All language subtitles for DaVinci-Resolve-17-Color-IntroductiontoColor

Hi, my name is Daria.

I am a colorist, a compositor
and a the Vintage Resolve master trainer.

And today I'll be taking you
through the vintage results color page.

So if you look at my workstation,
I've already got the vintage

resolve launched and I'm currently
on the project manager panel

in order to open the project file
that I would have shared with you

on the training page,

you need to right
click in the project manager

and select Restore Project Archive

and archive is a little bit different
from a regular project file because it

doesn't just contain the metadata
for the project in all its timelines,

but also all the media
within that project.

So within my documents
I can see I have colored

page underscore
video part one that the array

you don't need to enter that folder.

You just need to select that on
the surface, highlight it and click open.

It'll take a few moments
and you should then see a thumbnail

of the project open
and the project manager to enter.

You have to double click the thumbnail.

All right,

so when adventures are launches,
it will place you in the last page

that you had open.

In my case, it was the color page,
but if you need to situate yourself here,

look at the bottom of the program and
check to see which icon you have selected.

So I have color highlighted.

Make sure you either

click on color or the little color wheel
if you don't have labels.

By the way,

if you'd like to see labels, you can right
click at the very bottom of the program

and you'll see that you have
options to show icons only

or to show icons and labels.

Okay,

So in the color page,
I have the standard layout.

If you're seeing something different,
you can navigate to the very top

of the program,
go into your workspace menu

and choose reset UI

or user interface layout,

and then you should be seeing
the exact same

distribution of panels as I am now.

At first,
the color page might look quite busy,

maybe a bit intimidating
if it's your first time looking at it,

but it's actually much easier to approach
if you think of it as a series

of relatively simple tools,
all of which have, you know, just one

or two functions that have all just
been amassed together on this page.

So once you start learning them one
at a time, it's much easier to approach.

Let's take a look at the standard panels,
the very top of the page.

You have three main sections.

You have the gallery in the top
left corner

where you're going to be storing
your stills.

Stills are a way for us to grab
high quality image grabs of frames

from our clips, but they're also a way
of saving our grades, you know, so we can

then re-use them at a later time
or with different clips on the timeline.

In the

middle, we have the viewer,
which I think is pretty self-explanatory.

It's showing us our color grade
as we perform it,

but it also offers
a lot of additional functionality based on

which panel you currently have active
or which tool you're using.

So it's actually quite reactive
to whichever tools are in operation.

And then in the top right corner
you have the node editor.

This is where you're going
to be creating steps

for your grades to ensure
that your grade is nice and clean

and that your image signal
integrity is preserved.

So that's something
I will go into much more detail later on.

But just keep in mind that this is
pretty much where the magic happens

underneath of you,
where you have two forms of the timeline,

you have the thumbnail timeline
which is represented with these larger

thumbnails that you can click amongst
either with your mouse

or you can use the arrow keys
on your keyboard

to navigate
between the different clips of the edit.

You can also use the left and right key

to navigate between frames.

Underneath the thumbnail timeline.

You have the timeline ruler.

Now this looks a little bit
more like the timeline on the edit page

in which you can see the duration
of the clips, the relationship

to one another and different video tracks.

And so you don't always need

to see the duration of clips
when you're color grading, but if you did,

then you can refer to this timeline
at the bottom.

You can also select the play head

and drag to navigate
between the media clips.

And then finally, in the bottom
third of the page,

you have your collection of palettes,

which is all the tools that you're going
to be using in the color page.

If you are using a desktop
resolution of 1920 by 1080 and above,

then you will see a distribution
of like three columns of these palettes.

But if you have a smaller resolution,
then you'll find your palettes collected

into just two columns left and right

to navigate between the different palettes
or tools

you need to click on the icons
above the palettes,

and that will show you all the different
tools that you have access to.

By default, you will have

the primaries wheels
and the curves open at the bottom.

And then on the right hand side,
you have some additional tools like

the keyframes palette and the scopes,
which I'm going to select and leave open.

So with the scopes,
I can see the analysis of the video,

see the signal strength in the luminance,

and also the red, green and blue channels,
which is going to be really helpful

for balancing and matching my medium
at the very top of the page.

As with all the other pages in DaVinci
Resolve, you have the interface toolbar,

which is this very narrow strip
that features a series of buttons

that allow you to hide or reveal panels
based on what you need to do on the page.

So say instead of using the gallery,
you needed

to have access to your lookup tables
or the LUTS panel.

You can click on LUTS at the top
and see that

you now have access
to all of your LUTS collections,

but then

you can select gallery
and that will switch it back.

On the right hand side.

I have access to my open effects
panel, my lightbox, etc.

Another way that you can customize
your color page layout

is by clicking the edges of certain panels
and expanding them,

and you'll see that
the viewer in this case

dynamically resizes itself
based on the space that it's allowed.

And then if you ever

need to reset your layout,
you saw at the beginning of this video

that you could go into the workspace menu
at the top and choose Reset UI layout.

Some other terms that I'm going to be
using in this tutorial is options.

So the options menu is found
in most panels in the top

right corner
and it looks like these three dots.

So these options menus tend

to give you a bit more control
over individual panels.

Let you enable certain modes

or deactivate certain features.

You also have pop up menus,

which you will find in the top
right of some of the palettes

and they have a little dropdown arrow
next to them.

So with these you can switch
between different pages of a palette.

For example, with the curves,
we have a lot of Excel curves that we have

access to.

You can use this dropdown

menu to navigate,

but then it also has a corresponding
DOT menu at the very top of the palettes

with which you can navigate
between the different pages

of the palettes.

So again,
you will find these in different palettes.

If I go back to my scopes,
I will find this also has a pop up menu

for the different
types of scopes that I have.

And same thing for the primaries.

And then finally,
we also have contextual menus.

These are also known as right click menus.

Whenever you right
click in an area of the color page,

you will find the selection
of additional commands.

But what's interesting about this menu is
that it changes based on where you click.

So you will have access
to different commands or actions

based on the elements that you're right
clicking on right now that we're familiar

with the layout, we can start looking
at our primary grading tools.

When we talk about primary grading tools,
we talk about

making changes
to the entire frame of the image.

So we could do this
for a variety of reasons.

The main two is first of all, corrective.

So this is where we want to balance
the image, match it to another

clip in the timeline,

get rid of any color cast
that may have been captured in camera,

basically make it
look as nice and clean as possible.

And then there's also the creative reason
for primary grading.

So this is where you design a look
and you want it to affect

the entire frame or the entire scene.

We perform primary grading
with a whole combination of tools,

but really the most common ones
is the primary color wheels

and the curves that are open
by default in the color page.

So you see these currently open
at the bottom of my color page.

I've also got scopes open,
which I like to use in order

to properly analyze and understand
what's happening in the frame.

I'm going to navigate
to the first clip on my timeline,

and I'm also going
to change my scope type.

Right now we're looking at an R&B parade
which is giving us a readout of the color

intensity
of the red, green and blue channel.

This is really helpful
for certain workflows,

especially when we're matching clips.

But in my case, I just want to focus
on the tonal range of the image.

So I will switch from parade

to waveform.

There we go.

And it's currently
giving me a single video readout of this

frame With the red,
green and blue channels superimposed.

I might want to change this
to give me just a luminance readout,

so I will go into my settings at the top,

switch from B to Y

and disable colorize.

There we go.

So we have this floating settings menu
which I can pick up with my mouse

and move aside and you can see that
the scopes in the background

are no longer have any colors.

They're just a white readout.

If I wanted to increase
the intensity of this trace,

then I could go into my waveform parameter

here and brighten it up.

So now I have a really bright trace
in the background.

So trace is what we call the graph that's
giving us a readout of a video signal

and then to collapse the settings.

I just have to click anywhere outside
of that box and they will automatically go

back to where they came from.

So what are the scopes actually telling us

as you read them from left
and right across the image?

So imagine your eye traveling from
the left side of the frame to the right

and then top to bottom there
representing the luminance of the image.

So zero at the very bottom represents
the black point.

This is the darkest
that a pixel can possibly be, right?

So usually that's a value of 000
for red, green and blue.

Then opposite that
at the very top of the graph

will be the right point or the brightest
possible value that a pixel can be.

So as you're reading this graph,

you should see that
there's a few very distinct shapes,

especially these little pillars
falling towards the bottom of the graph.

And when we look at the image,
we will find

that as we travel from left and right
there are

these areas of dark shadow
in between these wooden pillars, right?

So where there is shadow, the pixels are
being reorganized and placed

towards the bottom of the scopes graph
to tell us that these are dark regions,

whereas in between these shadowy areas
we have a pretty neutral spread of pixels

where there isn't really anything
distinctly bright or dark.

So they're, they're all kind of bunching
around the midtown.

And if you look in the scopes, that's
also quite well represented in this graph.

So they're all just a little bit elevated,
but they're not necessarily

bright, right?

So they're not being thrown
all the way to the top of the Scopes panel

with this kind of readout,
we can understand exactly how

we need to adjust our primary controls
to get a nice spread in the image,

but make sure that it's not too bright,
it's not blown out

and it's also not too dark
that we're not crushing the shadows.

So for

that, I'm going to use the primary color
wheels.

Now, there's a lot going on here at first,

so let's first understand
what the individual wheels are doing.

On the right hand side,
you have the offset wheel.

This is one that will impact
the entire image uniformly.

If I click the control point
in the middle of the wheel,

I can hold and drag in any direction.

And you will see that I'm introducing
that color into the image

in the viewer.

I can also double click

the control point in the color wheel
to reset it back to its original position.

Underneath the color wheel,
we have this black slider,

which is called a master wheel, and this
will affect the luminance of your image.

If I click and hold it,
I can drag left to darken my frame

or I can keep holding it and drag
right to brighten the frame.

Notice that the trace in the scopes
is moving uniformly up and down.

So that's exactly what the offset does.

It will impact your image uniformly,
regardless of how

light or dark it is or how many shadows
it has or highlight points.

To reset

my settings, I'm going to go into the top
right corner

and click this round arrow
to reset my parameters.

Every wheel, by the way, has its own
reset arrow.

Plus you have a global reset in the top
right

corner of the primary palette,
as well as most other palettes

that allow you
to reset the entire palette.

So on the left hand side,

you have three more color wheels,
but these ones have distinct tonal ranges.

So they will impact a an area of the image
based on its luminance.

These are called lift gamma and gain.

And a shorthand way of remembering what
they do is that lift will control shadows.

Gamma goes after
Midtown's and Gane goes after highlights.

So if I was to click and drag the lift
color wheel,

I will find that the shadows
between the fence

posts get affected more dramatically
and they start to go red.

Whereas the highlights
are the last thing to get affected.

And likewise, I can use the mass
wheels underneath

those color wheels to
then make the shadows even darker,

but then go in the opposite direction
towards the gain

and make the highlights brighter and
thus establishing contrast in the image.

So if I'm going to be using the scopes
as a reference for,

you know, how to distribute or normalize
this image,

I will make sure that my shadows
are not touching the black point line,

especially during this point in time
where I'm only balancing the image.

I'm not really applying a creative grade,

going to drag the master wheel slightly
to the right

to land this trace right between

the bottom two lines of my scopes graph,

and then I'm going to do the opposite
for the gain.

The master wheel.
I'm going to drag it upwards

to brighten the video.

And normally
I would want to land most signals

right under the second line
from the top of the Scopes graph.

But in this case,
because it's already a very dark image

and because we don't really
have a good reference for a

well lit item,
like a piece of paper or a color chart,

I'm going to keep it a little bit darker
and instead I'm just going to use

the highlight on this hand

as a reference for brightness, which
I don't really want to take over 75%.

So that's this area of the graphic
can see there's very few pixels

representing that particular region,
which is why it's quite faint.

But hopefully you can see
that's just about touching 75%

and that's as high
as I will want to take it

If I feel

that the image is still a little bit dark,
I can still brighten that up

by going after the gamma master wheel,
dragging that slightly to the right

and bringing the middle part of the trace
upwards a bit

at the top
and the bottom of the primary palette.

You have your adjustment controls.

So these are single purpose parameters
that will further affect the image

in some way.

For example, we have a temperature control

which I can drag to the left
in order to cool down the image

or drag to the right to warm it up.

This is very commonly used

for getting rid of a temperature
or a color cast in the image.

If a camera was not properly white
balanced one recording One way that

I can make changes to these parameters
is to click and drag with my mouse.

I can also click and drag on the parameter
name itself.

So by clicking temp,

I can still change these values.

And finally,
I can also click on the numeric field

that the parameters in and type in a value

with my number pad.

And then when I press enter
that's applied to reset

any of the parameters, you need to
double click the parameter name.

So I'm going to double click temp

and then that takes me to the default
value of zero.

In this case,
what I would like to do is increase

the saturation of my image
because I had a log starting point.

The image was quite flat,

not just in terms of contrast,
but also in terms of color.

So I will go down here to the bottom
adjustment controls

and increase my saturation to 75.

So I'm just going to lift it up
to about three quarters.

I'll enter 75
and the number pad press enter

and you should see that a little bit
more color has returned to the image.

Now that I've raised the saturation
on the image,

I start to reveal
more of the original colors

and any color cast or inconsistencies
that may have been captured.

So how do we balance this image?

There's a lot of different approaches,

but we're going to go
for one of the simpler ones.

That involves using the data
that's already in the viewer.

I am going to navigate to the viewer with
my mouse and I'm going to right click.

And in the contextual menu,
I will choose show picker RTP value

and what that means is that when I hover
over the pixels in the viewer,

I will now get an IDB
readout of the values

of whatever pixel I'm currently
hovering over and this will give me

a representation of whether there's
a color dominance in any particular pixel.

Now in certain regions,
that dominance makes a lot of sense.

If I'm placing my mouse over that plank of
wood, you know, wood tends to be warmer,

so it will have a stronger red dominance,
it will have less blue.

Likewise for this jumper,
you could see that it's

naturally blue in color, which is why
the blue value will be highlighted

When you're trying to neutralize
an image or balance it, you are trying

to look at elements that should naturally
be grayscale or neutral.

So for example, white pieces of paper,
white T-shirts, of course, color charts,

if you have them.

In this case, we don't have any of that.

But we do have a rhinoceros
and we can realistically assume

that his skin tone is going to be
somewhere in that grayscale range. So

I'm going to hover over it and make sure
that I'm not seeing a color dominance.

When I do this, I see that my red channel
is always about ten points

higher than my green and my blue
no matter where I place it, really.

So that's an indication that the image
overall probably has a red color cast.

I am going to navigate into my primaries

and what I can do is grab
my color wheel of

probably my gain would be
a really good approach because the gain

is representing the light source,
you know, hitting the environment

and I will want to pull it away from red
to get rid of that color cast.

But it's a little bit harder

to do with an A wheel
because you're kind of moving, you know,

with these three dimensional colors, you
know, So it's a little bit more abstract.

The wheels are great for green of color
grading, but when it comes to precision,

maybe not so much.

So we're going to switch our mode
from wheels to bars.

If you go into your pop up menu

under wheels, you will see bars.

These are also known as printer lights,
and these will allow you

to adjust very specific
color casts in your tonal ranges.

So in this case, again, we're going
after the gain, which represents

the highlights of the image,
and that is anything that's being affected

by the light source, which of course
is the rhino and everything in the scene.

And we are going to drag down
in the red channel

to remove some of that red dominance

to interact with bars.

You can either
click and drag down with your mouse

or you can also use the scroll wheel,
which will give you much

finer control over the values
you know, so it won't be as aggressive.

So as I scroll,
I can see my image becoming more

and more cyan,
which is the opposite of red.

I'll make sure that I don't pull it down
far enough to reveal that blue,

and instead I'll just

make a very minor adjustment.

As you can see,
the red is not too different yet.

Then navigate back to the viewer
with my mouse and double check with

the values are looking like.

And now they are overall
much, much closer to the green.

And the blue values
are still a little bit heightened.

So I can probably take it down
just one more notch,

but otherwise I'm pretty,
pretty happy with this result.

With my image normalized and balanced,

I am now ready to apply a creative
look for that.

I will probably want to create a new note.

I don't want to work on top of the changes
that I've already made.

I don't want to undo anything
that I've done in my color wheels,

so I'm going to go into
the Node editor, right click,

add Node and add Serial

so I won't spend too much time talking
about node structures in this video.

But for now it's really good
to think of nodes as organizational tools.

You know, the fact

that you're going to have a separate node
for every stage of your workflow

and you're going to use them to keep track
of where you perform certain grades

so that you can return
to them in the future and know

exactly, you know, where you created
contrast, where you created balance.

And that way it's much easier to modify,
you know, not lose track of your tools.

To help me with that,
I am also going to start labeling nodes.

So the first node that I had open
number one,

you could see there's a little icon
at the very bottom

that's representing the tools
that I've already used.

On that note,

when I hover over it, it's telling me
that I've used the primary balance

and I've also used the adjustment
controls, you know, So

that includes things like know
saturation and lumens.

Next I am going to right
click node number one, choose Node label

and I will just start typing

balance.

So that was my clean up node.

This is where I was preparing it
for the eventual color grade.

Now, with the video signal
nice and cleaned up,

I can select node number two
and I'm going to label

that look.

By the way,

if you ever wanted to disable your color

grade to see what your image looked like
before you started working,

you can always click on the number
of a node to disable it.

So now you can see
this is our original image.

It was much darker, much flatter.

And when I enabled Balance, you could see
now it's looking quite clean, neutral.

And also the luminance spread
is much more natural looking.

I can also use the shortcut

command D on a mac or control D on a PC

to do the same thing

without clicking on the node.

I'm now going to select

my look node and create some sort of look.

I think first thing that I really want to
do is establish a deeper contrast

because it's still looking a little bit

flat to me,
even though it's looking natural now.

So at the very top of the primaries
palette in the adjustment controls,

you will find that there are these
two parameters called contrast and pivot.

I can click and drag contrast
and that will push the top and bottom

of the trace further away from each other,
as you can see in the scopes.

So what contrast does
is it increases the difference

between the lightest part of the image
and the darkest part of the image.

And that then reveals more detail
in the mid tones that makes the image

look more interesting.

It reveals the wrinkles and the rhino

then also creates much deeper shadows.

Sometimes, though,
that does result in your image.

Looking overall, too dark or too light.

And for that we have the pivot,
which you can think of

as a balance tool for the contrast.

So rather than placing the contrast
in the middle of the luminance range,

it will actually prioritize
either the highlights or the shadows.

So I can click pivot and drag
and you can see that

even though the contrast is maintained
and I can overall make the image

brighter or darker,

so I'll make mine just a little bit darker

and I'm pretty happy with that result.

To introduce a creative color cast,
I'm going to go back into the wheels

in order to play with the colors,
like in a nonlinear fashion.

So once again, that's our pop up.

Many in the top
right corner, I'll select wheels to return

and I'm

going to apply the color
to the overall frame using the offset.

Going to click on the control
point in the middle.

The color wheel, and drag it
a little bit towards like a cyan tone.

So that's like a warm blue
or greenish blue.

Okay.

And whenever I perform creative color
grading, my left hand pretty much lives

on the keyboard, on the command,
the shortcut or control D on a PC,

so that I'm constantly comparing before
and after as I'm working.

And that way it refreshes

my eyes and my mind and it lets me know
if I've taken the grade too far

and it's starting to look unrealistic or,
you know, just bad or distracting.

So in this case, I'm still okay with it.

It is a very strong look, but maybe, you
know, that was my intention for the scene.

So I'm happy with it.

As well as dragging the offset towards
Cyan, I'm also going to drag the shadows

towards red in order to counteract
some of that blueness

and make the shadows appear more neutral.

Okay, so then overall, that
has a pretty positive impact on the image.

It's giving us like a bit of a dual tone.

So it still looks quite unique,
quite different from the original video

signal, but it's it's
looking quite natural to my eyes.

And then finally, I'm also going to adjust
the midterm detail.

This is a parameter in the top right
corner,

and it's going to have the effect
of sharpening the image, even though it's

technically not a sharpening tool,
it is also a contrast adjustment,

but it targets areas of the image
that are naturally high in detail.

So midtown's like the scratches
on the posts, like the rhino's skin,

those are all going to be affected
and their contrast is going to be raised

and that will produce the effect
of increased sharpness.

So I'm going to click and drag

and you can see if I take it

really quite far, then the image starts
to look extremely dramatic.

I'm going to dial it back to about
maybe about 40 points.

And again,
press command D to bypass the node.

Or if I'm not using shortcuts,

you can just click on the number
of the Node two to do the same thing

and compare before and after.

All right.

And that was our first exercise.

Let's move on to clip number two

For clip number two, we're going to be
using the Curves palette.

This is the other primary palette that
everyone should know for color grading.

It is just like the color wheels used
for both correction work, for balancing,

but then also for creative
looks and designs.

So here we're going to do a very similar
thing just with an alternative approach.

Let's first get comfortable
with the interface.

One thing I can do with the curves
is I can actually pop out the palette

in case I need more control
over the individual curves.

So in the top right corner,
you will see this little icon

that looks like four arrows
pointing in different directions.

When I click on it, I expand the palette

and I can

now be
position it by grabbing it by the header.

Or I can click the bottom left corner

and resize it so that I can fit it
wherever I need it.

On the page.

You have complete control
over the individual channels,

the color channels
that you work on in the top right corner.

You can see that by default
these are all linked or ganged together,

but you can also select
that little chain icon to disable it

and see that you can navigate between
the different channels of the image

gallery. Link these as I continue.

Now, the main portion of the palette
is taken up by the curve itself.

And this there's a lot of similarities to
the Scopes graph that we just looked at.

So the very bottom of this graph
represents the hypothetical black

point of the image
and will impact the shadows.

If I select this point and I drag it
upwards, I am brightening the shadows.

If you look at the Scopes graph,
you will see that this image

is getting brighter
from the bottom upwards.

Likewise, I can drag the

control points across the bottom
and that will have the opposite effect.

It will deepen the shadows.

It will bring them down in the scopes.

The same is true for the opposite.

At the very top
we have our White Point control.

I can drag it across the top
to raise my trace

and eventually overexpose
it completely across the image.

Or I can drag it downwards
in order to darken the image.

So using these two control points,
I can very easily establish

a tonal range distribution,
or I can normalize the image

or create contrast.

What's really special about the Curves
palette is that I can also create

as many control points
within the curve as I want, and thereby

I can make very customized rates
both for balancing and for creative looks.

It means that if there's a very specific
portion of the image that I need to target

that I'm finding very difficult
to adjust with the color wheels,

I can switch to the curves
and make adjustments to that

very distinct range
to create new control points.

All I have to do is click on the curve
and start

to drag up
or down to lighten or darken it.

Then I can create

more points to

start creating looks.

You can remove points by right
clicking them with your mouse.

So I'm going to begin
by dragging the black and white point

to normalize the waveform in the scopes.

Remember,
we don't want to crush the shadows.

We just want to land them somewhere safely
between the zero and the 128 line.

So I'm going to drag that point

and place it right over there

and then I'll do the opposite
for the white point.

I'm going to drag it
until the very top of the trace

and somewhere under or on the second
horizontal line from the top.

So we absolutely don't
want to be crushing this

because we will be losing a lot of data
here, and that tends to look quite russet

in silver, but unprofessional.

So ideally, even the highlights
we want to keep quite well preserved.

And you can see right now
that area in the window is starting

to look like a block of white pixels,
which we absolutely do not want.

So I'll pick it up and drag it downwards
and we tend to be a little bit

more precious
with highlights than with shadows.

So instead of placing it somewhere
in between, I'm actually going to drag it

a little bit lower to make sure
that we preserve as much detail

out of that window as possible.

Hopefully by now

you're feeling more comfortable
with referring to scopes and reading them.

If we're reading it from left to right,
then we can see that there's

a great area
of raised pixels on the left hand side.

And if we look on the left hand
side of the image in the viewer,

then you will see
the brightest spot in this room,

which is of course an open window.

So it all makes sense of
the rest of the image is relatively flat,

so there's not too many distinct
shadows or highlights.

But then as you travel
across to the right, you see this really

gentle transition from shadow
to a lighter portion of the wall.

And in scopes graphs,

this tends
to look like a really gentle gradient,

which is exactly what you can see
hopefully

on the right hand side of the trace.

So just a little wave going upwards
towards the brightness.

All right.

So I have a stretch,
the top and bottom of this trace.

Sometimes you'll see that a change
that you make counteracts

a previous change that you had created.

So, for example, the shadows have now
been elevated, and that's perfectly fine.

A big part of color
grading is reiteration.

It's going back to tools
that you used earlier and making further

changes in order for the final result
to look optimal.

So I'm going to grab the black point
and drag it a little bit lower

so that once

again, we're
filling a lower portion of the shadow.

And finally, I'm going to create
another point in the middle of the curve

to control the overall lightness
or darkness of the image.

So kind of like using the gamma
in the color wheels I click and drag

could see that I can brighten
the overall room or I can darken it.

I can also refer to the histogram
that's in the background of the palette.

This histogram
you can think of as an alternative

representation
of the image from the scopes.

But rather than reading it
from top to bottom, we're reading it

from left to right.

So left representing the shadows, right,
representing the highlights.

So the majority of the image is actually
quite low in terms of luminance.

It's all the way down here.

And if I want to target this region,
I need to place the point over here

and you'll see
that when I drag it upwards,

much more of the image becomes
brighter, much more dramatically.

So I'm not going to be that intense,

but I will lift it up just a touch.

I can also perform a balance
at this stage,

but this time, instead of using the viewer
and the picture,

I am going to go back
and to my Scopes settings.

So this is the little icon
that looks like three lines.

And here I'm going to reactivate
my red, green and blue channels.

So instead of using white,
which represents luminance, I'm

going to switch to IGP and I'm also going
to select Colorize in my settings

so that I can see what
these channels look like in the Trace.

And then once again, I'm going
to click off to remove the settings panel

and I can immediately see that there is a
bit of a red dominance in the image.

One thing that's important

to keep in mind when you're balancing
is to always keep an eye on context.

If this was a video of a forest,
for example,

then I would naturally assume
that the Green channel would be quite

dominant in the scopes,
and that's perfectly fine.

I wouldn't try to neutralize that.

Likewise,
if we had an image of a blue sky,

then the blue channel would be dominant.

But in this case
we're looking at the interior of a room.

We have like these scales
with what we assumed to be, you know,

usually they're printed on a white piece
of plastic

or white paper
so that we would assume to be neutral.

There's no reason really
for anything in this room

to have such a strong red dominance
as what we're seeing.

So the most likely thing is
that we have a color cast.

So we are going to begin by

isolating a red channel in the colors
by clicking are in the top right,

and I am going to

reuse the midpoint by selecting it
and dragging it slightly down.

So you can see how the Red Channel

has separated itself
from the previous gang channels.

So green and blue are still there,

but Red has now
started to move on its own.

And when I refer to the scopes,
I can see that

red fringe is starting to disappear
a little bit behind the other channels.

Whenever you have pure white in the RGV
scopes, that's when you know that

three channels are perfectly overlaid
and you have neutral, you have grayscale.

I can also see that I have a bit of a blue
fringe at the bottom of this trace.

So I will also isolate the blue channel

and drag that slightly upwards.

Right.

And hopefully you can see that the image
has become a little bit more neutral.

If you need to make further tweaks,
then feel free to do so,

especially if something doesn't
look right in the viewer.

We can always reliably depend
on the scopes to give you

an accurate readout
no matter what monitor you're using.

So I'm going to press Command D to disable
the note to compare before and after.

And you can see
it feels almost like turning a light on.

You know,
the image has become much brighter.

The contrast is more defined.

It looks more like real life.

And also it's been neutralized
quite a bit.

So it no longer has that kind of yellowish
or brownish tinge,

which means that I'm now ready
to start performing other actions

in terms of creating this look,
I really want to create some contrast,

but I don't want to keep using

the same curves palette because right now
you could see it's quite broken up.

And if I start to make further
adjustments, it's going to be difficult

to keep track of what was balancing
and what was creative work.

So I would rather collapse this palette by
clicking on the X in the top left corner

and create a new

node in which I'm
going to establish contrast.

So I will right click on my existing node

and add a new serial node.

So a serial is just a standard corrector
node that will appear after the

that you currently have selected.

There you go.

I will use this node to create contrast.

And for that we're also going to be
using the curves palette.

And I'll remind myself
that the previous node

was being used for balance.

All right, whichever node I have selected.

So it's highlighted
with an orange outline, that's where

I will be performing
the changes on the palettes.

Notice that when I select the contrast,
which doesn't have any icons

at the bottom of it,
the Curves palette is back to what

it used to be just a straight line,
you know, from one corner to the next.

If I switch back to balance, then you can
see the changes that I've just made.

So now I can work on contrast

without affecting or undoing
anything that I did with the balance.

I will make sure that my curves

are all ganged up Once again.

I can expand the palette
so it's a little bit easier to modify

and I will create
what's known as an S-curve.

So S-curve is a shorthand way
of referring to contrast in an image,

just like the letter
s, it implies that you are darkening

the lower midtown's or the shadows
and brightening the Upper Midtown.

So the highlights
thereby creating this s shape.

So it's a really quick way
to establish contrast.

If you have a dark image like this one,
you might want to be very gentle

with the the severity of
the shape and keep it quite,

quite subtle.

I'm pretty happy with the results.

You could see my before and my after.

I also want to work on the colors
of this image,

but again, I don't really want to undo
what I've already done,

so it's a good idea to once again
create a new node.

But this time
I don't want to make changes to the colors

after the current node because I do feel
the contrast is a good change to place

at the end of a pipeline.

Instead, I want to make
my color corrections between the balance

and the contrast.

So for that I'm going to right click
the contrast node, add node.

But this time, instead of adding cereal,
I'm going to add cereal before.

So now a new node has appeared

in that connection
line between balance and contrast.

And this will be my look,

just like with the remainder of the nodes
on this particular clip,

I'm going to be using the Curves palette
to create the look.

Let me expand the palette one last time,

and this time
I'll start isolating the channels.

Okay?

What's fun
is that if you want to introduce

the color of a certain channel,
you can selected,

create a control point and drag upwards
to bring that color in.

But when you drag it downwards,
you're not just removing

the color, you're actually introducing
its inverse opposite.

So the opposite of green
and the additive color space is magenta.

So you bring magenta
in by dragging in the opposite direction.

If you ever have any trouble remembering
the different color pairs, you can refer

to the color wheels in the primaries
and see the opposite of green is magenta.

Opposite of red is cyan.

It's the light blue
and then opposite of blue is yellow.

So if I

were to reset these parameters,
go to blue,

I can introduce blue or yellow.

I mean reset

and also introduce red or cyan.

A quick way to create

a look using the curves
palette is to introduce two

opposite colors
into opposing tonal ranges of an image.

So, for example,
if I have my red channel open,

I could drag down in the lower midtown's

to introduce Cyan into the shadows.

A rather you know what?

I'll drag in the opposite direction
and introduce Red into the shadows,

but then drag the other half of the curve
in the opposite direction.

And that's going to give me
this really interesting,

almost a retro look on the colors.

So this is actually called cross process.

It's a reference
to older photo development techniques.

And in this case it almost always produces
like a really attractive color look.

So in this case, I've used the opposite
ends of the red channel.

You could see before and after.

I can reset this and try the same thing
for a different color.

And it will pretty much always work.

As in this case,
I'm going to lift the bottom

half of the blue channel
to introduce blue into the shadows,

but then lower the upper Midtown
to introduce yellow.

It's opposite.

And that also gives us
a really interesting result.

I'm going to keep these control points
relatively close

to the original lines
so that the colors are pretty subtle

to get this result.

All right.

If I wanted to look at this clip
in full screen,

I can use command F as a shortcut
or control F on a PC

and then continue to use my shortcuts
to bypass the note.

Great. So command the

before and after.

And this is me
creating that blue and yellow Look,

if I wanted to bypass the entire pipeline,
not just one note.

There are a couple of ways
I can accomplish this.

First, at the very top of the viewer,
you have this icon

that looks like a little color wheel
with some sparkles next to it.

You can click on that to completely bypass
the entire grade

and you'll end up
looking at the original video signal.

Or you can press shift the

and that
will also disable the entire pipeline.

And you could see
the very top of the viewer.

That icon, again, is getting crossed out
to indicate to you visually

that you're no longer seeing the great.

Now that we've created a few looks,

let's save them for later use.

So I will right click within the viewer

with my clip to still open

and I will select grab still

and now a still

will appear in the gallery
which contains, as I mentioned earlier,

a high quality
one frame grab of this video

based on the frame that I had open
at the time that I grabbed it.

But then also all of the color
grading data associated with it.

I can even click underneath

the still to give it a custom name.

So in this case,
this was the cross process.

Look,

in case you're unable to reach

or to click that area to start
labeling a still, you can always right

click and choose change label
and you can do the same thing.

Let's also grab a style of our first clip,

right click

grab still,

and that will appear
at the very beginning.

Here. I'll click to select it.

And this was more of like a neutral,
neutral cyan look.

So this is a way that I can collect all of
my different grades, different looks.

Something else I could do is also organize
these into albums, which is

the color pages version of folders
or bins to access albums.

I need to click on the sidebar
icon in the top left corner

of my media pool
and you can see when I select it,

the sidebar opens up
and I have my default album Stills one

I can double click to highlight

its name
and I will call this my Looks album.

Then I can also right click

within the sidebar
to generate as many new albums as I need.

So when I right click
I can add still album

and that's my stills too.

So it's really quite easy
to stay organized

when you're working with the gallery.

But now the next thing I'd like to take a
look at is matching clips to one another.

So that is just as important
as being able to read scopes

to be able to normalize and balance clips
in preparation for the creative grade.

But we perform matching
for a slightly different purpose.

So primarily it's so that you can have
clips playing in a sequence

and they all look like
they're all part of the same environment.

So let's take a look at three clips
that I have in the timeline right now.

I will disable the loop function
in my viewer

by clicking on the little orange arrow
at the bottom and I will press spacebar

to play through these three
airplane sequence clips.

And even though

topically they all make sense
next to each other,

they all look extremely different

because they were captured
on different days on different cameras,

you know, and it's perfectly natural
for this to happen to footage.

So the first clip looks really quite warm

Afterwards.

You go into this
very neutral clip in the middle

and then continue into this darker
color clip.

So we would like all of these
to look pretty cohesive.

I will begin with the automated match
function individually is off

because I feel that it's quite powerful
and really quite useful.

The first thing we need to do
is decide on our ideal

starting point or our key shot
as it's also known.

And I think the middle clip in
the sequence

makes the most sense
because it is a very neutral looking shot.

It's nice and bright,
but also the contrast is appropriate.

So we have nice deep shadows

and very
good highlights that are not blown out.

I will select my third clip

and right click on clip number four.

All right.

So this is a very important distinction
to remember.

The clip that you are changing

has to be the one that you have selected,
but the one that you want to match to

is the one that you want to right
click and choose shot match

to this clip.

It might take a moment,

but hopefully you will see
the colors shift

as your opening clip now changes to match

the look of the subsequent
clip could see that both nice and neutral.

Now they have the same color.

Tarmac even sets the ground,
same color fuselage on the planes.

They both look

very similar in terms of color balance,
but also in terms of contrast, you can see

that the shadows underneath the airplane
are just as rich in both cases.

So now, if you were to see this
as part of a documentary or a feature,

this would look a little bit more natural
that they belong next to each other.

We'll try the same thing for clip number

five once again using clip four as my key.

So I will have five selected.

If you right click

the active clip you will not see shot
match to this clip as an option.

So you have to make sure that you are
right clicking the key instead.

Shot match to this clip.

All right.

And that's also given me
a pretty good adjustment.

Remember,
you can continue to disable a note

or press
a command D to temporarily hide the grade.

And that absolutely
has been a substantial change,

but it may be not strictly as accurate
as the previous one had been.

And that's fine.

So in this case,

I can see, for example, that the shadows
are much deeper in our key shot.

If I look at the wheels
or if I look at the engines

and also refer to the scopes, you can see
that these fall pretty low down

right above the zero point line.

But when I look at number five,
those points are elevated.

So they look a little bit flatter
in the viewer and they're also much,

much higher in terms of the scopes.

I will go into my primaries

palettes and drag
the lift master wheel to the left

to darken that range of the image
and try to get it into

the same position in the scopes
as it was for clip number four.

All right,
so the shadows are looking much better.

I think the highlights are also
pretty good.

You could see they're a little bit lower,
perhaps in clip number four,

a little bit elevated in number five,

so I can drag those down.

But then overall, the image
I think I could use with a brightening,

you can see here
the spread is much more even, whereas here

it's a little bit more concentrated
in the upper mid-teens.

So pick up the gamma,
drag it upward slightly.

I'm still seeing
just a little bit of warmth,

I think, in this image
compared to the key.

So once again, we can return to
the primaries, switch from wheels to bars,

and I am ever so slightly

going to lift the blue channel
at the very bottom here in the lift.

So I don't have as much of a

separation of colors
at the very bottom of my scopes.

So by not even dragging,
but just by using the scroll wheel

once on the blue bar and raising it

by a factor of 4.01,

my shadows
have now started to look more neutral,

and I've achieved a much better match
with clip number four.

So this is a really nice
on the fly way of color matching,

you know, being able to very quickly
navigate down the timeline

and making sure all the clips
match each other,

especially if they were captured
in the same location.

And there's enough context,
enough visual references

for the software to understand what it's
seeing and match those elements up.

In some cases, though, you're not going
to have those types of helpful references,

in which case you will need to perform
all of the shot matching yourself.

And that's a very powerful skill to have,
and I'm about to show you how to do it.

I've got these two clips near

the end of the timeline, numbers
six and seven,

which don't really have a very clear

reference for whites,
you know, like a white piece of paper

or a white T-shirt or in this case,
the fuselage of a plane.

So here
we have a slightly more busy environment

in terms of there
just being more vegetation.

So things with a naturally
stronger color cast.

We do have some pretty good references
for shadows.

They don't take up a large portion
of the frame, but they are still there.

So we know what the deeper shadow
should look like.

In this case,
we also have the same environment,

but it was captured
at different times of the day,

which is another reason why
you might often have mismatched footage.

We want in the end for the sequence
to look like this.

We want the warmer daytime look
rather than the sort of sunset cooler look

for this, I am first
going to grab a reference image,

so I'm going to open up
a brand new album in the gallery

because I don't want this to end
in my looks.

I select stills too, and then I'll right
click the viewer when I have clips.

Seven open and choose grab still.

There we go.

In this case, are not grabbing this for,
you know, color grading or look purposes.

There's absolutely nothing in the note
editor for me to preserve.

I need this purely as a visual reference
and in fact,

I will label this still as reference

in the gallery.

And that way that's a reminder to myself
that there's nothing important

that I'm going to lose in case, you know,
I delete it later on

and then going to select clip number six

and I am going to double click
the reference thumbnail

to wipe it in the viewer

so you can see a few changes
have occurred in the viewer right now

in the top left corner of activated
one of the icons, which is the image wipe

and that has not produced a split line
down the middle and it's showing me

my reference on the right hand side
and my active clip on the left.

On top of that, in the top right corner,
I've also revealed

a lot of additional controls
for how the image wipe behaves.

By default,
you're going to get this horizontal wipe.

We have a single line in the middle
that you can pick up with your mouse

and move left and right
to pick the ideal point for matching.

But then you also have
a lot of alternative white modes,

you know,

based on the context of the scene, based
on, you know, the placement

of your characters.

And so you can check these out.

I think they're pretty self-explanatory.

But in our case, really what we need
is this kind of divide where we have

a good environmental reference, right?

So we can see the ground in both frames.

We can see the mountains
in the background, in both frames.

And those like few references to shadows
are also present in things like the

the dog's face, for example,
the wrinkles in the man's clothes.

But then also the horses eyes and mane
are all going to fall in the same region.

I'm going to

change my scopes from a waveform to an RG
parade that makes it really easy to see

exactly what the signal strength is of
every individual channel in the video.

So I'm going to use my pop up menu

to choose parade,
and the default setup should be enough.

So we have red, green and blue.

The actual distribution of the trace

is exactly the same as it was
with the standard waveform.

You're still looking
at the signal strength

from weakest at the bottom,
the black point to strongest at the top,

the white point,
and you're still reading it.

Left to right, except
now the video signal is a bit compressed,

so it's much more narrow,
but it's still the same shape.

If I was to jump back in
to say clip number two,

hopefully you'll recognize
that bright window on the left hand side.

But it's got slightly different strengths
for all three channels.

So in

this case,
I am looking at the image on the left,

but you can actually see the white line
between the two as I move it around.

So the parade is giving me
a readout of both,

which makes it much, much easier
to match the two because I just have

to get the height correct
in all three channels.

So matching is a bit different
from balancing in that sense

because you're not trying
to get three of them to line up perfectly.

I rather you're trying to get them
to replicate the relationship

of your reference clip
in which case, as we're reading this,

we can see the blue channel
absolutely does have to be reduced

because right now it's a bit higher
and the red channel needs to be raised

because it could see that the reference
image has a slightly elevated red channel.

So we are going to perform
our match using the curves palette.

I already have a blank node already

and in fact I'm going to label
this color match

and I'll begin by isolating my red channel

and I will raise its white points
to drag the top

half of this red parade.

And I only need to drag it a little bit.

You can see that it starts to match
the arc of the reference Red Parade,

and that's perfectly fine for me,
and I'm happy with it.

I will now do the same thing for the blue
channel, so that's a little elevated.

I will do the opposite.

I will select Blue Drag, the White Point

and lower it.

So once again
it matches the arc of the reference.

When I look back at the viewer,

the color grid is looking very,
very close.

All right.
So that's already a very good match.

And that just required two very small
adjustments to the red and blue channels.

One, maybe

final thing I would like to do
is also match

the bottom of the green channel,
which right now I can see is a little bit

elevated in my active clip versus
my reference.

So I will isolate my green channel,

select the black point

and drag it down ever, ever so slightly.

Okay,

So now we have a pretty good match
between the two.

In fact, I can disable my white mode
in the top left corner by selecting

this wipe image wipe icon

and I can use my up and down
arrow keys to cut between the two clips.

And then I can also play these back
to see how well they match each other.

And I think that's looking really nice.

Much, much closer than what it used to be,
which was of course

this the much cooler look
followed by the warmer one.

But here's where the real magic starts.

Once you've achieved a match
between clips,

you can now start to design
looks for your scene

and you don't have to recreate the look
every time you need to use it.

You can simply copy and paste it
across different clips,

and as long as they have the same starting
point, they will continue to match.

All right.

So it's all about getting it out of
the way in the first note of the pipeline,

for example, in this case,
I can create a new node,

add node, add serial,

and this will be a node for contrast,

I will once again use my curves,
but this time I will combine

all of my channels or gang them,
and I will start by maybe dragging the top

and the bottom

points in opposite directions
to really drag out

the potential of this image.

Because this is a creative contrast.

Look, there's
not really as many strong rules around it.

So if I start to, for example, click
my shadows, it's not as big a deal.

But let's see, I'm
going to click downwards

to maybe deepen the midtown,
which I think looks really nice.

It produces more color,
more saturation in the image,

and then drag the highlights up to give me

a bit more separation, to reveal more

detail in the ground.

Great.

Once again I'll press command f

see this image and press command D

to disable you see,
this is before and after my contrast,

and I can also press shift
D to bypass the entire pipeline

and see that this was my original
image followed by the great.

If I wanted to apply

this exact
same contrast to the following video,

I can select this node in my pipeline

and I can either use my edit menu
to choose,

edit copy,
or I can use a standard keyboard shortcut

which is command C or a control C on a PC.

Select that.

Now I can navigate to clip seven

and choose, edit and paste

or command v Control v.

The contrast has been pasted

and the look between
the two clips has been maintained

because they had the same starting point
in terms of prominence.

The next thing I'm excited to show you

is the filter option and the color page.

So remember when we looked
at the interface toolbar at the very top,

I told you that there were certain panels
that you can reveal and hide

by pressing on certain buttons.

One of those buttons is clips,
which collapses

your thumbnail timeline
underneath the viewer.

But if you look right next to the clips
button,

you'll also see this little dropdown
arrow.

When you click on it, you reveal

a series of filters
that you can apply to your timeline.

So by default,
your timeline will show you all clips.

But sometimes you might want to isolate
what you're seeing.

For example,
right before delivering a project

you might wish to check out
what all your ungraded clips are.

If there's anything that you may have
accidentally skipped or forgotten.

When I click on ungraded clips

that leaves just one clip in my timeline,

which was that airplane clip
that we used as a key shot.

So I can select that
and I can review this clip.

Now, this has no impact
on your actual edit.

If you look at the edit
timeline underneath,

you could see that all of the clips
and the cut points are still present.

If I was to jump back at to the edit page,

my entire timeline is still
just as it was.

It is only what we're seeing
in the color page that changes.

Let me go back to my filter and I could
select all clips and these all come back.

So filters can be incredibly helpful
when you're trying

to focus on a subset of your media
for whatever reason.

For example, we have two clips

that we're going to be performing
secondary grading on in a second,

and I will mark them
in order to remind myself where they are.

One of those clips is number two,
so I will

right click and I will add a flag to it.

So select flags and make it yellow.

And you can now see a little yellow flag
in the top left corner indicating that

for whatever reason, this has been,
you know, indicated with this flag.

And I would also like to mark clip number
eight

for secondary grading work.

So I'm going to right
click Add flag and yellow.

I can also add flags in batches.

So to select multiple clips, I can either

hold the command modifier on my keyboard

and make multiple selections,

or I can also hold the shift key
to select a sequence of clips.

So with number three highlighted,
I've held shift.

I pressed number five and that gave me
that exact sequence of clips.

I can now right click

Choose Flags,

select Blue, and now all of these
have adopted a blue flag.

So what does this have to do necessarily

with organization or the filters
that I talked about a second ago?

If I go back into my clips filter list,

I will find that one of my options
for filtering is flags.

So I could decide, you know what?

For the rest of the afternoon,
I only want to focus

on this airplane sequence
so I can choose to filter by blue flags.

And now I don't have to be distracted
by any of the other media on my timeline.

And granted,
this was a relatively short timeline.

There's not too many clips,
but when you're working on

an episode of a show
or a short film or feature film,

you are going to have potentially hundreds
of clips to work through.

And it really helps a lot to have flags
to indicate exact features

that you want to address, you know that
you want to focus on for the day

and not have to constantly back
and forth on the timeline.

So for this next portion,
I'd like to return to our main timeline.

I'm going to navigate to the Clips
dropdown

menu again and set it to all
clips to remove the filter.

And the next thing we'll be

doing
is working with secondary grading tools,

secondary color grading is when we target
only a portion of the frame

when we're performing color
grading or applying an effect.

So we do this primarily
using two techniques.

One technique is referred to as masking
in the vintage resolve.

We accomplish this using power windows,
and in this technique

we are isolating a portion of the frame
using a shape,

you know, something like something basic,
like a circle or square

or even a custom shape
that we draw ourselves using a vector.

And then alternatively,
we can also perform secondary grading

using keying techniques,
which is where you select

the portion of the frame
based on hue saturation or luminance.

So in the vintage result, we accomplish
this using the qualifier tool.

We're going to use both of these
and the next couple of exercises.

I'm going to start with clip number two,
which we've already worked on.

So here we've performed a balance, we've
applied a creative look and contrast.

But in our case, I also want to isolate
the face of these scales

in order to make the detail here
pop out even more, because that's

obviously the purpose of the shot,
is to get the audience

to look at the detail right in the middle.

So I'm going to try
to make it as clear as possible.

Now, where would you place a node
for this type of secondary grade?

So far we've

been mostly keeping things sequential,
but in this case,

I want to work on top
of the cleanest version of the signal.

So I'm going to place my secondary grade
right after the balance node.

I will select it right click, add

Node and add serial.

So I'll use my labels

to indicate
that this will be a secondary grade

on the scales in the scale surface.

And for this it makes the most sense

to use a shape as pretty straightforward,
a circular shape.

So I will go into my Windows
palette, the icon to enter.

It looks exactly like a circle,

and underneath that you have a series
of preset vector shapes.

I will select the circular window
and that will immediately appear

in the viewer as this little interface
that I can interact with.

So I can drag the corners
to make this window larger.

I can click anywhere in the empty space
in the middle

to move it around as a single unit.

I can also

stretch it or crush it,
pull it in various directions

and also rotate it using the little anchor
anchor in the middle.

Feel free

to also move around the viewer itself.

So right now I can't really see the bottom
of the shape too well.

So I can middle click my mouse,
so I can click on the scroll wheel

to maneuver around

so I have a better control
over the bottom of the frame.

I can also give myself a bit

more room
by collapsing some of my other panels.

For example,
I very often collapse my timeline

panel here to give the viewer
a little bit more breathing room.

And remember, it's dynamic.

So if I resize
some of my other palettes, then

it will reshape itself and make it larger.

So now I can see my selection
a little bit better.

I can see that the circle is not perfect,
and it's kind of up to me to decide

whether I'm happy to make this compromise
and keep it the shape that it is,

or whether
I want to be more exact in my selection

in the window options.

So that's the three dot menu,
the top right corner.

I can choose to convert the shape
to base here,

which means that I can now

break apart this preset shape

and turn it into a series of custom points
that I can pick up and move around.

And every single point
has these brazier handles that I can also

maneuver in order to get the best possible
angle on this point.

So I'm dragging these around
using my mouse

and then also modifying the handles

to get a better selection.

This does take a little bit of practice.

If this is your first time
encountering vector shapes or your points,

but you do get used to it over.

So I'm going to pick the bottom point up.

This is my last modification.

It's okay that this is outside
of the viewer, that it's off screen

because it's about getting the most
accurate shape or arc as possible.

All right.

So I'm pretty happy with that selection.

I can now go into my standard
primary controls,

my primaries and my curves
and make further adjustments.

This is also a really easy way
to get rid of the window interface.

That little white outline

is quite difficult to color grayed
when you're looking at the shapes.

So by clicking on a different palette
in the central palettes, I get

to get of that.

So in this case,

I am going to begin by brightening

the overall region using the Gamma Master.

We'll go to click and drag
the slider to the right.

All right.

And you can see how this is already
a little bit more appealing.

It draws the eye
because it's a little bit brighter.

I can also adjust the contrast
and pivot in the adjustment

controls to further enhance the detail.

So make the difference
between the white backplate

and the numbers a little bit enhanced.

Great.

That's even better.

And then finally, I can still use
the Middleton detail to further enhance

detail.

The numbers and the little lines running

across the perimeter.

Great.

And I can disable the scales now
to see before

and after, and you can see
how much more vibrant it's become.

But because this note is followed
by the look and the contrast nodes,

they are still affecting the end result
in terms of the look, right?

So we haven't undone of that cross process
that we created any of that contrast.

So it still fits very well
into the overall appearance of this clip.

If you feel that the edge of your circle
is starting to look a little bit

harsh, a little bit sharp,
you can always return to your window

palette and use the softness controls

to maybe make it a little bit
less dramatic.

So that's still going to be hard
to do with the window outline,

which means that I can go into my viewer
pop up in the bottom left corner.

These are my on screen controls.

These determine what kind of tools
or outlines I see in the viewer.

I'm going to select that and set to off.

And that way
I'm still working in the window palette,

but I no longer have to see that
circular outline.

Second click and drag my softness control.

And you can see that
makes it really easy to conceal the fact

that I have placed the window there,

but I don't want to take it too far.

They still want there
to be a bit of an edge.

So the last thing I need to consider
with a shot

like this is exactly how going to play.

I will re-enable the looping function
at the bottom of the viewer

and I'm going to play through

it doesn't

look too bad, but as these scales swing,

they kind of move
out of the influence of my window fight,

activate my outline.

You can see that as the scales swing
forward, they're no longer being graded.

And that's not great.

So I would like to have the window
follow the movement of the scales.

That is

relatively easy to achieve in the tracker
palette.

You'll find this right
next to the power window.

So the two of these are actually quite
intricately linked.

The tracker will always react
to any windows

that you apply to the viewer, and in fact,
you can't really run a track

in window mode unless you already have
a power window enabled.

So with the tracker palette open.

I have analysis controls accessible to me.

In the top left corner.

I will click, Analyze Forward

and keep an eye on the window
in the viewer because this is quite

a short take.

It happened very quickly
and the track was complete.

I can now drag the play head in the graph,
the tracker,

or even underneath the viewer
and move back and forth to check

the accuracy of the track.

And I think that looks really good.

The window is now moving with the scales,
and my secondary changes

have now applied
successfully to the whole clip.

Something else
that involves using power windows

that is also a secondary
grading change is adding a vignette.

So this is another way
of drawing the attention of the viewer

and redirecting it to a single point.

It's used most commonly to pretty much
draw us to the center of an image.

And traditionally vignettes
were just shadows

cast by the matte box
around the camera lens.

But now when we work digitally and,

the shadows of matter
are not as much of an issue.

We produce them artificially because there
is a certain esthetic quality to them,

and we do like the way
that they can help us frame an image.

So I will apply that
to the very end of my pipeline.

I'm going to choose my contrast node,
right click, add node, add serial.

Don't worry if your nodes start
to get thrown around the node editor.

By the way, the position of the nodes
themselves does not matter so much.

The most important thing
is the connection line.

So as long as the connection
is running in the right order

and the right sequence, then you're good.

So I can even start in a second
layer of nodes underneath here.

I can also choose to make the nodes
smaller by going in the top right corner,

and you'll find that there's a little
scroll bar that allows me to zoom in out

and I will right click,

add a label

for my vignette

and return to the window palette.

Once again, I'm going to activate
the Circle Window preset,

but this time I'm going to stretch it out
to pretty much fill the frame

because that's what a vignette is, right?

It should just be the darkening
of the very edges or the very corners.

One of the most important thing

about vignettes
is that they have to be extremely subtle.

As soon as you can see them,
as soon as you're aware of their presence,

then they immediately
become quite distracting.

So it's very important
that they're nice and gentle in the eye.

So I'm going to use the red point
over here

to soften the very edge of my circle.

I can even see what my selection
looks like by going into

top left corner
and clicking on the magic wand.

Right?

And that actually gives me my selection.

And as you can see,
the red point determines

the very softness of the edge
and then allows me to blend it out nicely.

I can always, of course, drag
it beyond the visibility of the viewer

itself, either by navigating, by middle

clicking and dragging,
but also by using the scroll wheel

so I can scroll out of the image
and keep dragging that softness.

And the final important thing
to do for vignettes

is to invert my selection,

because right now,
if I tried to darken my edges, you know,

if I went into, say, my gamma master wheel
and I tried to drag it to the left,

I will find that it's
the center of the image

that becomes darker
and that's not what I want.

So going to reset and then invert
my window in the window palette.

So there's my invert button.

Now, if I check the highlight mode,
you will see that

what we're selecting
is only the corners of the frame

and I can return to my damage control.

So dragging it to the left
and you will see that that is the edges

now that are darkening once again,
I will want to leave my window palettes

so that I'm not distracted
by the circular outline.

And I can also

zoom back into the viewer.

A shortcut for that is to use Shift
Z on your keyboard,

not only will it zoom into your frame,

but it will also set it to fill the frame,

which means that it will react dynamically
to any resizing that you do.

So it's a pretty good state to be in.

All right.

So with that selection made,
I can now start to darken

the edges of my frame,

make them a bit more dramatic.

If I'm not happy with
the shadows are falling,

I can return to my window controls
and make further changes to the shape.

I use vignettes relatively frequently.

It's a pretty standard shape
and placement, so something I could do

is save the placement and the blending

or in the softness of the circle
as a preset.

I'm going to go into the options
menu of the window palette,

and at the very top you can see
Save as new presets is an option.

I will select that
and give it a preset name

vignette.

Press. Okay.

And from now on,
if I want to go into another clip,

I will continue to see Vignette as a shape

option in the options
menu of the window palette.

All right.

And finally, we are going to go to clip
number eight and discover

the other half of secondary grading,
which is using the qualifier

to make selections based on a key of either color values, luminance or saturation.

In this case,

we have a clip that we can play through
a couple of times

of an airplane traveling over some water

or just running on loop.

And our intention here will be to,

for example, turn the water blue.

This is very difficult to do
using windows, obviously,

because it will require you to,
you know, outline the airplane

to get that exact shape
and then also track it.

But it's much,
much easier to do based on color values

because the green water is so distinct
and there is nothing else

green in the footage.

So it will be pretty easy to extract.

We already have a balance mode
present on this clip.

Feel free to explore this.

If you're following along,

you can deactivate this note
to see what it looked like before.

And this image was also
a little bit flatter.

There was not as much distinction
in the details

in the water and also like amongst
the highlights in the shadows.

Whereas with the balance in place,
you can actually see where the clouds

were in the sky

and where
you have like the shadow of the airplane.

So these details are a little bit
more pronounced.

They're going to make the final image
look quite good.

But in our case,
we want to generate a brand new mode

with which to perform
essentially a green key.

So I'm going to right click
the bounce node,

add note at Serial,

and I will call this a blue water

and then I will navigate to the qualifier
palette right next to the power windows.

There we go.

And here you can see that we have three

standards
upon which we are making selections.

So that's hue saturation and luminance.

You can start interacting
with these parameters away

or you can click in the viewer

to take a sample of the color
that you want to select.

So the quickest way to do
this is simply to click once the viewer,

and you will immediately see

a series of selections in these bars
in the qualifier palette,

you can also click on the one.

So the highlight mode in the viewer
to see what your selection looks like.

So yes, it has grabbed
that distinct shade of green,

but it hasn't really grabbed
all of the water.

So I'm going to try this again.

But instead of clicking
one time, I'm going to click and drag

and that will allow me
grab a much wider sample of color.

I'm going to press the global reset
for the qualifier in the top right corner.

So that resets all of the parameters
down here and then go back into the viewer

and I'm going to click
and drag across the water.

Make sure to get a full range of the
the luminance values, you know,

so we have the lighter green at the top,
we have the richer green at the bottom,

and even a slightly warmer
green in the bottom right corner.

And as I clicked and dragged

my selections
in, the qualifier parameters grew.

All right.

They expanded to include
a wider range of prominence hues,

saturation and luminance.

When I click on the highlight
mode in the viewer,

I will see that that selection
now looks much more solid.

So you should see mostly green water,
maybe still a few areas

that have not been picked up,
but that's fine.

We can now refine this.

So if we go back to the qualifier
controls,

you can continue to interact
with all of these,

I can click and drag the edges
of my qualifier selection

and as I do so, you will notice that
the selection, the viewer is affected.

So I'm getting few
and few of those gray spots.

And gray, when you're in highlight mode
means that an area has not been selected.

So it's good that the airplane is gray
and the birds,

but everything else,
all the water should be green.

And that's not looking too bad.

If I still found that there were areas
that were not being selected

despite the color range
seemingly being represented,

I could then to make changes
to saturation and luminance,

but once I'm done with these three,
I can also now

go into the top right corner of the viewer
where I have some highlight

specific controls
so I can change the way that my selection

is being represented from highlight mode,
which gives me that kind of color

and grayscale representation
which we've been using so far.

Or I could switch it to highlight
black white,

which will give me
a matte representation of my selection.

So here I can see that
whatever is represented

as white or opaque,
white is fully selected.

Anything that's black is not selected.

So we want to make sure that
we don't have any spots, any dots visible,

and also that, you know, there's
no selections on the airplane itself

to clean up your selection.

When you were in this mode,
black and white, you want to use the matte

finish controls on the right hand
side of the qualifier palette.

So the noise is a very popular choice
because that will get rid

of a lot of the smaller issues
that you might have with the edges

of your selections,
the object that you have.

So, for example, that's sort of cleaned up
a lot of the issues I had inside

the airplane

and then clean, black and clean white.

You can almost think as master wheels.

So if something was already pretty dark,
but there was a few white flecks in it,

then Clean black is just going to get rid
of those last remaining bit of noise.

And then I can also use clean white

to get rid of some of the noise
around the birds.

And then if you feel like
you want to add a bit of softness to your,

you can also use something
like Blur radius.

I tend to leave there until after
I start calibrating to make sure that

I can justify the level of softness
as opposed to just guessing.

But in that case, I'm
really, really happy with this selection.

So I think we've got
a really clean extraction of the water.

I'm going to turn off highlight mode

and I

can now start to perform the color great.

There's a lot of different ways
that I can achieve this.

In fact, that's something you'll find
about the color page

and also a lot of like other,
I suppose, creative processes

is that there's never just one way
to accomplish something.

There's a lot of different tools
that will do something similar.

And the only real difference
is in the speed with which you can get

the result that you need
and also the the clarity or the quality.

So in our case,
we are going to go with speed.

We're going to apply a really quick
change to the colors

by isolating the blue channel
in the curves palette

and dragging the black point up

in order to make blue

the dominant color in this selection.

So I can drag it up pretty high

and I can play through this clip

to see that those elements

that were not included in our selection
are not being affected by the grade.

So if I go back to my black point
and I race up and down,

you can see the airplane
and the birds are untouched.

But even with the water turned blue,

I can continue to refine it
using some other tools.

So for example, I might decide

this is very saturate
so I might want to tone it down

by going into the adjustment
controls at the bottom of the primaries

and making this a more natural blue

as opposed to like that really intense,
like almost plastic looking blue.

Something else I can do is use my hue
a parameter

to rotate the hue of the water.

So we've already done
most of the work by turning it blue.

But now I can refine what shade of blue
I want it to be.

So if I drag it to the left, I start to go

closer to magenta and pink and red,
which we don't really want.

Or if I drag it to the right,
I might turn it into a more inviting,

like a warmer blue.

And then if I keep dragging it
to the right, then eventually

alternate green.

So I want to kind of keep
it close to the original range,

but maybe a little
bit further to the right.

All right.

And that takes care of the water.

We've turned it blue,

but you might be looking at this image
and thinking like, well,

what about all these birds?

At the end, it feels like they're still
quite desaturated and colorless.

I think in the footage,
if we press shift the

and we turn off the entire pipeline,
you can see that they had a hint of pink.

So these were clearly flamingos and we've
now lost a little bit of that color.

So be really nice to bring it back.

The great thing about working with modes
is that you never have to repeat

a workflow and you never have to like
really copy and paste so much.

When you're working within one image,
you can just reuse a signal as many times

as you need to.

In this case, I would like to continue
working on this selection

that we've made with the water, but
just redirect my attention to the birds.

So I'm going to right click

on my latest node

and I will add a new node.

But this time I will choose to add
an outside node and what that is going to

do is once again make a standard corrector
like we've been using this whole time.

But it will invert any kind of key data
that you're current Node has.

So I'm going to click Add outside.

And for the first time
we're seeing a brand new connection.

It's this blue one
and it is actively invert

what we've just created in the blue
water node.

But now when I click on Highlight,

I will see that the white is focusing
on the airplane

and the birds,
and if I switch back to highlight mode,

you could see that those are the elements
that we will be affecting when we color.

Great.

So with this, we can color

grayed the birds
when I right click node label

flamingos and

if we were to start making changes

in any of our primary tools right now,
we would also be affecting the airplane.

And that's not something I want to do.

So I will need to first,
isolated from our selection,

we can go into the window palette for this

and simply create a subtractive window
that will extract what we don't need.

So this is a really fun thing
about secondary tools,

is that you can mix and match them.

You can combine them.

Oftentimes
the qualifier will do a lot of the heavy

lifting for you by making a selection
based on color, but you might still need

to use the Windows
palette to isolate things.

You know, that you want to keep
or maybe subtract things that you don't.

So I will click on this circle preset,

pick it up and drag it right

over the airplane and the viewer,

and then

resize the circle to make sure it's

not overlapping any of our birds.

I'm also going to make sure
that you'll see that

the airplane never leaves
the confines of that circle.

So as I drag my plane head to the left,
I see that it very slowly exits

the frame and disappears like
so I will switch back into highlight mode

and I will find that the only thing
I can see right now is the airplane.

And that makes sense because by default
all windows are additive.

So it is keeping
you know what I've selected?

I want to do the opposite.

I want to invert that shape.

So now I'm keeping everything
that's outside of it.

I've made it into a subtractive window

and this all

looks
good so I can turn off my highlight mode,

go back to my primary tools
and turn those birds pink.

This time we can use the wheels.

So because they're all very bright,
I will use the gain wheel for that.

Remember, that goes after
the highlights of the image and I can drag

my control point towards pink or magenta

to give them a little bit of color.

Now they might look really quite
saturated, quite extreme,

but something you have to keep in

mind is how shortly they are
present in the sequence.

Really.

So it's only just a few frames, maybe 12
or so frames at the end of the clip

that they come into view.

In that case, it's
okay to leave the colors a little extreme.

It's okay to leave the selection as is

because we will have just enough time
as an audience to process

that they're there before the clip cuts
to something else in the timeline.

So I've pressed shift Z to reposition

my viewer
and I'm going to play through this video.

I've got nice blue water
under the very yellow airplane

and then all these pink
flamingos coming in at the very end.

And that wasn't
too difficult to accomplish.

Thank

you so much for joining me
for this overview of the color page.

In the next video, we're going to be
looking at some more advanced

concepts,
like an introduction to color management,

looking at the note editor, achieving
nondestructive grading workflows,

and also the HDR palette,
and a few other new tools.

If you have any questions
or if you need any advice

on using the color page,

I highly recommend that you check out
the Blackmagic Design Forum

and to gain access
to all our other training materials,

Check out the training page on Blackmagic
design dot com where you can learn

all the other pages as well as gain
certification for all of them.