Colour Correction in Final Cut Studio

Course Description:

This two day hands-on course will familiarise you with the colour correcting capabilities of Final Cut Studio. You will start with the essentials of colour balancing and correction and move on to the fine points of secondary grading. This will include scene matching, using vignettes to isolate and track regions, creating advanced colour effects and looks, applying skin tone adjustments and how to adjust the composition and framing of a shot.

This course is for existing Final Cut Pro users who want to get the most from the colour correction and grading capabilities of Colour. This is a practical, hands-on Apple authorised course.

This course includes the following modules:

Controlling contrast

• Understanding contrast
• Controlling contrast with the Colour Corrector 3-way filter
• Setting the mood with the mids
• Creating artificially high contrast

Controlling colour

• Understanding colour balance
• Using primary colour correction
• Understanding the colour balance controls
• Identifying and correcting colour casts
• Manipulating colour directly in the blacks, mids and whites

Colour correcting for scene continuity

• Achieving visual harmony
• Comparing two clips
• Setting up for scene-by-scene colour correction
• Colour correcting a complete scene
• Project tasks

Working with the Colour interface

• Setting up a project
• Understanding the Eight Rooms
• Colour's task-based workflow
• Applying basic grades
• Viewing your images
• Performing secondary grades
• Employing colour fx
• Applying final touches

Colour interface techniques

• Panning and scanning
• Correcting the sequence
• The Render Queue Room

Basic grading

• Exploring the Primary Room
• Using the Auto Balance control
• Grading with the colour balance controls
• Grading with curves
• Understanding additional controls

Basic secondary grading

• Three types of secondaries
• Performing key-based secondaries
• Keying with HSL qualifiers
• Creating a Look

Advanced secondary grading

• Using Multiple Secondaries
• Combining a key and a vignette
• Using multiple keys
• Creating custom Mask shapes
• Combining vignettes
• Incorporating curve effects

Colour effects

• The Colour FX Room
• Applying Nodes
• Building colour effects
• Controlling Node order
• Monitoring inactive Nodes
• Adding Nodes to existing trees
• Saving and reapplying effects as presents
• Working with Preset Colour effects

Grade management

• Managing grades on a single shot
• Switching between grades
• Adding and deleting grades
• Organising corrections
• Saving secondary corrections
• Moving grades from clip to clip
• Dragging individual corrections
• Grouping shots
• Applying grades to groups
• Working with multiple grades

Keyframing effects

• Animating effects in Colour
• Manipulating keyframes
• Navigating to keyframes
• Keyframing other Rooms
• Animating user shapes
• Adding intermediary keyframes
• Keyframing colour effects

Recomposing and tracking

• Using the Geometry Room
• Recomposing shots
• Animating pan and scan effects
• Tracking objects
• Applying tracking data to corrections
• Offsetting the vignette and manual tracking techniques

Primary out and rendering

• Global changes and final tweaks
• Creating a stylised look
• Manually adjusting white, black and chroma levels
• Rendering shots and sending to Final Cut Pro
• Using Colour's archive feature