Color Correction and Color Grading

Color correction and color grading are two essential processes in video and film production that involve manipulating and enhancing colors and the overall look of footage. While they are related, they serve different purposes.

Color correction involves tasks such as adjusting brightness and contrast, fixing color casts, matching shots in a sequence for continuity, and ensuring skin tones look natural. Color correction helps establish a solid foundation for the color grading process by addressing technical inconsistencies and creating a consistent look across footage.

Color grading allows for artistic interpretation and storytelling through color. It involves adjusting color tones, saturation levels, highlights, shadows, and other visual elements to create a unique and stylized appearance. Color grading can be used to create a cinematic look, enhance a specific atmosphere (e.g., warm and inviting, or cold and desaturated), or differentiate between...

Technical requirements

The lesson files for this chapter can be found in the Chapter 7 folder at https://packt.link/gbz/9781804617281.

Before starting the chapter, it is beneficial to preview the final output and end project file provided with the Chapter 7 | lesson 7 exercise files. By doing so, you can gain a clear understanding of the desired outcome and have a visual representation of what you will be working toward throughout the chapter.

Previewing the final output allows you to see the completed project, demonstrating how the various elements, effects, and animations come together. You can observe the overall look and feel, the arrangement of different components, and how they interact with each other. This preview serves as a reference point, giving you a target to aim for as you progress through the chapter.

Opening up the project

For this chapter, open the given project in the exercise files as follows:

1. Open After Effects.
2. To open the project, click on Open Project in the After Effects startup window. Alternatively, you can go to File | Open Project... in the menu bar.
3. In the file browser, locate the Lesson7_start.aep project file in the lesson_07 folder of the exercise file.
4. Choose Window | Workspaces | Color.

Figure 7.1: An overview of lesson 7 Start Project with Color workspace

The project has multiple compositions, which we will use to learn color correction and grading. Keep the project open for the rest of the topics.

Removing a color cast

A color cast is an unwanted and predominant shift in color that affects the overall appearance of an image or video. It occurs when a particular color or hue dominates the scene, due to incorrect color balance of the camera settings or environment lighting, resulting in an inaccurate representation of the original colors. A color cast can be corrected using white balancing.

White balancing is a technique used to counteract color casts and ensure accurate color reproduction. By correcting color casts through White Balance adjustments, the overall color fidelity of the image or video is improved, resulting in a more natural and visually pleasing representation.

The Lumetri Color effect in Adobe After Effects includes the ability to adjust the White Balance. By using the White Balance controls within the Lumetri Color panel, you can correct color temperature and achieve an accurate representation of whites and neutral tones in your footage.

Follow these...

Changing the tone of the footage

In this section, we will look at how we can change the tone of the footage from warm to cool. A warm-to-cool look in terms of visual aesthetics usually refers to a color palette or overall atmosphere that transitions from warm tones to cool tones. Warm colors include shades such as red, orange, and yellow, while cool colors include hues such as blue, green, and purple.

To change the tone and look of city view footage given in the same project, follow the steps described in the upcoming subsections.

Basic corrections

Basic corrections in the Lumetri Color panel refers to a set of adjustments that help to correct and we will use it to improve the overall appearance of the footage:

1. Locate Warm to Cool look in the Project panel, and double-click on it to open it in the Timeline panel if not already open.
2. Select the City View layer in the Warm to Cool look composition, which already has the Lumetri Color effect.
3. Under Basic Correction...

Secondary color adjustments

Hue, saturation, and luminance (HSL) secondary color adjustments in Lumetri Color refer to the ability to isolate and modify specific colors within your video footage, allowing you to make targeted changes to particular areas or objects. This technique is often used for tasks such as color grading, enhancing or adjusting specific elements, or creating visual effects.

Using the HSL secondary adjustment, we will change red flowers to an orange color in the flower garden footage. Follow these steps to do so:

1. Locate Secondary color in the Project panel, and double-click on it to open it in the Timeline panel if not already open.
2. Select the Flower garden layer in the Secondary color composition, which should already have the Lumetri Color effect applied.
3. Open the HSL Secondary dropdown in the Lumetri Color effect.
4. Enable the HSL Secondary effect by clicking the checkbox next to Active if not already enabled.
5. In Set color under Key,...

Color lookup tables

Color lookup tables (LUTs) are a powerful feature within the Lumetri Color effect section of Adobe After Effects. They allow you to apply predefined color grading and stylization presets to your footage, giving you quick and easy access to various creative looks. Additionally, Color LUTs are exchangeable and widely used in various software applications and devices that support color grading and color correction.

Using the exchangeable LUTs, we will export a video frame from After Effects and import it into Photoshop to create the creative look, and then we will export the LUT from Photoshop to implement the same creative look created there to After Effects.

Follow these steps to do so:

1. Locate the Creative Edit composition in the Project panel, and double-click on it to open it in the Timeline panel if not already open.
2. Select the Cyberpunk layer in the Creative Edit composition, and it should already have the Lumetri Color effect applied.
3. Move...

Summary

In this chapter, we worked with color correction and color grading using the Lumetri Color effect. As we have seen, this effect is divided into six options – Basic Correction, Creative, Curves, Color Wheels, HSL Secondary, and Vignette. Each tab contains a different set of controls to adjust the color of your footage. It’s an all-in-one color correction and grading effect in After Effects, as well as an industry standard for color correction across all post-production software.

We also saw how to export a frame from After Effects in the .psd file format and then how to exchange an LUT between Photoshop and After Effects.

In the next chapter, we will learn about how to perform rotoscoping and masking in After Effects using the Roto Brush tool. Rotoscoping and masking allow you to isolate an object from its background, frame by frame, and do selective editing.