Guide to editing information flow ads!

This article will share some key points and techniques required for the critical color grading process in information flow video editing.

The impact of color on video undoubtedly accounts for a large proportion of the overall proportion. Many friends must have encountered many problems in editing. The early script shooting has been reviewed and submitted to the post-production without any problems. Obviously, the subtitles are very good, and a lot of special effects are added. There are no problems with transitions, music and sound effects, but the video produced has no texture, few conversions, low consumption, and the effect is not satisfactory. Then you must find the problem in time at this time, it is very likely that there is a problem with the color grading of your video. Then let me take you into the “color adjustment” and see where your problem lies.

First, let’s look at a few cases, which generally represent several application scenarios of color grading.

1. Basic video color correction

2. Color correction of gray film

3. Portrait whitening and skin resurfacing

Next, we will briefly learn the most basic video color grading.

Color grading in Adobe Premiere Pro is mainly done through Lumetri, and Lumetri includes Lumetri Color and Lumetri Range. Simply put, the main color grading operation is to adjust Lumetri Color according to the Lumetri Range, and the tone of the entire video is mainly composed of highlights, midtones and shadows, and we also need to adjust these three parameters based on the overall picture performance. There are also different levels of color grading, the most common ones are "primary color grading" and "secondary color grading". Primary color grading is the most basic color grading, which restores all colors to the 709 standard color space, while secondary color grading is to make partial color adjustments based on the mood of the picture or other needs after primary color grading.

The above is just a brief introduction to the principles of color grading in Adobe Premiere Pro. It doesn’t matter if you are a novice and don’t understand it. It only takes ten minutes to get started with color grading. First, let's review the basic operations in Adobe Premiere Pro. Create a new sequence, import the materials we need to color, drag the materials to the timeline of the newly created sequence, and then the next step is the color adjustment process. Create a new adjustment layer (be sure to develop good color adjustment habits, and do not color adjust directly on the original video material), and then drag the Lumetri color to the adjustment layer on the timeline. Let's take the color adjustment case of a sky time-lapse landscape that the editor has encountered as an example. See the figure below for specific steps. After that you can proceed to color adjustment.

Then you can start color adjustment. First, you need to look at the waveform in the Lumetri range and observe the upper and lower values. The so-called 709 standard color space is to ensure that the overall color range is within the standard color range. The popular reflection in the waveform is that the value range cannot fluctuate more than 5~95. A good colorist will not let the color exceed this range. Knowing this, our color adjustment will become more intuitive and easy to understand, which is equivalent to going directly from high-level talk to giving on paper.

According to the analysis of the above figure, the color waveform of the video exceeds the range required by the 709 standard color space, so we have to adjust the Lumetri color to make the color range into the 709 standard color range. At the same time, we also need to combine the preview image in the monitor to further understand how to adjust the color.

Lumetri color is mainly divided into several parts, such as basic correction, creativity, curves, etc. The color grading in our information flow videos will not be too complicated. The two parts of basic correction and creativity can basically meet our daily color grading needs.

Basic correction includes common adjustment areas such as highlights, shadows, and contrast. It can be seen from the waveform that the white and black parts are too much, so the values ​​should be adjusted down appropriately. The picture exposure is insufficient, so the exposure should be adjusted slightly, and the highlights should also be raised a bit. The color temperature generally does not need to be adjusted. Then adjust the creative part. In order to make the picture softer and clearer, we need to adjust the sharpening and natural saturation appropriately. Increasing the natural saturation is to make the unsaturated part brighter, but the part that is already saturated enough will not be affected.

At this point the primary color grading is basically completed, but many people think it's over here and ignore some details. You can see that the sky is a bit bluish, and the sunset is not that red, which does not conform to the public's aesthetic taste, so the next step is to do secondary color grading. The secondary color grading is to fine-tune some colors in the video. Here you adjust the color wheel and match the highlights, midtones, etc. to make the sky bluer.

But the sunset is still not red enough. No matter how we adjust the shadows and midtones, we can't make the sunset redder. At this time, we have to use a mask to cut out the sunset and adjust the color. The specific operation is to adjust it with the assistance of HSL. As the name suggests, "HSL" means hue, saturation and brightness. We can use the keys to absorb the color of the sunset. The H, S and L keys can accurately select the range of the sunset respectively. The operating principle is equivalent to the color range keying in PS. By selecting places with similar colors, you can control the image you want to subtract. I believe it will be much easier to understand after this.

Noise reduction and blur are mainly used to soften the overall sense of the selected sunset. The soft edges make it look less rigid, and the following corrections are similar to the tone adjustment in the basic correction, which is to further adjust the color temperature, color, contrast, etc. to make the picture more layered.

From the above picture, we can see that there is a big gap between before and after color adjustment. Before color adjustment, the picture is darker, underexposed, the color saturation is insufficient, the brightness is low, the overall picture expression is poor, and there is no texture. After color adjustment, it can be clearly seen that the overall tone of the picture is bright, the expression is strong, and it conforms to the public's aesthetics, and has a strong texture. By comparing before and after color adjustment, you can clearly feel the improvement that color adjustment brings to the video throughout the day. Color can set off the atmosphere, which in turn drives changes in emotions and plays a big role in subjective feelings. Therefore, the quality of a video is closely related to color adjustment. If the color is adjusted well, the video is half successful.

The above article only talks about the tip of the iceberg about secondary color grading. There is still a lot of professional knowledge involved in secondary color grading. In our information flow video editing, doing a good job of primary color grading and knowing a little bit of secondary color grading can basically meet the needs. If you still want to continue to improve your color grading skills and advance to secondary color grading, then first of all, you have to learn more about some classic color grading cases, and subjectively feel how others plan color adjustments, so that we can improve our color grading level faster.

But if you want to reach the master level now, then you can only learn from some professional color grading. You can find some professional color grading presets or daily practical color grading presets on the Internet. Here I will share some websites for you to find:

www.lookae.com Popular face film and television post-production;

www.newcger.com New CGger.

These two websites contain many professional color grading presets, some seamless transition presets, PR, AE templates, sound effects, etc., and most of them are available for free download, which is very practical.

So after we download the color preset, how do we import it into PR for use? Find the input LUT in the basic correction module in the basic color, click the drop-down box on the right, browse to find the downloaded LUT, and import it directly into the application.

At the same time, after the primary color grading is correct, we can directly apply some professional "secondary color grading" in the "Look" in Creative. We can switch different color grading presets according to the preview below and adjust the intensity 0-200 to match the video screen. This will make our color grading even better and greatly enhance the picture quality.

Of course, these color adjustments are not rigid and can be applied directly. Colors can also express emotions. There are warm tones, cool tones, etc. Different colors also express different emotions. For example, common colors in horror movies are black, white, red, and blue. Different colors combined together also represent different emotions. We must choose our color presets according to the emotions that need to be expressed in the video. If you want to express retro, then choose some color presets for darker yellow scenes. For the same video, each person’s color adjustment may be different, but the "primary color adjustment" must be correct, so that no matter how the secondary color adjustment is performed, there will not be too big a mistake.