Auto Color Correction

[Media Editor]

Is using the Auto Color Correction in Premiere 2020 a good starting point?  I am a non-professional.

[Peru Bob]

Premiere Pro or Premiere Elements or Photoshop Elements?

[Media Editor]

Premiere Pro

[Meg The Dog]

What version of Premiere Pro are you using?

MtD

[Media Editor]

14.04

[Meg The Dog]

Auto Color, that's been moved into Obsolete effects?

Well, probably better than not correcting at all, but "auto" effects are kind of like "one size fits all" garments - they don't really fit anyone very well.

Lumetri is a much more powerful and usefull tool.

If you are just starting out, apply Lumetri and then just use the Basic Correction Panel.

Start from the top and work down the paddles.

Get the White Balance as close to neutral as possible when looking at any skin tones in the picture.

Then move to Tone, to work with the  Exposure and trim it up as best you can.

Or you can apply the Auto Color and if you are happy with that, then power on. Having it moved into the Obsolete area of effect means that Adobe is not going to be supporting the effect in the future.

MtD

[Kevin-Monahan]

Auto Color, all the way. It's a great first step.

If you are really grading, drag Satuaton slider to zero. Go for adjusting exposure/highlights, shadoes with a black and white image first, then dial the hue back up. Adjust hues, by first clicking the white balance controls.

Then adjust color effects in the Lumetri panels as you progress through the panels from top to bottom. Some effects do not need any adjustment, such as those in the Secondary color correction area.

Keep a light touch as you go for the ones you do try! Plenty of tutorials out there. Have a look around. 

Thanks,
Kevin

[salvo34]

I use cs6 which is pretty old. before Lumetri got introduced to new versions. The auto color correct was always pretty lame ... sometimes making things far worse than the original.

Just so you know... it's not just because it's legacy, it always was kinda bad to use even a long time ago.

[R Neil Haugen]

A lot of editors do "white balance" first, then start with tonal corrections (darks to lights). Most colorists work tonal first, then do WB/color cast corrections. You can work either way.

I started doing WB first, then tonal. Now ... I typically apply a Lumetri effect preset that has Creative tab's Sat at 0, and use the tonal controls of Lumetri to get my black to white tones looking good. Then I go to the Creative tab, set Sat back to "normal", and check for color casts in both mid/highlights and shadows.

I do most of my color balancing using the Creative tab's Shadow and Highlights wheels rather than the "Color Balance" tool.

Why? Think of working with an RGB Curves tool/panel. What a Color Balance tool does is move the white points. As with any movement of a white point on a Curves panel, all other values down the line move proportionately to their place on that line white to black. So ... mid tones get half the 'movement' of whites, shadow tones get nearly nothing.

WB blue/amber control moves the Red channel white point opposite the Blue channel white point.

WB green/magenta control moves the combined Red/Blue channel white points opposite the Green channel white point.

And ... no WB control fixes color casts that go down into the shadows.

Here's a blog post I made about neutralizing using a saved Lumetri preset with a LUT that has a mask removing all saturated pixels, so in the image and scopes you only see the near-neutral tones. I then use the Creative tab's Shadow and Highlight wheels to neutralize the image ... without making any color judgements visually! ... by using the Vectorscope YUV. (Ignore the parts about the Ripple panel. All changes you can make with a mouse/pen tablet.)

Neutralizing with Creative Tab

I did another post with a longer discussion, slightly different process ...

Neutralizing Revisited

My current process has changed some ... as it will always as one moves through experience levels. There are many ways anything can be done ... and rarely is there only one "right!" way.

Neil

[chrisw44157881]

Perhaps you can elaborate your needs. auto color methods are really only useful for extremely fast changing color sources(flicker, timelapse, old film sources, etc) as manual control will usually always give better results as it will account for both perfect scopes and perceptual color and can be further refined with secondary correction. Anything 'auto' doesn't know what you want 100% of the time and can often makes things worse. In smaller cases, its actually faster to keyframe color changes from one shot to the next.   You can also try a XML to resolve's auto color which works a lot better. i also made an AE template for white balance, exposure flicker for extremly poor sources listed above.

[Media Editor]

The majority of my videos are shot outdoors with a HD Camcorder or a GoPro.  I do not have to do a lot of Color Correction.  Videos shot indoors are the real challenge.  I do not have professional lighting.  I am using the Basic Correction Tools.  I have on occacions used the Auto Correction Tool.  Sometimes it is helpful and at other times not.  I have had very little success with the Curves Tools.  My videos are created for family, friends, schools, churches, sports events, etc.  I do not get any complaints from the people I create the videos for.  Plus I create the videos for free.  Occasionaly, I create DVD or Bu-ray discs.  I tell them that if they do not like the quality they can use them as Frisbees.  I have never had  any returned!!!!!

[salvo34]

hehe, good going. What you're doing is really cool and everyone would of course love having the stuff to look at, etc.

when inside see if you can make the wb 32k specifically. OR 'interior' or 'Tunsten' or whatever your camera settings have for inside. That way you let the windows go blue ( outside ). It's OK.

🙂

[salvo34]

I'm shooting a shot a day ( more or less ) staring out my window... with camera.... to make a 15 second thing called " ISOLATION "... Gotta shoot a few more shots before I start editing.

I'm using 56k for outside, so the wb matches what's out the window. I'm NOT using my movie lights for this. Just what's in apt. ( practicals )... like a table lamp, ceiling light, etc.

So I'm letting that stuff go yellow/orange/red ( WARMER). I don't care for this project.

It's fun to shoot stuff and edit and use what we can when it makes sense financially and time wise etc. ( not to mention the work and time it takes to finesse things right ).

🙂