Colour correct/ grade in premiere pro?

T

taras4444

Well-known member
Hi there,

Just recently been getting more into colour correction/ grading past the initial "magic bullet mojo" effect, plus shooting with my af100 i now record onto my recently purchased Samurai with its pro res 4:2:2 codec, so thought it was time to really try to learn more and improve my colour correcting skills.

Basically I wanted to ask who here actually does their correction in premiere? And what tools do you use, most people seem pleased with the 3 way and fast colour correct (combined with making masks). Or do people prefer effects? And - excuse my ignorance - but what is the order people generally take to colour grading? (And are the top effects processed first right?)

From my research and the books i've read, my new work flow I've been attempting is:
edit everything
- denoise everything with red giants denoiser (after it renders i toggle it off however as adding subsequent things takes ages to process)
- fix colour issues by applying fast colour corrector, where i adjust shadows first, tweak highlights then mid tones for contrast
- then add 3 way - colour corrector to fix colour balance issues,
- finally if there are more specific secondary issues I add a mask via drawing a shape in the title creator and applying it. (i havent got round to doing these thoroughly yet so still unsure).

- then after all that for grading I was thinking of sending the scene/sequences to magic bullet looks to cultivate a grade.

What does that rough work flow sound like to you guys? I appreciate everyone has their own methods but is there something critically wrong there or something that has to be done first?

Appreciate all the help I can get, all the best, Taras
 
1) Shoot so that you don't have to denoise. (Proper exposure.)

2) Applying the Fast Color Corrector kind of defeats the purpose of trying to learn to color-correct.

3) Base color-correction often begins with curves to get your highs and lows set properly.
 
Steven Hullfish has a number of lengthy video seminar/lectures available on the art of color correction. Worth watching in addition to the suggestion to get his book. Lots of other stuff is popping up on color correction these days as there is a bit of a commercial push on it, now that it is becoming a bit more mainstream. Poke around and you will find it.
 
Ha thanks guys, funnily enough bought that book a week ago and waiting for it to arrive! And David I appreciate what you mean, exposure is crucial, I just meant in general in shots that may not have been ideal etc. So you dont use fast colour corrector then, just the curves?

And Shooter, out of interest, what do you use?
 
I think the flow you described is fine except I don't denoise anything and I don't use Magic Bullet for looks. You can do tonality in Fast color corrector. I wouldn't do the white balance with the dropper except to get an idea of color cast. Another cool thing to use is Crop. If you crop an area of skin tone and use the vectorscope it can be really helpful in keeping your skintones natural and consistent. I use the Three way mostly for secondary CC. RGB Curves is good for working with the RGB Parade but very touchy.

There are other tools but you can get a good balance in Premiere Pro. There's a couple of great tutorials on Lynda.com and I also would recommend Alexis Van Hurkmans's Color Correction Handbook: Professional Techniques for Video and Cinema for a really in depth, platform agnostic book on CC.
 
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Colorista II is great for its HLS tool and powermasks, and the 3 way corrector is less clunky. And it runs directly in Premiere.
 
No. Resolve can be used without a control panel.

The free version is fully functional and only has a limit on how many nodes you can use at once.
 
The guy who does Tao of Color is a great resource too. First met him at NAB at his color correction workshop.

I use Colorista II. I start with color matching all the clips with good white balance, contrast, and broadcast safe, then apply secondaries, then looks if needed. I'd like to learn resolve except Resolve 9 can't run in my system.
 
My go to book for learning how to color correct / grade is Van Hurkman's Color Correction Handbook. One of the best technical books I've found. Easy to read, unambiguously gets the points across, and is hardware / software agnostic; it's more about the what and why than it is about the how. Because once you know what to do and why, you can always figure out how to do it with whatever tools you have available.

My correction workflow is to first set my black and white points, then my over all contrast level (in PPro, luma curves, and using the built in waveform monitor so I can see what I'm doing). Next, I usually fix any color casts with the three way color corrector (using the vectorscope, RGB parade, etc. depending on what the footage calls for). Then I'll fix any secondary color problems, like colors beyond broadcast safe (again using the vectorscope and three way color corrector).

Color grading is a much more subjective task. The workflow tends to change with every project, even every clip. Can't easily describe it in a short thread posting. But Van Hurkman does a great job in his book.
 
i use magic bullet misfire post contrast to adjust the contrast and then use the fast color corrector to to get my levels right. I use magic bullet looks if i want to have a set color theme to set the tone for the whole project but then I use this in my music videos. I do everything in premere www.youtube.com/rale2001
 
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