automatic color correction

I never recommend the 3-Way color corrector. That's old code, and some of the math is plain wonky. Stick with Lumetri panel. And you don't have to apply anything to the clip, it just works doing it for you.

Auto is never a fail-safe item. It only goes so far, and so if you have clips that are very close in tonal scale, in the amount of luma data in each range, in chroma data, and the amount of chroma in each range, it can come close. But throw in something like the three light fixtures in that second image, and you have given it something way outside the previous image.

And using auto WB on a camera is death on matching cameras ... as it will shift constantly during shooting. I've had to resuscitate media that was shifting ... you wanna pay me a ton extra for correcting your media, just shoot with mulitple cameras in auto-WB. Every camera will shift at times. So you can't correct for one cam, apply to all shots from that cam.

Final tip for auto-matching: scroll across both the Reference clip and the to-be-matched clip, to find frames that are the closest between them. That gives a much better match for auto work.

It should only take a matter of minutes if you're using the scopes! ... to figure out how to get closer. See what the scopes show as different. Move the luma/brightness sliders to try to match the tonal/brightness pattern. Move the center of the wheels to try to match the chroma data. Once you've got the basics, it's not hard to do some basic matching of a similar scene like these.

And last, why do you need a conductor? You could simply use a visual metronome ... ahem. And it's auto too!   😉

Neil

First, there are two options for auto color in Premiere ... Auto White Balance in the Basic tab, and Color Match in the Color Wheels & Match tab. You don't say, but from your image I'm assuming you're working with the Color Match option in the Color Wheels/Match tab.

So what to your eyes is "wrong" about the second image? We don't know for certain, and everyone looking at this may well focus on one thing as the 'most' wrong, quite differently than another set of eyes. So telling us what you would like to see instead would be helpful.

A bit of edumacation on how color-match works is probably useful. It starts with the Reference (left) image, samples first the tonal (luma) data, the range primarily, of lights and darks, and in what proportions, then computes the range and proportions of color (chroma) data, combines the two, and gives a result, perhaps think of a "pattern" for that image. This it then compares to and then applies to the clip to be changed. Trying, essentially to map to a pattern of lights to darks and color to color.

So how well the clips match to begin with makes a huge difference. In this image, the Reference clip has no clipped specular whites, whil the second clip has three large areas of what would normally be bright specular highlights in those light fixtures on the wall. There's nothing nearly as bright in the first image, and Premiere is trying to match highlights of the second to the Reference. It cannot know to disregard those light fixtures in the second image.

So it comes as close as it can, then you need to fix the rest. To me, it looks like it has (very expectably) tried to match the overall contrast range of the two images, but the second has actually a much wider range between blacks/whites, which it can't "know". So it doesn't have a high enough contrast on the second image.

But how do you figure out what to do?

Any time you work color, you really need to have the scopes up to tell you what's going on, in reality. Your eyes are a great relative judge, but horrid at absolutes. In my example, as you can see I have the Waveform (YC no chroma) in upper left, Vectorscope YUV upper right, and Parade RGB bottom. I added them in that order to get this arrangement.

The Waveform gives me a straight luma ... brightness ... display of the image, left to right. You can see at the top where those light fixtures behind the girl clip ... where the brightness is so high there's no detail showing in the image. Sometimes you can bring down your white point and get useful image data showing, sometimes there's nothing there, no color or shape detail. That you would typically just leave 'clipped', pure white.

The vectorscope is a color wheel ... and shows saturation and hue. No color data, meaning whites, grays, black, is in the dead center where the graticules cross. Highly saturated colors give a trace towards the edge of the scope. And the hue is shown by their angle ... their position around the scope as a color wheel. Red is top left, Blue to the right, Green bottom left. If you drop a mask on say a skin tone, you can see where exactly on the color wheel of the Vectorscope that data 'lives'. And how saturated.

The RGB Parade gives a mix of chroma and luma data, again like the waveform, it shows the image left to right. It gives a good read of the overal 'feel' of the image, the mix of color & brightnesses.

As you can see on my image, you can tell in all three scopes where the dots are that represent the color blocks on that chart. You can see where her face is, once you know what to look for. And you can tell whether or not, and roughly where, something goes clear to black or white.

Once you've applied the Color Match, look at the scopes.And the handy part of using side-by-side Comparison view is the left half of Waveform and Parade scopes will be the Reference image, the right half of those scopes will be the image you're correcting, and each showing the image left to right across the scope. So ... you simply use the controls available to make the two scopes look similar in both halves of the scope.

First, try and match the luma ... tonal ... data shapes particularly of the Waveform by adjusting probably the luma/brightness sliders for the Color Wheels. Set the blacks/shadows equal between the two images, and the main highlights. Pure whites will be different when you have no total clipped whites in one image (like the left shot) and light fixtures like the second shot.

So match the diffuse highlights of the skin of the performers of the Reference clip and the clip you're correcting.

Then adjust the color as needed with Basic tab, Creative Tab shadow/highlight wheels, Curves, or Color wheels, your choice! ... so the RGB Parade and the Vectorscope show similar color data across the two images.

That should get you pretty close, and after a couple images, it gets easier.

Neil