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Investigation 1/20: Color Grading Revisited

Despite learning about the process of color grading during Film II last year, I wanted to refresh myself on the topic. With me wanting to incorporate color as an important element of my next film, making sure I can properly manipulate color through editing is important.

Color Correction Basics

The basics of color correction begin with adjusting the Blacks, Whites, Highlights, and Shadows. Adjustments are made to these values by moving the corresponding sliders in order to change the look of the image. These adjustments allow for easier color correction as the image is flat and isn't too light/dark. Next, the clip is white balanced either by manually moving sliders or using Adobe Premiere's built in auto white balance tool. After the base image is corrected, the editor can use the RGB and Hue Saturation Curves to create their desired look.

Masking

Masking allows the editor to select a particular section of the clip to manipulate. This provides the opportunity to have different color corrections for different areas of the clip. By creating a mask atop of the clip, the editor can stretch it around the area they which to manipulate. Another independent mask can be created after adding another Lumetri color effect on the clip, allowing separate edits to be made. As an example, the editor could have a third of a clip warmer while the other two thirds are cooler, in order to create contrast. Here is a still frame of a simple selection I made:

HSL Secondary

The use of the HSL Secondary tool within Adobe Premiere Pro allows the editor to directly manipulate one particular color in a clip. This process within Premiere begins with selecting a sample color that you wish to manipulate. Using the H, S, and L sliders, you work to select all surrounding colors of the object you wish to manipulate. After you have made your selection, you are then able to use the color wheel and the normal Lumetri color sliders in order to change the color, temperature, saturation, and more. In order for me to see if I would be able to apply this skill, I used old footage from my last project.
After completing this quick test I determined a few things. First is that in order to get the cleanest results, you will need to properly mask off only the area that you wish to change. In this example I only used a simple masking which is why you can see some areas around the shirt appear pink. The other thing I determined is that moving shots make it difficult to keep one area. Despite using Premiere's built in tracking, it was unable to keep the mask fixed on a subject which is why I didn't include this segment in the test clip. Knowing this, I will only be able to play to use this technique on static shots.

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