Color Grading Questions

[media kat]

I am completely new to color grading.

1. When dragging a Lumetri preset on to a clip, should it be dragged to an adjustment layer? Does it make a difference since you can delete the preset if you do not like it?

2. Is there a way to temporarily hide the effect so you can see before and after?

3. When wanting to color grade footage, which tool should I look into; three-way color corrector vs. lumetri color vs. fast color corrector?

Thanks!

[Meg The Dog]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/media+kat  wrote

1. When dragging a Lumetri preset on to a clip, should it be dragged to an adjustment layer? Does it make a difference since you can delete the preset if you do not like it?

Either. An Adjustment layer is generally used if you want to apply the color correction to multiple clips at the same time, as opposed to applying the color correction individually to each.

2. Is there a way to temporarily hide the effect so you can see before and after?

You can either use the Global Effects Mute Button:

or you can turn the effect on or off in the Effect Controls Panel by clicking on the FX button:

3. When wanting to color grade footage, which tool should I look into; three-way color corrector vs. lumetri color vs. fast color corrector?

I would vote for Lumetri, especially if you are just starting out in color correction.

My two cents.

MtD

[media kat]

1. For clarification, it doesn't matter if you drag a preset to an individual clip or an adjustment layer, though if you plan to apply a color adjustment to multiple clips, this is where the adjustment layer is used so it spans multiple clips?

2. Can Lumetri presets and general adjustments in the Lumetri panel be applied over some duration of a clip so it gradually takes effect? Like being Keyframed?

Thanks.

[Meg The Dog]

1) Yes. There are some other consequences of using an adjustment layer as well - if what is below the adjustment layer is a composite of multiple images, the color correction will be applied to all the images below it, as opposed to just a single clip as it would be if you  applied it directly to the clip.

2) The easiest way to do that is to use the blade tool to cut the clip into sections, color correct the individual sections as necessary, then apply a dissolve transition between the color corrected sections to gently transition between the color correction settings.

MtD

[chrisw44157881]

here's my thoughts:

1. lumetri has superior curves control. it has better fine curves adjustment

at a more logarithmic level.

2. fast color corrector has a hue control that lumetri doesn't, so you'd have to use

both.

3. lumetri's color engine and premiere's master color engine only support sRGB

so don't try any P3 luts. also don't use 32 cube luts. only 64 to not have banding.

4.you can nest sequences to have adjustment layers affect color per sequence.

[R Neil Haugen]

Past the great help of MtD and Chris ... in Lumetri, learn to use the scopes, for many things they are far more reliable than the Mark I Eyeball/brain combo, which does it's 'relative' thing beyond belief. I always have the Vectorsope YUV and either RGB Parade or Waveform (Luma) mode "up" while correcting.

If you use multiple Lumetri "instances" on a layer (clip or adjustment layer) then the main Lumetri control panel only works the last instance on that layer, you need to use the ECP controls panel to adjust earlier instances on that layer. This is one of the reasons some people stack multiple layers of A-L's with a single Lumetri on each ... more use of say the HSL keying for different parts of the image, yet every one gets full use of the Lumetri panel and that's especially important if you use external controls like the Tangent Ripple or Elements or the little Palette things.

Neil

[Kevin-Monahan]

One more thing.

There is more computer power (I call it "overhead") needed if you add an additional video track, an additional clip (Adjustment Layer), and a GPU accelerated effect (Lumetri) to that clip. Adding a Lumetri color effect to a clip without the extra track and Adjustment Layer takes less computer power.

Many people don't think about making smart choices in keeping NLE "Timeline overhead" to a minimum. If I have a 4K clip in a HD sequence and am adding a Lumetri color effect in the Timeline, I could save overhead by scaling the clip to HD, & adding a LUT on ingest rather than wait until I add an Adjustment Layer with a Lumetri color effect after a raw clip hits the Timeline. Of course, this takes planning and foresight. Think you might agree.

Cheers,
Kevin

[media kat]

Last question before I dive into learning color grading in Premiere. What are the limitations with color grading in Premiere vs. using After Effects or DaVinci? Are there certain types of projects that work well in Premiere and others in After Effects, etc.?

Thanks everyone.

[Meg The Dog]

My two cents:

Premiere is primarily an editor that has a good set of color correction tools added,

After Effects is primarily a compositing & motion graphics application that has color correction tools to aid in compositing.

DaVinci is primarily a color correction application that now has editing added to it.

Since the current DaVinci application descends from its long history in Color Correction, it's hard to beat the feature set and functionality of DaVinci for color correction.

Having said that, most of my work I can color correct (to my satisfaction) in Premiere.

MtD

[R Neil Haugen]

A full grading app like Resolve (and the now-dead Sg, rest in peace ... ) will have things not available. Like real two/three-up viewing so you see the clip you've graded and the clip you're matching side-by-side, which you can futz up a custom workspace to sorta do in PrPro (and I have one in the workspace bar!) or a nifty feature in Resolve, a 'wipe' effect you can do, with a clip 'loaded' into the program monitor, wipe across it to see the grading you've applied to any part or all of a clip.

Real shot-matching capability with a toggle switch that gets you maybe 80% or closer to 'there' just 'bang'.

A variety of means of controlling the correction ... real offset/gamma/gain or lift/gamma gain or all four options (you can look them up online). Hue/sat but with options ... hue/hue as one of them, where you can simply select a hue and move it towards somewhere else on the color circle, which is really handy.

Many other things ... but the real unhandy part is you need to get your project out of PrPro and into Resolve, which depending on how you set up your project in both apps, can be not too much time to a royal pain the the tush. As in, hours of work. Just going from PrPro into Resolve.

Some of the features of a full grading app you can get with plugins for PrPro, such as Colorista from Red Giant. That gives a whole slug of nifty controls at your fingertips. For a fee, of course, to purchase the plugin.

So ... in a grading app, you can do a lot more, and that a lot faster, than in PrPro. You may very well not need all of that, as Lumetri is capable of quite a bit. And the time going from PrPro to Resolve each time can be a cost as well, plus learning another complex program.

For me, simpler things I just do in PrPro. As I 'kept' SpeedGrade (Adobe's former grading app) on my system, I can use a $10 app from a guy in Austria to auto-mod a 2018 PrPro project file so to Sg, it seems to be 2015.2, and Sg will then work the file in the old "Direct Link" process. Save, run it back through that little app to "upvert" back to 2018, and go back to work in PrPro. This takes only a minute or so each way, and I can do a lot more in Sg and that faster than PrPro.

And ... I do some work in Resolve, in general to learn the program, to test out the whole process, and grow my skills. Perhaps partly a self-defense thing?

Neil

[chrisw44157881]

i always thought everyone graded each clip to be normalized, and then the adjustment layer was for a final look. it would be left off while editing for performance. a second lumetri would be needed if enabling the HDR option as it disables luts.

why would you use an adjustment layer per clip? that doesn't make any sense.

-------------

grading thoughts:

premiere can't grade color models higher than sRGB. so alexa/RED cameras don't work natively unless crushed to sRGB. neither do

deep color luts. there's also no color management in premiere. it doesn't support icc files, only luts

for monitor grading. output via mercury transmit is limited to sRGB as well.

in terms of grading, you can even get a final look in photoshop as a smart object as RAW camera mode which has many features. After effects would be cumbersome to grade separate clips. it would be better used to get a final look. it has the ability to do procedural plugins and effects you can suedo code to get unique looks.

davinci supports ACES color management. that's the main reason.

[R Neil Haugen]

i always thought everyone graded each clip to be normalized, and then the adjustment layer was for a final look.

That's what most colorists teach, but that said ... from talking with them, there are certain continuing projects they do, certain clients, where they know ahead of time what the 'look' will need to be, and have that set aside in their batch of Looks. Apply that over the whole 'new' project, and simply touch the clips through to mate them into the look.

Kind of a backwards way to work, but ... if they know the media is going to be darn tight to 'neutral' from the camera folks, there's not always a lot to do for neutralization. Saves time.

Not something I can often do, however, not doing repeat projects.

Neil