In this tutorial, we are going to go through the steps of color correcting and color grading the footage.
Performing Color Correction in Filmora9
The raw footage captured by a camera can contain a variety of imperfections which can be easily corrected with Filmora9’s color tools. Keep in mind that color correction is one of the last steps of the video editing process and that it is advisable to complete all other video editing tasks before using the color tools.
The Editor panel can be accessed by double-clicking on any media asset you add to the timeline. The panel contains Video, Audio, Color and Motion tabs, and to start color correcting your footage, you just have to click on the Color tab.
White Balance
You’ll find White Balance, Tone, and 3D LUT submenus within the Color tab. The White Balance submenu lets adjust the Temperature and Tint of a video clip by either dragging a slider or inserting values into the boxes next to the sliders manually.
Click on the Auto option if you want to set the White Balance automatically or use the undo icons if you want to reset the Temperature and Tint values to zero.
Tone
You’ll find the Contrast, Saturation and Brightness options in the Tone submenu. By adjusting the Contrast value you can either increase or decrease the difference between the brightest and the darkest areas of the image, and make objects in the shot more distinguishable in the process.
Videos recorded on Smartphones may already have some added contrast, so increasing the Contrast value too much can make parts of your shot darker than they should be.
The Saturation slider enables you to control how vivid the colors in your videos are. Increasing the Saturation value will make the colors more vibrant while decreasing it will do the opposite. In case the footage is over or underexposed you can use the Brightness slider to make the video look more realistic.
The exact values you’re going to assign to the options in the White Balance and Tone submenus depends on the video clip you’re editing. Giving a video a more natural look should make it more appealing to the viewer.
3D LUT
During the color grading process, you will be giving a distinct look to your videos. The 3D LUTs or the Look-Up Tables drop-down menu lets you choose from presets that imitate the visual styles of different movies and TV shows. You just have to select the preset you like and it will be automatically applied to the footage.
The colors in a Batman movie or an episode of the House of Cards look differently. So you just have to select one of the preset 3DLUTs that best matches the style you’re trying to recreate. Look-Up Tables will change the light and color values in your video to make it look more similar to a TV Show or a movie you selected.
Flimora9 also allows you to import LUTs as cube files into the editor, so you can simply download a Look-Up Table from the Internet and use it to color grade your footage.
Once you’ve completed the color correction and color grading process, you can uncheck the White Balance, Tone, and 3D LUT checkboxes if you want to see how the video looked like before you made any changes.