Hey guys my name is Denver Riddle, I’m
a colorist and filmmaker and if you're wondering
how can I make the look of my films stand
out through color grading in Premiere Pro CC
and make my films look big budget?
Well I’m going to reveal that here in this beginner
crash course using the Lumetri color tools
found in Adobe.
We’re going to create this amazing look,
you can download the look as LUT or look up
table and easily apply this to your own footage.
Also, while YouTube is a fantastic resource
for learning about so many different kinds
of subjects if you are looking for a step-by-step
guide that takes you all the way through discovering
the art of color grading and getting the big
Hollywood film looks I want to let you know
about a free training workshop I’m going
to be doing where I reveal my top color grading
secrets, to attend the just click the link
below in the description and I hope to see
you there.
Alright, let’s do this thing!
Here inside let’s set up our workspace for
color grading,
we’ll choose Color workspace and that will
bring up the Lumetri color tools.
In the top section, we have the Scopes…we
have the Program Panel, where we see the clip
we are currently working on, and the Lumetri
Color panel over here on the side, where we can perform our grading.
It’s also worth pointing out the Effects
Control panel where we can do some other things,
including adding and tracking color masks
but more on that in a bit.
Before we jump in and start grading this thing,
let’s discuss basic terminology for how
we define color.
The three basic terms that we use to define
color are Hue, Saturation, and Luma.
Hue is the name we call colors.
Saturation is the intensity or vividness of
a hue.
And Luma is the brightness or shade of hue.
It’s also important to know how to read
the scopes, which can be super beneficial.
If you’re in the color workspace the scopes
should appear but if not just click on the
Lumetri scopes tab.
The three scopes I always use are the waveform,
the RGB parade and the vectorscope.
The waveform let’s us correct for exposure.
If I overlay an image on top of the waveform,
you can see that the trace the stuff you see
here actually corresponds with the image of
the girl dancing.
The RGB parade scope is helpful for correcting
white balance issues, it reads similar to
the waveform other than it’s broken out
into the individual color channels of red,
green and blue.
With this scope, it makes it easier to spot
imbalances if either the image is too cool
or too warm.  How that will show is one channel elevated above the others.
The Vectorscope, corresponds directly with
the color wheel, and I’ve overlaid it here
for convenience.
It shows what colors are in the image as well
as their saturation.
The further the trace extends from the center
of the scope, the more saturated or vivid
the colors are.
Here’s a simple but powerful workflow for
color correction: We first correct the exposure
or brightness of the image, second the white
balance or color temperature if there are
any issues and lastly the saturation by either
increasing or reducing it.
This will make more sense as we actually do
it!
Let’s first make a correction to the exposure
of this image using the basic correction panel.
Now if you look at the controls in the basic
corrections panel you’ll see controls for
highlights and shadows, but also for whites
and blacks.
Lumetri uses a terminology that’s slightly
different than other grading applications.
But here’s how the controls work:
The Blacks control adjusts the darkest parts
or the very bottom darkest point…and the
Whites control adjusts the brightest or the
very top of the image.
The Shadows control affects the tonal range
between the shadows and the midtones if say
you want to recover or darken details in the
shadow areas and the Highlights control effects
the tonal range between the highlights and
the midtones, or the upper part of the image
if say again you want to recover or brighten
details in the highlight areas.
We’ll adjust the shadows first with the
blacks control while watching the waveform.
We want to bring the trace in the shadows
down until the darkest parts of the image
sit right above 0.
Then we’ll bring up the highlights with
the whites control so the brightest parts
of the trace sits right about here near the
top.
Then let’s darken the undertones or the
area between the shadows and the midtones
by pulling the shadows slider to the left…
this will help us remove that washed out look
from the talents face.
And then I’ll just adjust this a little
more until we have good contrast and exposure.
This is the first step.
Next we’ll fix the color temperature since
the image is looking cool.
Looking at the RGB Parade scope, the blue
trace is elevated above the red and green.
Our goal is to “neutralize” or white balance
the whites and we’ll want to find something
in the image that is white.
In this case, we’re going to use her sneakers
as a reference.
Now we can do this manually with the temperature
and tint sliders or we can save some time
and use Premiere’s auto White Balance Selector.
To do that we just need to select and click
on the white part of the image and voilaaa…
the temperature and tint sliders automatically
move to white balance the shot and the traces
are aligned in the RGB Parade Scope.
Now if for whatever reason we’re not happy
with the result we can still manually adjust
those sliders to our liking.
In this case I think we can warm up the image
a little bit.
And that’s the second step.
As our final step let’s boost the color
a little bit by increasing the saturation.
And here’s what the clip looks like before
and after the correction.
Pretty amazing right?
On the next shot we’ll repeat the same procedure
going for a nice balance of exposure with
the the blacks, whites, shadows and highlights
controls…the color temperature in the shot
looks off too, so we’ll use the white balance
eyedropper, this time, over the truck in the
background.
I’ll then refine it a little manually.
Lastly we’ll add some saturation too.
Moving to the third shot, we wanna match it
to the first shot for obvious reasons, since
this is pretty much a wide version of the
same scene.
To give us a good starting point let’s copy
the correction from the first clip to this
one.
We’ll go to the first shot select it and
use the keyboard shortcut command "C" (if you're on a Mac) or control
"C" if you’re on Windows, we’ll then go
back to this clip… right click on it and
choose Paste Attributes from the dropdown
menu.
Make sure the Lumetri Color effect is checked
and click OK.
This copies the correction and gives us a
good starting point, but you’ll see that
we still have some matching issues.
The image is too dark.
To help with matching we can go to the Color
Wheels & Match panel and activate the Comparison
View.
Now we can see a side by side comparison of
our clip and any other clip in the timeline.
There are also vertical and horizontal split
options, but we’ll stick to the side by
side option.
Now here’s the really cool thing.
In the side by side view, we can compare them
visually AND in the scopes as well so this
makes matching a breeze.
To match the traces better we’ll bring up
the general exposure using the exposure slider
and then bring up the shadows with the blacks
control.
We can see now in the Waveform that both traces
look like they’re at the same level.
That’s a nice looking match.
Now let’s disable the Comparison View
option.
In the interest of time I’ve already gone
ahead and performed color correction to these
remaining clips.
But in this last shot you’ll see that the
yellow pole looks greenish compared to the
ones on the other shots.
Well what’s really cool, is that with Lumetri
we can fix that one color.
So let’s open the HSL Secondary panel and
then with the eyedropper, let’s click and
drag through the pole to qualify it.
To see what we’ve selected, let’s turn
on the highlight feature by clicking here.
Now clearly our selection isn’t enough.
So let’s improve our selection with the
hue, saturation and luma sliders.
Then add just a little denoise and blur to
soften the key.
Okay now let’s turn the highlight feature
off.
We’ll then drag the color wheels control
until the pole loses that green tone… and
Bam!  Doneski!
As a final touch, her face is looking a little
dark so to lighten it we’ll accomplish that
with a mask, where we’re effectively relighting
the scene, something really cool we can do
in post.
Now in order to do this using Lumetri we’ll
need to add a 2nd instance.
To do that we need to open the effect panel
and then If we go to the Project Panel we’ll
see a double arrow located at the upper right
side… go ahead and click on that and choose
Effects from the dropdown menu.
Once we find the Lumetri Color Effect we’ll
drag it to the Effect Control panel… and
this adds a second instance of lumetri where
we can now use a shape mask.
I’ll go ahead and add a mask and size and
position it over here face like so… and
add some feathering so this doesn’t stand
out too much.
Then to lighten his face, we’ll increase
the shadows…and highlights…
Playing it back you can that the talent’s
face moves so this is a problem.
To address that we’ll want to track the
shape to her face, so going to the Effects
Control Panel, we can easily do this by clicking
on the track forward button.
And badda, bing, bada bang!
The shape moves perfectly with the movement
of our talent’s face.
Really amazing stuff!
I love doing color grading in Premiere Pro
CC.
Okay now it’s time for the really fun part
and that’s creating an awesome look for
these clips.
The Orange/Teal Look is a really popular look
because it uses principles of color contrast
to make the skin tones advance or pop out
from the background.
And frankly it just looks awesome so you’re
going to love this!
I’m gonna show you a quick way to apply
the SAME look on top of all of these clips
and this will save you time and ensure you
have a consistent look across the board.
To do that we’ll go to the Project panel,
right click and select from the dropdown menu…
choose New Item… then Adjustment Layer.
A prompt will appear and we’ll just click
ok.
We’ll drag the Adjustment Layer to the second
video layer over top of our video clips and
any adjustment or color treatments we apply
here, will be applied to all the clips underneath
the adjustment layer.
Pretty sweet huh?
Alright now let’s create the look.
Make sure the adjustment layer is selected
and we’re going to skip and go straight
past the basic correction panel to the curves
where we’ll have more creative control.
And a quick crash course on the way this works
in case you haven’t already used these in
Photoshop is bottom point adjusts the shadows,
the top point adjusts the highlights and we
can make as many points as we want on the
curve in between to shape the tonal range.
In this case we don’t want to affect the
highlights or the shadows too much so we’ll
create contrast in-between these areas known
as the undertones and midtones.
I’ll make a point here in the midtones and
drag it up.
This improves our exposure but makes the undertones
look a little washed out.
So let’s add another point here and drag
it down to adjust the density of the undertones,
there that looks nice, now we have a much
richer contrast.
For color we need to push teal into the overall
image but without affecting the skin tones.
So let me show you how we’ll do this, we’ll
go to the HSL Secondary panel and use the
eyedropper to select our talent’s skin.
We’ll then refine our selection with the
Hue, Sat and luma sliders.
Then add some denoise and blur for good measure.
Then what we need to do since we currently
have our skin tones selected is to actually
invert our selection (like so) and now we
can use the color wheel to introduce teal
into the image with affecting the skin tones.
Now we are onto something… right?
But we are not there yet.
Something is off.
Because we pushed teal into the entire tonal
range our shadows also look teal, so we’ll
want to clean them up so we can have clean black
shadows.
To do that I’m going to show you a really
awesome trick.
I’ll add another instance of lumetri…
go to the Hue Saturation Curves panel.
Then go to the Luma vs Sat curve.
Now the way this tool works is the shadows
are to the left and the highlights are to
the right, and then anywhere that we place
points on the curve, we are able to adjust
the saturation for that part of the tonal
range by either pulling up to increase the
saturation or pulling down to decrease it.
So this is really cool way for selectively
reducing the saturation in the shadows without
affecting anything else so we’ll place a
point here so nothing above is affected and
then we’ll drag the left point all the way
down to reduce the saturation in the shadows.
Voila our shadows are nice and clean and the
skin tones and everything else kept their
saturation.
If I toggle this instance of lumetri off and
back on again… you can see the difference
it made in pulling the teal out of the shadows
on the walls, her hair and the trash can.
Okay, so don’t forget that cool trick.
Now, just to play with these yellow poles
to have them have a closer tone to her coat
and skin tones, so this is more orange teal
we’ll go to the Hue Saturation Curves panel,
and under the Hue vs Hue curve we’ll use
the eyedropper to isolate the yellow range.
And drag it up to introduce more warmth into the poles.
As a final touch, I want to apply one of the LUTs from Ascend that’s available
for download when you sign up for the free
workshop.
Let’s add another instance of Lumetri and
go to the creative panel.
From there we can browse our LUTs and I’ll
choose the 3strip LUT.
Now at first it’s too strong but that’s
okay because we can dial it back to taste
with the intensity slider.
What an awesome look!
Now if any of this, has seemed overwhelming
to you I want to let you know about a great
alternative that we’ve developed as a plugin.
For content creators who don’t want to specialize
as a colorist but still need a professional
look with on screen grading, lightroom style
controls, false color mode for landing the
correct exposure and real time preview of
LUTs and presets, you can find out more about
Cinema Grade I’ll have a link for it in
the description below.
So that’s just an alternative.
Now I know that I covered a lot of things
here, but my purpose was to help you get started
with seeing a difference in your films today.
If you’re looking for more guided help in
discovering the power of color grading I want
to invite you to our 1-hour color grading
workshop where I reveal the top color grading
secrets used in Hollywood and how best to
do color grading in Premiere Pro CC.
You’ll find a link to register for the workshop
in the description below this video.
In the web class I reveal how I went from
being a wedding videographer down to 0 wedding
bookings during the recession of 2008 to improving
the look of my films and landing client work
with some of the biggest brands like Facebook.
I reveal the same techniques that have had
the biggest impact on my career, so if you’re
serious and want to be guided every step of
the the way you won’t want to miss it.
I also want to point that if you want to learn
more about our Color Grading Academy it’s
the only way you can do that.
People ask if we do formal training, well
this is your opportunity to discover that
and we’ll have a special offer for the it
at the end of the presentation.
So be sure to save your seat, click the subscribe
button and then the bell for more grading
videos!
I hope you enjoyed this beginner crash course
as much I enjoyed creating it for you and
I look forward to seeing you at the training.
Have a great day!
