It may come as a surprise to some, but video cameras are not nearly as perceptive as your eyes. That means if the white balance isn’t perfect, your face won’t look quite human.
The art of fixing all that is called Color Correction, and for years it struck fear into my heart because I had not one idea of how to go about it. I felt like it would be a major operation.
Well, today I’d like to share a simple outpatient procedure that will make all your videos look more human.
From now on I’m going to call this Color Restoration, because your face doesn’t need correction. It just needs more accurate interpretation.
Once you’ve watched the video, to find your personal Color Restoration numbers, check out the Larry Jordan article.
**Affiliate links for tools used in this video**
For a free 2-week trial of Cinema Grade, click here.
If you’re on the Mac and want to try Hawaiki Keyer, click here.
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On a PC and need better keying software? Download the free version of HitFilm here.
8 replies to "How to do Color Correction for Your On-Camera Videos"
Hi Steven
this is by far the best explanation I have seen about color correction for the skin tone. Thank you very much for this excellent video. Can you also explain which blur effect you use for the backgrounds? Is is a kind of gradual blur effect.
Greetings
Ton Meeuwissen
The Netherlands
Sure. It’s the Focus Blur in Final Cut Pro. It allows you to select specific areas of blur. You can get the same effect in Photoshop by creating multiple layers of your background and selectively putting parts of them out of focus. And I suppose there are other plugins for your editor that will do the same.
Great video Steven, I always set my skin tones the fiddly manual way. It can be a real pain, but I’m really impressed how Cinema Grade brought out your skin tones. I’ll give it a whirl.
Thanks
This sort of labor-saving device seems on the order of running water. 🙂
Great video . I’m using Premiere Pro as my editor. Are you suggesting I bring my green screen footage into the Hitfilm editor first for keying, then export into PP? It looks like the Hitfilm keying tools are better than PP.
Glad you asked. I’ve helped a number of people with this exact problem. Before switching to a new app, I would try hard to make the keyer in PP. I do know that if you shoot it carefully, that keyer will work perfectly.
Excellent video Steven. A nice clear explanation to follow, and easily applicable to Davinci Resolve from your Final Cut Pro examples here. Great work, especially on that final green spill. It’s great to see how even the professionals have to properly colour correct and see your raw footage to final output.
Thanks for sharing!
Glad you found it applicable to your toolset. Happy editing!