What is the Color Correction? (Steps-by-Step Guide)

What is the Color Correction? How is it Different from Color Grading? - Know in Detail

‍

‍

Post-production editing is crucial as the final product deliverance is dependent upon it. The editor does not have to fix everything; he has to adjust some essential things to make the final product attractive and exciting.

‍
‍
The most crucial thing while editing a movie or show is color adjustments. To perfect the look and feel of a TV show or movie, editors and colorists engaged by the production make color adjustments. This could entail enhancing the blue or orange or desaturating or saturating the screen's pictures. This guide will discuss the basics of Color corrections and Color grading.

‍

What is Color Correction?

‍

‍

Technical color correction takes place in the post-production stage of a movie. To make film footage appear natural and unprocessed—the way the human eye sees it in natural life-film colorists apply editing software to change the material's color, contrast, and exposure. The colorist ensures that the finished product looks exactly how the director and cinematographer intended it to.

‍
‍
The colorist also corrects technical color problems. For instance, if an actor performs at their peak in a scene with poor lighting, the colorist can save the scene by adjusting the lighting to match the rest of the movie's footage.

‍
‍
The footage is additionally optimized through color correction to ensure that any additional visual effects (VFX) mix in as naturally as feasible. The adjusting of white and black levels, exposure, contrast, and white balance is known as color correction. This restores the filmed image to its natural, proper hues, as intended by the filmmakers.

‍

Need for Color Correction in the World of Filming

‍

‍

A remarkable video is created using various critical components, including storytelling, cinematography, production design, and editing. However, color correction is crucial to delivering the best final video. The concept of color correction was first proposed long before customers were drowning in a deluge of digital video information. Let us light upon the need for color correction in Filming.

‍

The new standard for online video content

Color correction is not only done for large film studios but also significantly impacts online video content. In this technology era, people spend most of their time on Social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.

‍
‍
People expect and want to watch high-quality visuals. Many influencers, Vloggers, brands, and companies attract audiences to their pages by uploading interesting and exciting video content. Here, the color and quality of the videos can change the game. Hence, Color Correcting has a unique place in online video content. It offers your video content a more dynamic and professional look.

‍

Convert Raw footage into a spectacular one

The best technique to obtain the highest quality image is through color grading and fixing it, regardless of how sophisticated your camera is or how talented your cinematographer is. The RAW camera format, which captures the most uniform color spectrum, is an option on many digital cameras. While filming, the color may appear dull, but RAW footage allows you to edit the image further.

‍
‍
Turning off in-camera artificial enhancements and choosing to record flat video guarantees that you'll have the most significant ability to edit the image later, taking into account all of the factors that change throughout the day when filming, such as weather and lighting. This makes it possible for editors to sync camera angles to produce attention-grabbing content.

‍

Uplevel your Storytelling

Color correction is another tool to tell your brand's story. Colors subconsciously generate moods, so emphasizing bright colors in the footage can create an upbeat and happy mood while making dark, muted tones focus will set a more gloomy and dour tone. We all strive to create engaging and concise content.

‍
‍
You don't need a more stylized appearance because even a minor color grading will help make your point. The color of your digital video content is a part of your brand identity as the color of your logo, so if you're a brand that regularly releases video material, you may establish distinct color styles throughout your content.

‍

Increased Production Value

Colour correcting is an inexpensive approach to raise the production value of all your content. We all must figure out ways to raise the production value without raising the budget while creating digital content.  

‍
‍
Effective color correction and grading can distinguish professional content creators from beginners. Even if they are unaware, your audience identifies color-corrected film with achievement. As media viewers, we are so used to watching highly stylized cinematography in movies, and TV shows that anything else appears unprofessional. Your cell phone videos look different from Star Wars, mainly because of this.

‍

Steps for Color Correction

‍

‍

It takes a good eye and a lot of patience to color a video. Check out the steps below for a simple guide on how to fix video color:

‍

Step 1 - Select the right Picture profile

All cameras feature built-in picture profiles that let you edit the video you're recording. A picture profile is a set of specifications that establishes the fundamental qualities of your footage (such as color, saturation, and tone), giving your movie a unified appearance. Some filmmakers favour using a flat picture profile when filming because it results in low-contrast, neutral footage that colorists can improve in post-production.

‍

Step 2 - Adjust your white balance

Another step in primary color correcting is defining the white color. White balance, which measures the temperature of your white light, aids in accurately presenting colors on your video camera. To create a baseline, it's crucial to define the degree of your white because color temperature and tint can impact how all of your other colors appear.

‍

Step 3 - Fix your tones

It's essential to balance the tones when taking high-quality pictures. The exposure—the quantity of available light the remainder of your image needs to look right-can be improved by balancing the dark tones in your cameras, such as black levels and shadows, mid tones (the mid-range between black and white), and highlights (the brightest light).

‍

Step 4 - Use your scopes

Scopes are practical instruments for color monitoring because they offer more precise color information. Using your reds, greens, and blues as an example, the vectorscopes in color correcting software measure chrominance values like hue and saturation (RGB). Since this color tool detects hue levels more precisely than the human eye, it is beneficial for colorists when attempting to color-balance natural skin tones.

‍

Step 5 - Use Color match

In post-production, you can apply presets to your photographs using lookup tables or LUTs. Similar to a picture profile, a LUT enables editors to add a standardized color scheme to footage after capturing it. By automatically altering colors to match those in your reference image, match color tools can help you reduce editing time.

‍

Step 6 - secondary color correction

The initial color adjustment will affect your entire image, but you should perform a second edit concentrating on particular regions. A secondary correction enables you to spot any abnormalities or color casts that aren't natural and adjust minute details that might significantly impact your image as a whole.

‍

Step 7 - Final editing

You can fine-tune your video image using additive colours and make any necessary last-minute color tweaks after you've finished your video color correction. According to color theory, you could give your footage a bluer hue if you're looking for a particular tone in your movies, such as coldness or isolation. You could wish to color grade a movie with more purple tones if it has fantasy or enigmatic themes.

‍

Basic Corrections

‍

White Balance

White balance is the same in both coloring apps and your camera. It describes your image's color temperature. Images with colors close to their intended values should result from appropriately setting your camera's white balance for the scene. Even if you accomplish this in camera, there will probably be some adjustments you need to make in the post to get you home.

‍

Scopes

Scopes are a straightforward yet effective tool that lets you correctly color correct your footage, as you can see. Scopes are monitoring tool that plots information about color and light so that you can observe how they are precisely balanced and how they compare to one another.

‍

Curves

You should use curves in conjunction with your scopes to fix and grade colors precisely. With curves, you may modify shadows, midtones, and highlights much more precisely by adding points to drag colors to new values.

‍

Color Match

Selecting a reference image to evaluate and apply to your target image is possible with a color match. Since this computation is automatic, it's crucial to check your scopes and apply your best judgment regarding the accuracy of the color match.

‍

Color Qualifiers

Color qualifiers allow you to alter a specific color or group of colors without affecting the remainder of the image. Color qualifiers can also be used to indicate colors that you want to lock in place so that they won't change when other colors and picture elements are changed.

‍

How Color Correction is Different from Color Grading?

‍

‍

Two distinct methods for editing color in a video are color grading and color correction. Both procedures are necessary for creating videos. Although each term still has a specific function to fulfill, they are linked, and you will need both to give your video a classy look.

‍
‍
Color correction refers to the alterations you apply to your footage's color. White balance, exposure, tint, whites, blacks, saturation, highlights, and shadows are a few of the alterations that can be made. You must modify these properties to give your video material a more pleasing appearance.

‍
‍
Color grading is the application of a filtered layer on top of your finished video. Your video will appear more polished and visually appealing as a result. It is a procedure that gives the footage more feeling or mood. Bring in your footage for color grading after color correcting it.

‍
‍
The situation then becomes more complicated. Adjusting atmosphere and tone is done technically through color grading. A project's ability to convey professionalism depends on effective color correction. Color grading is only the cherry on top. Integrating both techniques into your editing process can create beautiful and cinematic videos from front to back.

‍

How do Color Grading and Correction Work Together?

‍

‍

Both are employed to produce a film or television program's final aesthetic. It's not only about that; it's also about creating a standard that everyone can see on a TV, computer monitor, or large-screen projection.

‍

Conclusion

A remarkable video is created using various critical components, including storytelling, cinematography, production design, and editing. However, color correction is crucial in delivering the best final video. We have tried to cover every important detail of Color Correction.