New to Color Grading

[Mark-P]

I'm new to color correcting/grading and I'm using Premiere and Cine4 footage.

1. My RGB parade seems to have similar shapes for all 3 channels, though the blues are touching 0. Does it mean I have too much blue in my blacks? Is this what crushing my blues means? For a good white balance, do you want all three channels to look like they have the same shape so they are balanced?

2. Should I adjust my color temperature, and exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows whites, blacks before applying an input LUT?

3. If I spend a lot of time adjusting my exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows whites, blacks is that essentially doing the same thing that an Input LUT would be doing? If so, after applying an Input LUT designed for Cine4, should I expect to only have to do minor White Balance and exposure adjustments and possibly other minor tone control adjustments after an Input LUT?

Any help will be very appreciated!

 

[R_Marvin]

Mark,

Too many questions, I recommend investing in a bit of knowledge for yourself to give you a basic understanding and helping you move up from there to achieve your goals in color correction and developing your own unique style. Without knowing too much about you and your current level of expertise, make sure you have a good foundation in lighting and how to white balancing your camera. I don't want to assume, but perhaps you're already highly skilled in those areas, but if not work on those too. I would start with this book "Color Correction Handbook: Professional Techniques for Video and Cinema" by Alexis Van Hurkman which is availble from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Color-Correc...eywords=color+correction+handbook+2nd+edition

And maybe your local bookstore. The text is geared toward those who are colorists or wanting to be colorists but there is good information there regarding color theory, how we see color, the how and why, how to make corrections, more topics than I can list here. Initially you can ignore the hardware requirements he mentions and study the portions regarding color correction and grading. I think this will help to give you a solid foundation in the area and help you along the way. You can always find things on YouTube or Vimeo but I would first recommend the book written by someone I regard as an expert in the field. And you can download Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve to play with too since it is a standard application in the field of color correction/grading.

Best of luck to you.

—Ron

 

[morgan_moore]

1 - too little blue - your blacks are yellow.

Scopes - a grey object should render with each of the parade forms of equal shape and height

2 yes because luts may clip your image - you need to bring the image into the range of the lut before adding it


3 yes a lut is just an adjustment of colour - you can do anything a lit can do. Manufacturers luts may be worth using of course to save time of doing it yourself

 

[Mark-P]

Thanks for your replies. I’m going to order that book, in the meantime:

1. If reds, greens, or blues are touching 0, is this referred to as crushing your reds, greens or blues?

2. On the waveform Luma, when adjusting your tone to get a good exposure, how close do you generally want to keep the shape (not sure what it is called) from reaching 100?

3. On the waveform Luma, when adjusting your tone to get a good exposure, how close do you generally want to keep the shape (not sure what it is called) from reaching 0?

Thanks again.