Just started editing your own videos? But find it hard to have a simple colour grading workflow. Here is a quick and easy beginner’s guide. Once you master these techniques, you’ll have the foundation to colour grade anything using Premiere pro!
My name is Haris, I’m a photographer with a digital agency in London. I have been using Premiere Pro for many years now, I edit Weddings, corporate campaigns, and basically anything I film... I grade it.
Colour grading can be daunting, I found it a mess when I started, especially as a photographer, it is not the same as a photo workflow. So, these steps are things I would tell my past self who is entering the world of grading in premiere pro.
(I say Premiere pro because… there are more dedicated programs just for colour grading solely and it is another world. Let’s stay within the premiere for now.
Before we start! Make sure you’ve edited your project already! Always leave colour grading till the end. This is because Premiere Pro may crash if you have an old machine and start pulling some crazy moves… it might be a bloody pain. So go ahead and save a copy.
For today’s example, I will be using a few clips from my New Zealand travel video. I love that video, really proud of the grade, so let’s get started!
1) VECTOR SCOPES: BASIC ADJUSTMENTS
We start by doing basic adjustments (exposure corrections) to our clips individually. This is where you will correct the exposure, correct the white balance. I MUST ADD that you should have your footage close to what you want visually within the camera first best as you can. This is not like photography where you think you can just fix it in post. Imagine we are editing a string of Jpegs, not raws. If you have a camera that can shoot in raw, well then. BYE.Go to the colour tab and on the left, you will find the vectorscope view. This is a lifesaver. Scopes are your friend, say hello to Mr. Scope sir.
Scopes give you an objective view of what your exposure is. So you may edit your footage and think it looks nice and well balanced and exposed correctly but on somebody else’s screen it’s too dark, it’s too contrasty. Scopes help you to objectively correct your image with confidence.
For example on these clips I will want to have a full graph, I like to have my blacks just kissing 0 and the whites just at 90, that’s my personal preference and suits my style, you can play around with how you want to interoperate this graph but having it full and balanced is the key.
Also, make sure to correct your white balance and use the eyedrop tool to get adobe to an objective opinion. You can have your waves but I find it annoying and everything in the clip might be different. You want the individual clips to flow and match!
A side note, If you have shot in a standard picture profile or flat colour profile, this is still super important to correct your image.
2. COLOUR WHEEL: CREATING YOUR LOOK
Now you have your sequence correctly exposed. Well done. Step 1 is done, the difficult bit is done. I usually like to blast some music whilst doing my basic adjustments or listen to a podcast if you want to fly by quicker ;)
Now we want to add an adjustment layer, an adjustment layer is where you can apply an effect and whatever is underneath it will be affected. So we wanna grab this adjustment layer and drag it all the way across our sequence because we want our whole sequence to have the same consistent look.
Now open the colour wheel in lumetri: If you recently downloaded some luts and are super excited to try it out, you wanna do it here in the creative tab. Be careful they can be quite strong so dial it down. But I wanna show you how to make your own look.
We will be doing an orange and teal look.
Midtones: Orange
Shadows and highlights: Teal.
Be gentle because we have some other things to add, You always want the grade to be subtle.
Grab another adjustment layer and we will boost the Saturation, sometimes I like to add a touch of vibrance if I shoot in a super flat colour profile.
Now at this point, your project might look super punchy and the colours may be a bit too strong for your project. So let’s balance this grade, go to the Luma vs Saturation and drag them down on opposite ends, Look at how they change when you turn it on and off. Now you assess if you wanna be gentle or go full force. Sometimes I find that it really takes the colours completely out of the skin tones, so you always compare how it is affecting your skin tones. Overall, this helps to balance your grade and gives a more of a subdued film look.
Now let’s add some sharpening. Usually, I find that 20% is usually the max I would go to, maybe 25%. If you haven’t shot in a flat picture profile, maybe go 15%.
So, this is my footage when we started the tutorial.
NOW, boom! This is after a few simple tweaks, match better, exposed correctly and colours match nicely.
Congratulations, you now know the basics of colour grading any project in premiere pro. With these foundations, you can now take it further with your projects, super far. Colour grading is never-ending. I’m fairly decent when using Premiere Pro but overall, there are people whose whole job is purely to grade films and we have literally just scratched the surface.
So, I showed what I think are the most important basics if you are a seasoned colourist and just watching this for fun, is there something I missed out? What would you have done differently?