Colour grading is often quite daunting when starting your videography journey. Don’t worry, I’m going to simply break it down into easy to understand sections!

Colour Transforming

I’m going to refer to colour transforming here as the switching of colour space between the beginning and end of the colour grading process. Footage is always recorded using a certain colour space. This basically dictates exactly what the video looks like. 2 examples I’m going to use is Rec-709, and C-Log in this blog. Rec-709 is what you could call a ‘standard’ colour space. Nearly all of the footage you see utilises Rec-709 to produce a natural looking video. Rec-709 is often the input colour space that is used when you film on standard modes within cameras. Rec-709 is also commonly the end colour space of your footage, as it again is a natural looking colour space. C-Log is a flat contrast profile colour space. What Log footage often does is produce a flatter profile image, often claiming an increase in dynamic range (The range of highlights and shadows captured). Meaning it will store more information in the highlight and shadow sections of your footage. This provides colourists with a fantastic starting point. The flat contrast profile and increase dynamic range allow a more controlled approach to the colour grading process. These are again only two examples of many colour spaces, but two of the most relevant examples. The first big step to consider in colour grading, is what your input colour space is, and what you want your output colour space to be. To keep it simple for beginners, I’d always suggest aiming for an export in the Rec-709 colour space. This means that if you’re shooting in Rec-709 already, you don’t have to worry about this step. However, if you’re shooting in LOG, always aim for an eventual transformation from Log -> Rec-709. In Davinci this is done using a colour space transform node. In Premiere Pro this can be done using a conversion LUT. These LUT’s are often available on your cameras website.

Colour Correction

Colour correction is what I like to think of as the first proper step in the colour grading process. I’ll break this down in to 4 sections, Exposure, Contrast, Saturation, Colour Adjustment.

Exposure

Exposure is essentially the brightness within your video. When shooting and editing video, it is crucial to ensure that the video is not too bright, and not too dark. There are essentially two ways you can ensure that you’re successful in achieving a good exposure. The first method, is to just use your eyes. Work through your exposure adjustments, until you think the video looks good, nice and simple. The other method is to use a scope. A scope such as the parade within Davinci Resolve is essentially a tool, often include in colour grading programs that shows you how much of your video falls within the shadows, mid-tones and highlights. It is a fantastic tool to make sure your exposure is correct.

Parade Scope Davinci Resolve

Shows exactly where the RGB colours of your footage fall relative to your shadows, midtones and highlights.

Relative to the parade above, the bottom is the shadows, and the top is the highlights. As you can see, the information throughout the image falls mostly in the mid tones. There are some super bright areas of the image where information is lost, as well as some dark spots within the image where information is lost, however in most scenarios that is expected. Exposure wise, if you’re shooting in the day time this is a realistic parade that you could be aiming for.

Contrast

Once you’ve set the correct exposure, the next thing on the list to tackle is the contrast. There are multiple ways to adjust contrast throughout different editing programs. I’m going to tackle two techniques today. One being the Tone Curve, the next being a contrast slider. If you’re just learning and want to take it step by step, the easiest option is to just use a contrast slider. You’ll want to firstly aim for realistic footage, with a high dynamic range. To achieve a more cinematic look, often the aim is to have the darkest parts of your image as close to black as you can get, whilst still having some information, and the brightest parts of your image, as close to white as you can get, whilst still holding information. Whilst this is achievable with the contrast slider, a fantastic way to achieve this look is to use a tone curve.

In this tone curve, i’ve used a basic technique called an S-Curve. This lowers the middle range of the shadows, whilst not lowering the blacks. Also raising the middle section of the highlights, whilst not raising the whites. This is a fantastic way to have more precise control over your contrast over your image.

Saturation

Saturation is essentially the intensity of colours within your footage. Now whilst there are tools to help you adjust saturation within an image. I generally use a blanket saturation slider to adjust the video to my desired look. Keep in mind that this step is a broad saturation adjustment. You want the general saturation of your image looking good, more then the saturation of precise colours. You’ll find that if you’re shooting in log, you’ll need to add more saturation then if you were shooting in Rec-709.

Colour Adjustment

Within this section, I cover things such as temperature, and the individual saturation of colours. The temperature of an image essentially goes two ways, warmer (more yellowish) or colder (more blueish). If adding saturation to your image causes the temperature of your video to look either too warm or too cold, you can adjust it to correct your image. There are multiple different techniques to ensuring an accurate white balance, or temperature. The easiest way is to find something that is supposed to be white in your image, and adjust the temperature until it is accurate. For beginners, I suggest this be done using the temperature and tint sliders within your editing programs.
Now there will be occasions where you want to change the exact hues, saturation or luminance of your colours. The Hue is essentially the actual colour, and the luminance is the brightness. Curves are challenging, but the most accurate and controlled way of doing this. I would love to break down all of the different colour orientated curves available, but that is a topic that deserves it’s own blog.

Creating your Look

This is often the final step of your colour grading process. Once you have transformed or converted the colour space, and have applied the relative colour corrections, you’re able to start dialling in your artistic style. This is often done in the form of a LUT. There are a wide variety of LUT’s available for download, and depending on your editing program, you might have some available within the program. They’re a great way to quickly test and compare different looks, as you can often switch between them at no time cost. They’re usually a 1-2 click apply, a fantastic way to develop a more sophisticated look without doing any of the heavy lifting!

Thank you guys so much for reading this blog! If you have any questions I should have the comments open below, if not you’re always welcome to send me an email at Toriimedia@hotmail.com or DM me on Instagram at @Torii.Media . Thanks Guys!

How Do I Colour Grade?