This introduction to basic color correction in Premiere Pro provides an overview of the color workspace and two tools for basic color correction, the vectorscope and waveform. White balance, curves and more complex mid-tones and color gradation can also be adjusted to make corrections to a clip.
Video Transcription
Hi, this is Margaret with Noble Desktop. This is an introduction to basic color correction in Premiere Pro.
Please do the same and if you don't have it up here in your menu bar, go to Window > Workspace > Color. As soon as you choose the Color Workspace, a couple of things happen, one of which is you're given this Lumetri Color Panel and you're given a Lumetri Scope Window.
You probably do not have these on your window yet, unless you put them there. To find them, go under the wrench and choose Vectorscope YUV and Waveform RGB. These are the two that I recommend particularly for people wanting a basic introduction to color correction.
The vector scope is the circular scope and is demonstrating the saturation levels of the color as well as where the color is situated on this chart. The waveform is the graph and is letting you know the color distribution of wherever you might be in this clip. It's actually reflecting the way the colors distributed and also the exposure (are you underexposed, beneath zero, overexposed, above a hundred).
When it comes to basic color correction, I also like to work with curves. The other items on here particularly color wheels and match an HSL secondary will be spending a lot of time with. When it comes to curves, we have two sections: the top section and the bottom section. The bottom section is called Hue/Saturation curves, which have to do with color grading in a wonderful way where you can change one color, but that's another lesson for this lesson in basic color correction.
Under curves, there are just RGB curves. This white dot has to do with your white point and your black point (or the brightest point on your clip and the darkest shadow on your clip). When it comes to the colors, these are dividing up your colors into video color fields of red, green, and blue (highlight and shadow).
To uniformly lower the highlights you would go down vertically, to uniformly boost the shadows you would go up vertically. Visiting the vectorscope, you can lower the saturation a bit. You can also go under basic correction and boost up the blacks a bit.
If you're looking at the graph, the first thing you can say is you are definitely underexposed and need to bring up the shadows. You can do this by going to your curves, looking at the blue line, and boosting it up vertically. I'm missing a lot of the more complex mid-tones and of the higher tones of brightness here and color gradation.
You can also do white balance by using the eyedropper. Whenever you have a tint over your footage, white balance will correct that. To give the clip an overall boost, you can go to the curves and boost the mid-tones.
I hope you've enjoyed this introduction to basic color correction in Premiere Pro. This has been Margaret with Noble Desktop.
