it to be completely honest they don't at least not in this way Pros understand that adjustments happen one at a time so let's start over again we start out with our three Clips in the beginning normalizing and balancing serves to establish a strong foundation for all the adjustments that come afterwards during that process we take care of each clip at one time but we're only adjusting

exposure and contrast for all the clips like so then we do our color balancing which helps to make everything a little bit more coherent again as I just said all of this serves to establish a strong foundation so this consistency is now represented with this Lego piece we now have three individual clips that are now fairly similar in terms of exposure and contrast which means they feel like one piece now secondly we want to perform our secondary adjustments because there might be some areas that need a little bit of work so we do our secondaries

on the first clip on the second clip and on the third clip and then we do a second round of secondaries for example adjusting some Hues and whatnot and here we go ultimately Pros are efficient which means they don't do luk development three times in a row they do it once further improving their consistency and coherence within their timeline and in the end everything comes together as one piece under one creative intent because their workflow is efficient well structured and achieves more and more consistency over time almost by definition as you can probably guess there

is not the one perfect workflow every reason to do one one thing at one time affects another part of the equation nevertheless I'd like to share some of the cool principles in action in this timeline I have a bunch of lock footage from a red camera the first thing I will take care of is my color management this just means that the color space transformation from our recording color space to re 79 is being handled by the software for me if you're working in divin resolve you can do that by using your project settings or

by clicking these two dots they bring you to the timeline level notary you can apply your color space transformation there and it will affect all the Clips in your timeline if you're working in Premier Pro or Final Cut Pro you can just follow along as the approach will be the same first I will grab an adjustment layer and place it on top of my timeline then I stretch it out so it covers all of my Clips in the timeline because again it's supposed to affect all of the clips underneath then I pull up my lot

loader like so and apply the proper lot on here as I mentioned before this footage is lock footage from a red camera so I apply the proper color space transformation lot and here we go if you don't have a color space transformation lot you can get one from your camera manufacturer alternatively I have a free Suite of color space transformation Lots you can download from my website the link is in the video description with my color management out of the way I can start by adjusting exposure and contrast since I'm only concerned with light when

adjusting exposure and contrast I will turn my entire timeline black and white I do that by using my check layer plugin but you can also just desaturate your entire timeline at the adjustment layer but in here I would just select Luma only and here we go now my image is black and white this means I can only focus on the light and I'm not distracted by any color information next I will decide on the hero shot for this sequence and scrubbing through here yeah I think this is the one the hero shot is the first

shot I will color grade and this will be my main reference now I jump into my color wheels and adjust expose in contrast to my liking so I pull everything up just a little bit then I will park my Shadows right here and also I want to preserve that Moody feeling so I might lower my midtones just a little bit okay so that's already it with exposion contrast for this clip next I will pull up my custom workspace with the comparison viewer so workspace is color grating with the comparison viewer and I will save a

still like so with this reference right here I can compare all my other Clips to it so I move on to the next clip select it dive into the color wheels again I would just eyeball it I think I will increase the overall offset a little bit and then pull down my lift or my Shadows so it looks fairly okay in terms of exposure and contrast okay let's move on to the next clip already and this is the establishing shot because I had a look at this footage earlier I know there's quite a bit of

information in the foreground here so maybe we can preserve some of this I will push up my offset quite a bit so we can get our highlights to almost a similar level here and then I will just pull down my lift and let's see what that's doing yeah I think we can let that slide and maybe if I go into my highlights I can just pull them up a little bit more let's see contrast should be a little bit more Stark but at the same time I want to preserve a little bit more of that

foreground so I might lift up my midtones and bring down my Shadows just to compensate for that again for the sake of this tutorial I leave it at that lastly I can already move on to the next clip I will also apply an instance of color wheels and again I start by adjusting the general offset like so and then I will just pull down my lift until I have the contrast where I want it to be the contrast could be a little bit more Stark in that shot so I will try to pull down my

midtones and see what that's doing and I think we did it okay that's already it as you can see we were able to compare the shots to one another because we're only concerned with exposure and contrast for now next let's take care of saturation and color balance I go back to my hero shot and I will disable the check layer for now so I can see the colors I go in here and apply a second instance of color wheels so maybe I just want to run away from the yellows in my highlights just a little

bit and towards magenta because as you can see if I disable this there's a little bit of green going on in the background and I'm not too fond of this so something like this might already do the trick lastly let's adjust the overall saturation just as a baseline And I think I will crank it a little bit more and I will park it around here with that done I save another frame so we can reference it in my comparison viewer I move on to the next clip like so and I pretty much do a very

similar thing so there's a little bit of a greenish Hue in the highlights so I will try to pull that away from that just a little bit something like that might already do the trick and in terms of saturation I think we can also boost this just a little bit if I have a look at the vector scope side by side next we can move on to the establishing shot seeing this with the color information now I can already tell I want a little bit over board with my exposure adjustments so I will just try

to bring that down just a tad and also the highlights can go down just a little bit and then I will apply another instance of color wheels to take care of my color balance again the green is a little bit prominent here so I'll run towards magenta and let's see what that's doing so this might be a little bit too much something like that works out I think for the sake of this video I will park it around here lastly I will adjust my overall saturation just a little bit and I'm looking at the vector

scope side by side so I think I will park it around here lastly there is this shot which also has a decent amount of green in the highlights I will apply another instance of color wheels and pull my highlights away from that green just a little bit and I'm mainly looking at the background here have a look at the vector scope how this rotates so this is before and this is after I think we can park it at that and in terms of saturation we can also give it a little bit but I don't want

to go too far with that so I think maybe you know what I leave it at where it is for the sake of this tutorial I will not do any secondary adjustments as this video is already as long as it is but lastly let's take care of our look development to do that I get rid of my comparison viewer and then I grab another adjustment layer I will slide it underneath our color management and I make sure that it covers the entire timeline so let's rename this real quick so this is our color space transformation

and this is our look having the look adjustment layer underneath the color space transformation just means our look is processed before the color space transformation so we're still even with our look development are taking advantage of the larger color space again I go to my hero shot I make sure the look is selected and I dive into my color curves yeah let's do look development with color curves so first I will go into black and white again and I will adjust the contrast just a little bit I have a feeling that we can take advantage

of a little bit more contrast for now and maybe even lift the very black point just a little bit okay with that out of the way I can delete my check layer so I can see the colors underneath and let's do a little bit of split toning here I will use this Luma curve and Sample my skin turns to give me an idea where my skin turns are scented and then I will just add some anchor points to these curves the first thing I do is pull out some red from the shadows and again this

is not a look development tutorial this is just something quick and dirty for the sake of this tutorial and I will push some more red into the highlights very subtle something like this secondly I take care of my blue Channel I push some blue into the shadows as well and I will maybe even pull them from the very highlight so let's see what's going on there something like this might be fine lastly let's balance it out with the green Channel I think there's a little bit too much green in the shadows so I will just

create one point down here and pull it down ever so slightly and okay let's have a look at the before and after so this is before and this is after as far as the look development for a subtle teal and orange look goes this is where I would park it again this is not supposed to be a look development tutorial this is just something very very basic and quick and dirty if you are interested in learning look development subscribe and stay tuned once we are done with our basic look I will just scrub through and

make make sure that our look works on every clip so let's have a look and I think again for the sake of this tutorial this works out as mentioned earlier in this video if I change my mind about this look I have the entire freedom to do so and all my adjustments I did before stay in place this is what I meant with establishing a strong Foundation this Foundation ensures that all of the clips underneath are consistent so the look will translate to each clip properly I know this was quite a lot so let's summarize

what we've learned a good workflow is efficient this means we minimize the redundancies for example by not doing look development for each clip individually but once for the entire timeline this makes us timely and mentally efficient we don't need to do so many things at once a good workflow is also well structured meaning we do logical passes for example if we take care of exposure and contrast we perform only exposure and contrast adjustments for every clip in our timeline also we start with the broadest adjustment possible and use targeted adjustments like masks or qualifiers only

if they are absolutely necessary consequentially it is easy to achieve consistency which is the ultimate goal when doing one thing at a time we can easily compare our shots because we can focus on one thing that currently matters yeah and that's that if you want to bring your color grading to the next level book your one-on-one session with me today the link is in the video description below but slots are limited and if you ever wanted to know how bright things should be be sure to watch this video next