Open topic with navigation

Magic Bullet Looks

Color Correction Tools

Colorista lets you change the color of shadows, midtones, and highlights in your image. The wheels are arranged in a triangle, with shadows on the left, highlight on the right, and midtones in the middle.

• The 3-Way wheels correspond to the color grading concepts of lift (shadows), gamma (midtones), and gain (highlights).
  • Shadow wheel: This wheel lets you set the footage’s black level. You add density or darkness when you move the shadow color. You can raise or lower shadow levels with the wheel’s luminance control, and you can offset the color balance in shadow regions with the hue point. Moving toward any colored region pushes the color balance toward that color, moving from unsaturated at the center to completely saturated at the edge.
  • Midtone wheel: This wheel changes midtones in the footage, shifting them darker or brighter. For instance, to make your image warmer, move the Midtones dot toward the yellow/red area of the wheel. The more you move to the outside of the wheel, the warmer the image becomes.
  • Highlight wheel: This wheel helps set the footage’s white level. The Highlights wheel will brighten and tint the entire image, but it mostly affects highlights.
• Numeric Entry (toggled by ): Each of the nine colors corresponds to a color dot in the wheels. Numbers can be scrubbed to reach a value. You can also type in a numeric value. Double-click a number to reset its value to 0.
• Temperature: Adjusts the overall color temperature to warmer or cooler tones (left and right on the color map). A 0 value is neutral, with higher values warming the image temperature and negative/lower values cooling the image.
• Tint: Shifts all image colors between green and magenta. A 0 value is neutral, with higher values shifting the image tint to magenta while negative/lower values shift to green.
• Exposure: Stretches or compresses the red, green, and blue channels. Exposure is good for setting overall image brightness. Use the exposure control when you want to add brightness compensation after adjusting the other correction controls.
• Contrast: Helps define luminescence detail. Positive/higher values add contrast, bringing out image detail, while negative/lower values remove contrast, flattening your image.
  
  
• HSL: The HSL tool lets you grab the color you want to adjust and move it toward the color you want it to become. HSL helps nudge the hue, saturation, and lightness of individual colors or ranges of colors.
  
  • The HSL tool is split into two color wheels, and each wheel has eight different color channels that appear as movable dots. The two wheels are linked. Either wheel can be used to adjust the ranged hues.
  • Hue shifts all colors along the color wheel. Higher values move the color sample counterclockwise along the color wheel. Negative/lower values move the sample clockwise.
  • Saturation controls the image’s total amount of saturation across all channels. This raises or lowers the footage’s colorfulness, or intensity of color.
  • Numeric Entry columns (toggled by ) let you enter specific values of hue, saturation, and lightness.
  • Hue/Saturation wheel (left): Adjusts hue and saturation. There are eight color dots. The value range for each color dot is from -100 to 100 percent. The default value of each color dot is 0, or 50% of total saturation. Increasing the value adds saturation and moves the dot outside the wheel. Decreasing the value removes saturation and moves the dot toward the wheel center.
  • Hue/Lightness wheel (right): Adjusts for hue and lightness. There are eight color dots. The value range for each color dot is from -100 to 100 percent. The default value of each color dot is 0, or 50% of total lightness. Increasing the value adds lightness and moves the dot outside the wheel. Decreasing the value removes lightness and moves the dot toward the wheel center.
  • Wheels are linked: Moving a dot causes the corresponding dot to move in the other wheel. If you move the red dot in the saturation wheel, for instance, the red dot in the lightness moves in the same way. This linked adjustment keeps the hue value the same for both wheels.

• Saturation EQ: Adjusts saturation across the various values of luminance (lum) and saturation (sat)
  • Sat by Lum adjusts the saturation by luminance between the darkest (leftmost) and brightest (rightmost) values.
  • Sat by Sat adjusts the saturation levels by the least-saturated (leftmost) and most-saturated (rightmost) values.

• Curves: The Curves control offers four groups of curve parameters to give you precise control over contrast and color adjustments. There are individual controls for adjusting red, green, and blue channels as well as all RGB channels together.

Pop can add or remove sharpness and contrast depending on its values. Positive values add local contrast to your image for more visual “pop,” or clarity, which adds better visual sharpness for many types of challenging footage (e.g., outdoor backlit shots). Set to negative values, Pop removes sharpness and creates a softened smoothing effect, good for quick and simple complexion smoothing during cosmetic cleanup.

• Pop: The value range is from -100 to 100 percent. The default value is 0%, or no effect. Higher values apply more contrast. Increase the Pop contrast to help footage that looks hazy or unsharp. Lower values apply more smoothing. Lower the value to smooth out skin tone values and clean up problem skin.
• Size: The Pop tool can be used either to enhance or reduce local contrast. Size controls the amount of “locality” in the contrast.
• Preserve Detail: This control tries to revert areas of the image with finer details to their original values from before the Pop slider’s application.

4-Way Color lets you change the color of the shadows, midtones, and highlights and provides a master color wheel to adjust all image colors. The 4-Way Color wheels are arranged in a diamond, with shadows on the left, highlights on the right, midtones in the upper-middle position, and a master color wheel in the lower-middle position. There's also an interactive Ranges graph which allows you to alter what colors are affected by the shadows, midtones, and highlights color wheels.

• Shadow wheel: This wheel lets you set the footage’s black level. You add density or darkness when you move the shadow color. You can raise or lower shadow levels with the wheel’s luminance control, and you can offset the color balance in the shadow regions with the hue point. Moving toward any colored region pushes the color balance toward that color, moving from unsaturated at the center to completely saturated at the edge.
• Midtone wheel: This wheel changes midtones in the footage, shifting them darker or brighter. For instance, to make your image warmer, move the Midtones dot toward the yellow/red area of the wheel. The more you move to the outside of the wheel, the warmer the image becomes.
• Highlight wheel: This wheel helps set the footage’s white level. The Highlights wheel will brighten and tint the entire image, but it mostly affects highlights.
• Master wheel: This wheel gives color control over the entire image.
• Ranges Graph: This graph lets you set which colors will be affected by the shadows, midtones, and highlights color wheels. The black curve represents shadow, grey represents midtones, and white represents highlights.
• Preview: This check box, when turned on, will overlay your footage with a black and white matte showing which colors are affected by your adjustments. The overlay only turns on when you adjust one of the three curves in the Ranges graph.

Hue/Saturation is a combination of primary saturation and secondary hue controls. This tool can dramatically shift the image’s color values. Saturation increases or decreases the saturation or vibrancy of colors, with precise control in linear light.

• Hue offsets the color of the selected color. The number value takes you that number of degrees (from 0 to 360) around the color wheel. Positive/higher values move the color sample counterclockwise along the color wheel. Lower/negative numbers shift the sample clockwise.
• Saturation controls the total amount of saturation in the image on all channels. This raises or lowers the footage’s colorfulness, or intensity of color.
• Component Balance weights the operation to favor a particular color.

Mojo II makes it easy to instantly give your footage the stylized color grade of a Hollywood blockbuster film. Mojo accentuates skin tones, cooling your backgrounds so your actors stand out.

• Mojo: The Mojo effect warms highlights and cools shadows in footage. The Mojo slider controls the strength of that effect.
• Tint : Mojo Tint sets the hue of green-blue shadows. It allows colors that range from powder blue to cyan to teal to green. Those cool shadows can range from royal blue to emerald green, although most stylizations opt for the teal hue in between.
• Punch: Mojo tries not to affect the image’s overall contrast, but if you want to add some contrast, use the Punch slider. This contrast control modulates saturation as it increases. The contrast is applied across the entire color range.
• Bleach: The Bleach control lets you vary overall color saturation. Bleach provides a way to add or remove saturation from the final result. As the slider value increases, the image loses color. With negative values, colors become more saturated.
• Fade: The Fade controls lift the brightness of the rich black tones of your image to give it a faded look.
• Blue Squeeze: Blue Squeeze compresses the blue tones to be more uniform in hue. This compression, or “squeezing,” gives you greater control of the overall color palette of your image. This parameter pairs especially well with the Tint control.
• Skin Squeeze: Often, skin tones are too varied in color, and sometimes people's skin can take on a blotchy appearance. Skin Squeeze compresses skin tones to be more uniform in hue. This compression, or “squeezing,” reduces blotchiness and unifies uneven complexions, which has the effect of flattening out skin tones.
• Exposure : This correction control adjusts the image’s overall exposure.
• Cool/Warm: This is a correction control that adjusts the overall color temperature of your image. Positive values make the image more orange, and negative values make the image more blue.
• Green/Magenta: This correction control adjusts the image’s overall tint. Positive values make the image more magenta, and negative values make the image greener.
• Skin Yellow/Pink: This correction control targets a range of common skin hues. If your shot looks great but your subject’s skin is just a bit to yellow or pink, this slider will allow corrections without adjusting the image’s overall tint. Positive values make skin pinker while negative values make skin yellower.
• Strength: This control manages the overall strength of the Mojo Tool. A 0% value will effectively turn off the Mojo Tool, whereas 100% will apply the Mojo Tool at full strength.

LUT allows you to import .cube LUT files or select a LUT already imported into the builder interface.

• LUT shows the name of the currently selected LUT (if any).
• Strength controls the overall strength of the applied LUT. A 0% value will effectively turn off the LUT tool, while 100% will apply the LUT at full strength.
• LUT Gamma can apply a basic gamma correction to your footage before applying a LUT.
• Presets come integrated with the LUT tool, allowing you to preview and import your own .cube LUT files ( ).

Huenity unifies hues within the shot. By default is set to select and unify skin tones. Add multiple Huenity tools to target and unify various hues of the shot.

• Strength controls the overall strength of the Huenity tool. A 0% value will effectively turn off the Huenity tool, while 100% will apply the tool at full strength.
• Select Colors by provides more options for hue selection.
• Hue/Saturation shows an adjustable box around hues on a histogram. The tool will unify these hues.
  
  • The crosshair represents the specific color targeted by the tool.
    • Use the eyedropper tool to select the color within the shot manually.
  • The box around the crosshair represents the range around the targeted color that will be united toward that target.
  • The dashed box around the two represents a feathered falloff range of colors that will be more subtly shifted toward the target.
• Selection Preview shows a live update displaying which parts of the shot will be affected by the tool.

Color Remap maps colors from one value to another while allowing you to pin colors to avoid having them affected by any remapping.

• Strength controls the overall strength of the Color Remap tool. A 0% value will effectively turn off the tool while 100% will apply the tool at full strength.
• Preserve Luminance controls how much of the luminance values are affected by color remapping.
• Color Model sets what model is used for the color map preview shown below.
  

  RGB: Red, Green, Blue	Lab: Lightness, Red/Green, Blue/Yellow	YUV: Luma, Blue, Red	JzAzBz: HDR Lightness, Red/Green, Yellow/Blue	IPT: Luma, Blue/Yellow, Red/Green

• Color Wheels select which original color (left wheel) gets mapped to its new color (right wheel)
• Color Map shows two columns. The left column is the original color, and the right column shows the target after mapping.
  
  • Click New Color Mapping to create a new row OR hold Shift + Eyedropper tool to create a new color mapping.
  • The pin icon ( ) indicates if both colors in a given row are an identical match.
  • Click the arrow icon ( ) to reset a color mapping to its original color.
  • Click the X icon ( ) to delete a color mapping.
  • Click the eye icon ( ) to show or hide a given color mapping.

Channel Mixer remixes one channel to another. It is generally used for making high-quality black and white conversions, correcting color casts, and tinting and stylizing images. You are essentially controlling RGB channels into a finished, combined image.

• Normalize adjusts the reversion of colors between their original values and the mixed parameters below.
• Strength controls the overall strength of the Channel Mixer tool. A 0% value will effectively turn off the tool, while 100% will apply the tool at full strength.
• Monochrome toggles a black-and-white image output, allowing you to see how red, green, and blue are combined to create a final contrasted image.
• Red, Green, Blue offers RGB sliders for each color value, allowing you to nudge them into different tones. These tones are represented on each slider as well as the tool icon within the Tool Chain.

Color Blend (formerly Color Filter) creates a color overlay filter, like that used in a matte box, where the imposed color typically darkens the image. An integrated exposure adjustment can be used for brightness compensation.

• Exposure Compensation: Corrects for any resulting changes in overall exposure.
• Color: The color of the filter, which is typically bright and saturated.

Duotone tints shadows and highlights with user-specified colors.

• Highlight Color: The Highlight Color wheel allows you to select the color that will tint the image's highlights.
• Highlight Tint: This control manages the strength of the tint applied to highlights in the image.
• Shadow Color: The Shadow Color wheel allows you to select the color that will tint image shadows.
• Shadow Tint: This control shifts the strength of the tint applied to image shadows.
• Balance: This control adjusts what Duotone considers a shadow versus a highlight.

S Curve makes it easy to create and modify an S curve with unique, adjustable UI controls.

• Log: Applies a color adjustment to the image to bring out detail and color in Log footage.
• Curves Graph: An adjustable graph to help create an S curve. The anchor on the bottom of the screen adjusts the black point while the anchor on the top adjusts the white point. Adjusting the center point of the T control changes the midpoint and brightness. Rotating the T control by clicking on the two anchors at each end adjusts the image’s overall contrast.
• Black Point: Adjusts the curve’s black point.
• White Point: Adjusts the curve’s white point.
• Contrast: Helps define luminance detail. Positive/higher values add contrast, bringing out detail in your image, while negative/lower values remove contrast, flattening your image.
• Midpoint: Adjusts the balance of the curve between black and white points, moving the T control on a horizontal path.
• Brightness: Adjusts the brightness of the image, raising and lowering the control.