Colour

Colour work makes shots look right, then makes them look like they belong together.

The Colour workspace

Press Alt 2 (⌥ 2 on Mac) to switch to the Colour workspace. It opens the Library on Looks, the Inspector on its Adjust tab and docks the scopes under the Inspector. Press Alt 1 (⌥ 1) to go back to the Edit workspace.

You can do everything on this page from any workspace; the Colour workspace just puts the tools in one place.

Correct a clip

1. Select a clip on the timeline.
2. In the Inspector, open the Adjust tab. The Colour section has five controls:

Each goes from −100 to 100, and 0 leaves the picture as it was. Drag a value, or click it and type.

Work in this order: fix the exposure first, then the balance (temperature and tint), then the contrast, and only then the look. A grade built on a badly exposed shot never quite comes right.

The switch in the section's header turns the clip's colour on and off, so you can see what you changed. The reset button sets everything back.

To compare, click Before / after in the player's toolbar or press </kbd>. The left side shows the shot without its colour changes and look, and the right side with them. Drag the line to move the split.

Animate colour

Each colour control has a keyframe diamond, so a grade can change during a shot: for example, warming up as the sun comes out. Set a keyframe at the start, move the playhead, and change the value. See Titles and text for how keyframes work.

Add a look

A look is a ready-made colour treatment that sits on top of your corrections.

1. Select one or more clips.
2. In the Library, open Looks.
3. Click a look to apply it, or drag it onto a clip.

The built-in looks are Warm Afternoon, Blue Hour, Faded Print, Dusk Contrast and Silver Mono.

The clip's look shows in the Look row of the Colour section. Click × (Remove look) to take it off, or Browse looks to pick one when there is none.

To give the same look to a stretch of the film, drag a look onto an empty part of a picture lane above the clips. Zornov makes an adjustment clip that colours everything below it. See Effects and transitions.

Copy a grade to other clips

1. Right-click the clip whose colour you like and choose Copy look.
2. Select the clips that should match.
3. Right-click one of them and choose Paste look.

Paste look copies the colour settings, the look, the effects, the blend mode and the masks.

Match one shot to another

Shots of the same scene from different cameras or times of day rarely match. Match colour makes one shot take on the colour and light of another.

1. Grade your best shot of the scene first.
2. Select a shot that should match it.
3. In the Inspector's Adjust tab, find Match colour.
4. In To, pick the shot to match.
5. Set Strength, then click Match.

If shots are meant to differ a little, a strength of 60 to 80 % keeps some of their own character. Click Match again after changing the strength or the target, or Remove to take the match off.

Read the scopes

Your eyes adapt, and screens differ. The scopes measure the picture instead.

Click Scopes in the player's toolbar to show them over the player (the Colour workspace docks them as a panel). Choose a view at the top:

• Waveform: brightness across the picture, from left to right. The bottom is black, the top is white.
• Parade: the same for red, green and blue side by side. If one is higher than the others, the picture has a cast.
• Vector: how much colour there is and which way it leans, with targets for the standard colours and a line where skin tones fall.
• Histogram: how much of the picture sits at each brightness.

Below the scope, Zornov puts the key numbers into words: the black, middle and white levels, how much of the picture is blown out, crushed or oversaturated, and any colour cast in the shadows, mid-tones or highlights (for example warm (orange) shadows).

As a rough guide for a normal shot:

Shots that cut together should sit within a few percent of each other on black and mid, with no different cast. Skin should fall on the skin line in the Vector view: off it, people look ill (green) or sunburnt (magenta).

More grading with the AI editor

The AI editor can reach colour tools beyond the Inspector's controls: setting the colour space of camera log footage, colour wheels and curves, corrections for one part of the picture (skin, sky, foliage), LUTs and HDR output. Ask it in plain words, for example "my clips are S-Log3, set them up" or "make the sky a little deeper on clip 4". See The AI editor.