colour corrections their ideal sequence order to try things John R. Or anyone Please!

[Norman Black]

I would suggest in order

1) Get the overall exposure where you want it. You can use color corrector, color curves or levels.

2a) Get your contrast where you want it. I suggest color curves.
2b) Get your color balance where you want it. Color corrector, HSL or Lab adjust, white balance. Color curves can be powerful here but it is a little harder to get desired results, at least for me.

3) Get your saturation where you want it. Color corrector, HSL adjust.

This is an order but there is inevitably some iteration in this process.

[John Rofrano]

[jenny gold] “***Numerous video tutorials go about stating you should and need to start with this corrector or that and contradict each other very confusing!”

That’s because there is no right or wrong way. It’s all a matter of taste. As long as you like the look you achieve in the end, that’s all that really matters. Of course, there are some workflows that work better than others. More on that later…

[jenny gold] “***and the term ‘COLOUR GRADING’… is that same thing as colour correction or not really?”

Technically, Color Correcting is the process if getting the colors to look right. Make sure the whites are white and the colors are not too saturated and footage from multiple cameras match each other. Color Grading is the process of giving a movie an overall consistent look which may or may not look natural. Many futuristic sic-fi movies have a very blue cast which gives them a cold look, except the movie Dune which has a very Red look, or The Matrix which has a very Green look. When people are going for “the look” they usually call that color grading. Even if you want a natural look, you may grade the entire movie with a particular color curve to get the contrast you want. People sometimes use these two terms interchangeably so you might have to ask them what they mean but, in general, correcting is correcting inconsistencies and grading is going for “the look”.

[jenny gold] “1)With doing any Colour correction should one alter any contrast and brilliance FIRST to clips that may need etc using whatever plugins… and THEN go onto to do colour correction would that be the right order to do it or does it not matter?”

The sequence of plug-ins that I like to use for color correcting is:

Levels -> Color Corrector -> Color Curves

The logic behind this is to use the Levels to bring the luminance into the broadcast safe range because all cameras shoot outside the allowable range. Then I use Color Corrector to correct any color cast and get my whites back to white. Even if there is no correction, I always boost the saturation a bit because that’s what all the big networks do so if you want your colors to look as vibrant, you need to boost the saturation a little. Finally I use Color Curves to bring the contrast back into the shot by applying a gentle S-Curve to slightly crush the blacks and whites. This helps to make it look more “film-like”.

This is all based on personal taste. When grading you may put masks around people and lighten them up to pull them out of the background more or add a softness or film glow for a particular look or to pull your eye toward a subject. Grading is a very artistic process that gives a movie it’s signature look. It’s way beyond color correcting. I have a lot of respect for people in the industry who can color grade well. It’s an art.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jenny Gold]

Great useful clarity reply John in all this from you…very good of you indeed everything to date…this weekend you have replied and kindly helped and now I am a lot wiser time to now start to play!

Do you out of interest use additional other ones such as magic bullet looks or new blue/ If so which ones…I have them and again just need to play…

thanks again
Jenny

[John Rofrano]

[jenny gold] “Do you out of interest use additional other ones such as magic bullet looks or new blue/ If so which ones…I have them and again just need to play…”

We have an inexpensive set of “movie looks” plug-ins at VASST called VASST Cinema Looks that you can purchase for $9.95 USD a set. There are 13 sets and each contains 6 looks. The nice thing about these is that they are created entirely from Vegas plug-ins. That means that you can dissect them and learn how they were put together and modify the look any way you want. These are my goto “movie looks” because they are GPU accelerated by Vegas Pro and easy to tweak.

My second choice would be Magic Bullet Looks but Red Giant has had an “on again / off gain” relationship with Vegas Pro so you never know if they are going to support the next version or not.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jenny Gold]

Thanks John for what other plugin you use will look into the ones you use down the road…
Jenny