Transcripts
1. Introduction - Kdenlive: Hi, and welcome to this ad and Live class where
I'll be showing you how to color grade and color correct your footage
and not in that order. My name is Jonathan. I work
as a motion graphic designer. I am the founder of NuxTux Creative Studio over on YouTube, where I upload animated
shorts and tutorials. In this class, I'll be
showing you how you can color correct and color grade your footage inside of Kaden Live. And we'll also take a look at
secondary color selection. Now, to follow along, you can go to the project section of this class where
you can download the footage that we'll be using. I've also provided the links to the original footage
over on pixels. They're free for
download and for use. So with that out of
the way, head on over, download the project files,
and let's get started.
2. What you'll learn - Kdenlive: Now that we've
gathered our assets, let's get a overall idea of what color correction is
before we jump into it. Now, this includes
understanding what are the three pillars of
color correction, and that's white balance,
exposure and saturation. White balance simply means taking our image
from, let's say, if it has a greenish
tone or a bluish tone, then white balancing is simply removing
this color cast and bringing back the
natural looking colors. Next, we have the exposure, which is the distribution
of light and shadow. So if we had footage like this one over here,
a clip like this one, then exposure would
be for us to push the bright areas to
be brighter and the dark areas to be darker
and then the mid tone, so those ranges in between to distribute them accordingly, right, something
that fits the scene. And finally, let's talk
about the difference between Rec seven oh
nine and log footage. Now, if you're not familiar
with these two, don't worry. I'm not going to bore you
with too many details. Just understand that Rec 709 is the type of footage that you'd get from your phone
or certain camera, which is already
processed and compressed. This sort of format, seven oh nine, what you
see is what you get. Now, on the other end,
we have log footage, and log footage tends to
look a little desaturated. The contrast is a little off, and it doesn't look very great, but log footage actually contains a lot more information
than Rec seven oh nine. This is why it is preferred
to work with log footage when editing anything such as
movies, shows, even vlogs. Log footage will give you a lot more control
over the colors, the exposure, and the
overall of that footage. For this class, we'll be
working with Rec seven oh nine, but most of the reg
seven oh nine that I've linked down in
the project section, is Rec seven oh nine
that is unprocessed, meaning it still has that dull
looking desaturated look, and this gives us a bit
more of a dynamic range, although it is
still Rec seven oh nine so we can't
push it too far. We can't saturate it too much
or recover too much from the white areas or even recover information
from the darker areas. So Rec 709 compressed,
log, not compress. Now that we've gotten
this out of the way, let's get started
with Caden Live.
3. Before we start - Kdenlive: Alright, so the
first thing we'll do is make sure that we're on the same workspace or at
least a similar workspace. So inside of KD and Live, we have our footage imported. I already have it
on the timeline. I'm going to go at the
top right over here, and I'm going to click on Color. This will move me over
to the color workspace. Now, yours might look
different from mine. Feel free to move
the tabs around. And if you're missing any of the scopes or any of these tabs, simply go up to your menu bar, click on View and check whichever of these
panels you're missing. And if you want to
modify the layout, you can always check
on Show title bars, which makes it easier
to move around these tabs and then save your
layout when you're done, and you can also
manage your layouts. All right, with that
out of the way, we're all on the same workspace. Let's go ahead and download a couple presets that will
help us with the workflow. They're all free. They're available
inside of KD and Live. Let's go ahead and jump
and get our assets. So inside of the Effects
tab at the top here, we have a down pointing arrow, and this is the Download button. Simply left click on it. You'll get a pop up window, and I'll go ahead and
expand this a bit. And here we are looking
for the LM collection. So we want the M basic
color correction, M basic color grading, and we also want the
secondary M presets. Simply click on Install
to install them, and it will add them
to this first star over here in the Effects panel, and this is where we can
find customs and templates. Now, customs or
effects tags that you've created
yourself and templates are the ones that we download. If you're not
seeing it in there, you can click on different
tabs and then go back in or close out of Caden
Live and open it up again. So we have all of
this out of the way. Next, let's learn
about the tools that can help us with
our color correction, and then we'll jump
right into editing.
4. Vectorscope - Kdenlive: Hi. So in this lesson, we'll be taking a look at the different scopes and waveforms that we
have available to us, which help us with our color
correction or color grading. So the first one we'll look
at is the vectorscope. Now, remember, if you're
not seeing the vectorscope, just go up to view and make sure that vectorscope
is checked on. Now the vectorscope allows us to monitor the saturation
in our video. So saturation is how pronounced
or muted colors are. Starting from the very center is where there is no saturation. And then as we move
away from the center, we are getting more
and more saturation. Now, if you're not seeing these guides on your vectorscope, you can activate them
by right clicking on it and then
check these boxes, the 75% box, they draw axis, and they draw I and Q lines. 75% box is this box over here. And it is to indicate the
limit of colors for broadcast. So old television had a limited amount of colors
that they could broadcast, and this box here
indicates that limit. You can go outside of it, but if you do plan on broadcasting, it is best not to
go outside of it. Next, we have the draw axis, which are simply these
vertical and horizontal lines, breaking down the color wheel. If I go ahead and change this to YUV, you can see
the color wheel. It breaks it down
into quadrants. And then finally, we have
the I and the Q lines, which the I line is considered or sometimes
called the skin tone line. And if you can match
the skin tones of a person to this line, no matter the enicity, if you can match
it to the e line, then technically the skin
tones should be correct. Over here with the footage, if I disable all of the effects, you can see how the saturation has gone down. Check
on the effects. Saturation goes up.
And it also shows you in which direction the saturation is being pronounced. So the red, you can
see the red here, very pronounced, bit of
blue, blue in the genes, bit of green, green in the
background a little bit, and very, very little
bit of magenta. Right, so you can change
the look of this. You can also zoom in and
out of the vectorscope. Now, remember to zoom out when working because
sometimes zooming in, you might think it's more
saturated than it is. And really, that's it
for the vectorscope.
5. Waveform - Kdenlive: Okay, so next on our list, we have the waveform. Now, the waveform,
unlike the vectorscope is showing us the
values of luminans. Now, the waveform is a
representation of our clip. If I scrub to the clip here, pay attention to our character, see how he goes from the left to right, right to the left. If you look at the waveform, here we have a dip in value, and you'll notice that it moves
along with our character. So basically, the waveform is showing us our same
image left to right, except that the values
are from bottom to top. And all the way at
the bottom as zero, we have pure black, and all the way at the top 255, we have pure white. Now, right above the bottom, we have the shadows, and right under the whites, we have the highlights. In between, we have
the mid tones. This will come into play later. You don't have to
memorize it right now. You can also change the
look of the waveform. I find that the green shows
the most information, but it really is just
an aesthetic choice. But that is it for the waveform.
6. RGB Parade - Kdenlive: Hi, next on our list, we have the RGB parade. The RGB parade is
similar to the waveform, as it is showing us our
image from left to right, except that it's breaking down the information into the red, green, and blue channels, but it is still showing us
our image or clip over here, the same way as the waveform. So same principles all the way at the top,
we have the whites, all the way at the bottom, we
have the blacks in between, we have the midtones,
highlights and shadows. And that is essentially
it for the RGB parade.
7. Histogram - Kdenlive: Hey. So lastly, on our
list of tools to help us with the color grading and color correction
is the histogram. And the histogram, similarly to the RTB parade is showing us the information
within our clip, starting from a value
of zero all the way up to a value of 255
at the edge here, except that it doesn't
follow our footage. It is simply showing us the distribution of
the information. You can also see the
different channels. We have the sum of everything. Y is Luma. Then we have the red and
green and blue channels, which you can toggle on and off, and you can also go from
linear to logarithmic, which still shows you
the same information is simply using a
different scale of values. But that is about it
for the histogram. Well, right, now we can
jump into some practice.
8. How Effects Work - Kdenlive: Now, if you want to
understand how these affect the values
inside of your eclipse, I have a black and
white gradient over here with the same
effects added to it. Let's move over to the waveform. And let's start with exposure. You'll see that exposure
moves the white point. So all the way at the top, it is moving it
either back or down, and you can see how it's
affecting our gradient. When we push exposure up and it pushes
the white point up, it is simply pushing the
value of the white higher. Try this with all of these. For contrast, you'll
see that it's only pushing the white in the
black at the same time, so the same amount
for both of them. Next, we have the IF Gamma gain. With the lift, we're
controlling the shadows, so not the black points,
but the shadows, so the lower area can see
how it curves the values, right click to reset. We have the gamma which controls the midpoints,
if you will. See, it's curving
more in the middle. It's a more gradual
transformation, and then we have
gain inside of it, which controls the whites. So if we push it up,
pushes the whites, push it down, pushes
down the whites. Okay. You can also add colors with these wheels
and you can reset by right clicking on them. Next, we have levels, and levels is mostly
for controlling the whites and the blacks
and a bit of the midtones. We have a few options up here. You can change the channel. So instead of going for Luma, you can choose the
red, green or blue. We also have this little
histogram checkbox, which is quite useful
when working on footage. Here, you can't really tell what it's doing,
so let's turn it off. So the input black
levels moves the blacks, input white levels
moves the whites, and the Gamma moves
the middle section. Then we have the black output, which pushes the blacks
away from the dark areas and the white output which pushes the whites away from
the bright areas, right? Okay, so this should be enough
for you to understand how these different effects are affecting the exposure
of our image.
9. Color Correction - Kdenlive: Hi there. Welcome to our first practical
lesson for this class. So we're going to color
correct one of these clips, and we can choose
either one of these. But before we do, let's first add our effects
tack to one of those clips. So I'll grab this
clip over here. All right click, I'll
delete all of the effects. So we can start off with
this fake log clip. Keep in mind, this is MP four, which is an already
compressed format. It simply looks
like log footage. So with our clip selected, we can go over to
our templates in the effect tab and double
click on MBsic CC. This will add all of these
effects over to our clip. And what I'll do is simply
collapse all of the effects. And next, I'll disable
the key frames, since we won't really be
animating any of these. Okay, so first things first, let's work with white balance. Now, there are
several ways to go about white balancing
your eclipse, but with this nice
to the effect stack, we have at the top two
white balanced sliders. So let me uncollapse these. The first one
controls temperature, so how cool or warm clip is, so how blue or red. We have the color picker here. Well, we have the color,
which we can set manually. Or we can use the color
picker and grab a color here, so a neutral gray or white
spot inside of our footage. So let's say I grab
this, and it will do the white balance or the best that it can with
the white balance. You can also reset out of
this simply by clicking on the menu here and reset effect. You can use the eye icon to toggle on and off this effect. Alright. Next, we also have
the white balance down here, which controls the tint. And the tint is how green or how not green
your footage is, and the rest of it works
pretty much the same. You can reset it just
the same as well. So you can use the color pickers to set the white balance, or you can do it manually
by moving these sliders. Hold down Shift, left,
click on a slider, and you can drag
left and right and move it in smaller increments. Whereas if you don't hold
Shift, it kind of jumps around. You can also right click
on it and reset the value. Alright, that's enough
about how these work. Let's get started with
our white balance. So as I mentioned, at the
end of this clip here, luckily for us, you can
see the back of the phone, which is supposed to be white. So we can already tell that
if this becomes white, then we have white
balance or clip. You can add a bit of green
as well, you can see. And again, remember,
we don't have to work on these in
a linear fashion. What does matter
is their position. So whichever comes after in this stack of effects
is applied afterwards. So what makes the difference is not if I change saturation
before contrast, but instead if saturation
is placed before contrast. With that said, I reset
out of saturation, but I will increase the
contrast here just so we can get a better distribution of the values, so the exposure. So now that we know how these
are affecting our clip, we know that with exposure, we're simply pushing the whites. So we'll be pushing the
brightest information up not too much. Then with contrast,
we know that we are pushing the Blacks and
the whites equally. So if I push contrast too much, I'm going to clip some of the whites or the
bright areas here. So let's not go too far. And then we have ph gain gamma. And I know that if
I drag the lyph, I'm not going to pull
down the blacks, but instead I'm pulling
down the shadows. And then with gamma, I
can increase a bit of the midtones and pull down
the shadows a bit more. I don't want to touch
the highlights, and then with levels, I can use the gamma here
to make the overall, I guess, slightly darker, in this case, or do we
want it to be brighter? I'd say ever so slightly darker. Then I can go back to the gamma and push the gamma up a bit. Now, we know we're getting
something very bright here, which is this light,
but I also want to push the highlights
a bit higher. Such. So it's only
natural that there is some clipping here because
this is a bright light. You might at some point come across this idea
that you have to stretch the waveform so that the values touch the
bottom and touch the top. That is not always true. It really depends on what
you're working on, right? If there's nothing
that's meant to be pure black in your clip, then it shouldn't be pure black. Nothing should touch zero. And if nothing is
actually, you know, purely white or bright, you don't have to push the information all the
way to the brights. Now, once you get the color grading where you're
stylizing it, then yes, of course, you
can take some liberty, but it has to be
intentional, of course. So in this case, I'll
bring the blacks down a bit and bring up the mid tones a little
bit. And there we go. So if we scrub through this, you can see we're getting
some nice results, except here, it's a bit
overexposed, we could say, right? So to control this, let's move down a bit
of the mid tones here. So for this, we'll just
move down the highlights as such and decrease there you go. We've color corrected, and we can now add a
bit of saturation. We can add some saturation. Now, my personal preference, and I might have added it
in the LM basic by now, but I like to add a curve. So let's move over to
the video effects, and I can add a Basier
curve above the saturation, and then I'll switch the
channel to saturation. And with this now,
I can use the curve to target the colors
that I want to saturate. Now, it's going to take a
bit of training to learn where these values
are on the curve. But essentially, this lower
area here that I'm using or clicking on controls
around where the reds are. Once you learn a bit
of how the curve is distributed or the values are distributed on the curve,
it becomes easier. You can also use it
to control the U. So if you wanted the
greens to be greener, but it's only one at a time, so feel free to add as
many curves as you need. So I will put this one after, switch it to, and then push
it up over here a bit. You can see we're
getting greener foliage, right? There we go. So in terms of color correction, we've already done a very
good job. We've corrected it. We fix the exposure, and we remove a bit
of the green cast that we had, and there we go. But that is not all
there is to it. You don't always have a
white surface to work with, and sometimes all you have
to go off of is the skin. So let's go ahead and
learn about that.
10. Checking Skintones - Kdenlive: So briefly to check
the skin tones, let's go ahead and add
a rotoscope effect. So rotoscope over
here, add it in. And then we can
simply left click. Left click, left
click, left click. Left click, and then right
click to close our selection. And then we can see here on the vectorscope the
distribution of these values. And as you can see, they are pretty much aligned
with the skin tones. They're a little bit red,
but we know that there is a red light flashing
on our subject, so it only makes sense that there would be
some red in there. So if we were to check
on this scene over here, so let's see where
is our subject. He is and put it
on the forehead. You can see that it's
a little bit green. So if we turn this
off, we can tell, yes, this scene is a bit green. And if we were to do
our white balance based off of this heart alone, then it might come off different once they're no longer
standing in this area. We could always lower the greens ever so slightly.
Let's check again. Okay, a bit more balance, and let's see what happens
when we move away. The result is a little bit red. But remember, again, there is still a light on our subject. So you can usually
use the rotoscope to isolate a part of the skin and then
just try to align it. You can use the sliders
to move the values, red, blue, green, not green. All right. But that is pretty
much it for the skin tone. So it's a brief overview, but just keep in mind that you can always isolate
the skin tones, and we'll learn a bit more
about that once we start targeting specific
values in our footage.
11. Color Grade Theory - Kdenlive: Alright, now we're
going to get into the color grading section of this class. So
we're near the end. And for the color
grading section, I'm going to use
this clip over here, which is Rec seven oh nine. You can already see this.
It's already processed. And what I want to do to this clip is to
make it brighter. So we're getting into the
principle of color grading, which is you want to give
a tone to your clip, whether it's a movie, a vlog, a short, a documentary, you're trying to give
it a mood, a feel. And over here, when I look at this clip, I find it a bit dark. Right? And I'm picturing
something more like Barry Allen and his team at Star Labs, and
it's a bit brighter. We have a brighter atmosphere. So this is already processed, so I can't push
saturation too far. I can't play I can't
recover anything from these dark areas because there's no information
to recover. This is Rec seven oh nine, but we're going to
learn a bit of color grading off of Rec
seven oh nine. So over here, this one is actually a bit color
graded already. This is process footage. But what I did is add a glow, and the glow really
lightens up the room. And then a Bizier curve that
I use to up the saturation. Let me lower it a little
bit actually looking at it. And then I added a color level. The color level is basically the same principle as levels, except that it is broken down into the different channels. So where level would control the waveform
in a uniform manner, color levels controls
these waveforms, so the red, green, and blue, but individually. Then I added a Bizier
curve basi curve, I left it on RGB just to add a bit more light around
the midtones if you will, the bright area midtones. And then now this interesting
section here in the middle, this is all one effect or one stack of effects
to get one result. And I'll break it down for you. I'll start with the
secondary color correction. But before I do,
let's go ahead and look at our effects template, and this stack over here is what you're going
to get with something like LM secondary HSL
or LM secondary Luma. And we get the secondary
color correction. Let's turn it on, and then
we'll add Luma key over here. Luma key is simply
selecting content from our clip based off
of the luminance value. It's going to make
sense in a moment. So Alpha operations is simply an effect
that allows us to, for example, invert
or selection. So Luma ke was selecting these bright areas and excluding
the darker areas here. And with the Alpha operations, I was able to invert that, and now we're
selecting these areas that are being shown and the dark areas are
being excluded. And if you notice, the
dark areas are being used to grab the brightest
areas and are seen, which is why I'm
using a luma key, which works off of brightness. So with these effects together, when we add a mask apply, it applies the mask and
everything that goes between mask apply and the ask mask
operation, if you will. So Alpha operation,
in this case, every effect in between
here will only be applied to the selected area. So if I turn this off, these parts here that
still have color are going to be the only areas
affected by these changes. And finally, a basi curve, just to tweak the
saturation a bit more. So this over here is not
exactly color correction. This was a color grade, if you will, where
I took one image, so one look that it
had and decided to make it brighter and
add a bit of red, orange, a bit of orangy
yellow look to the gamma, so the mid tones, just to really give it a different
tone, a different feel. Okay? And that is the
principle of color grading. So let's dive into it
in the next lesson.
12. White Balance - Kdenlive: Hi. So for this lesson, we're going to do a bit of white balance on this
image over here, just so we can really sit down
the white balance process. So, for starters, we have our
clip here on the timeline. Let's go to our templates, and we can add the LM basic
CC and get our effects that. As usual, I'll collapse everything and then
turn off the keyframes. With that done, we can start quite balancing this
image over here. So I'll start with the
first white balance, the temperature, and
I'll click around here. Although this is not
really gray or such, but it feels like this would be part of the
neutral colors here. I've seen these parts
of trees before. Right? So here it looks a
little bit bluish, so we can move it
closer to the red. Then for the second
color picker, let's see if we grab
something closer to these highlights there, a very, very tiny change. Okay, let's not go too red. We don't want it
to be blue either. That's like a before, after. We've introduced a lot of
blue to let's see here. If we were to add
a bit of green, we are in the woods,
apparently, as well. And finally, that would be it for the white
balance already. We can fine tune it to really
get a more faithful result, but that would be enough
for white balancing here. We'd be able to work with saturation and do the rest of our color
correction, right? However we see fit. I was that easy for us to white balance this
piece of footage here. Alright, and that's
it for this lesson.
13. Color Grading - Kdenlive: Now, another way to go about the color grading once
you're done with the color correction
is you can right click on your clip and go to create sequence
from selection, and this would create a sequence out of
this and you could apply the color grade
directly to the sequence. Okay, so first things first, I'll go ahead and add the
M creative color grade so we can have the color
grading effects stack. Now, this might be
updated by the time that you are
watching this class. So some of these might be
in different positions. So I'll simply collapse all of this and turn off
the key frames. Now, it starts after
the saturation up here. Okay. So currently,
I have the sharpen or unsharp mask and the denoiser at the
top here of the stack. But for now, we can put
them at the bottom. They might be at the bottom for you by the time
you're seeing this. So the first effect
that we have following the saturation is
video equalizer. And the video equalizer
is essentially a compact version
of our contrast. Brightness, which you
could say exposure, a saturation or gamma, the red, green, and blue
gamma, and the gamma weight. This gives us similar controls to what we had in our
color correction. Next, I added a
saturation to it. Desaturation, even though we have one inside of
the video equalizer, we could later on decide
to desaturate or saturate. You can also just delete this. Next, we have the ph Gamma gain, and we're going to use
these wheels here to add a bit of color
and set the tone. Then we have the
tint, which will allow us to add even more of a tone to our footage using
the dark and light values. Then we have the option
of curves down here. And finally, we have the sharp
in the noiser or sharpen. So if we start with
the video equalizer, let's say we want to add a bit
more contrast to this now. We're entering the
color grade so we can push the blacks all
the way to the darks, blow out the highlights all in the name of reaching a
stylized look, right? Up the brightness a bit. I'll decrease the saturation. And then I'll move
the gamma down. I might lower the brightness, make it a bit darker. Next, jumping into
the saturation, I'm going to up the
saturation again. They should push the
reds more than anything. And with the lip gain gamma, I'm going to introduce
some blue in the gamma and then a tiny bit of
green into the shadows. Then for the highlights, a bit of a yellowish tone. Going to pull down the gamma, so making it darker even more you can scrub
through the footage, see what we're getting here. We'll push the gamma
up a little bit and pull the lyfh down instead. Can drag the gain,
push up the gamma. Okay. I can push a
bit more blue into the shadows as well
or rather the gamma. And then now with the tint, we can add our tone. So in the blacks, I will add a very dark, desaturated blue, I guess. It maybe greenish. Okay? And for the whites, I'll put a blue, around a blue, desaturated blue. And then we can control the amount of the tint
with the slider here. So let's see what it
looks like before, after. Before, after. Okay. I won't do anything
with the curves here, but with the Basier curve, I will add a bit of contrast. So push the highlights up and
drag in the shadows a bit. Okay. Alright. And then finally, we have the sharpening, so I can put it to a 0.23 0.23. Let's zoom in here. You can also zoom in holding down
Control on a PC or command on a Mac and use your mouse scroll wheel and then hold down Control on
a PC or command on a Mac. Left click, and you can
move around or pen around. So let's see what the
sharpening is doing. It's giving it a little
bit of that sharpness. And then we have the
denoiser removing any unwanted noise
in our footage. So simply zoom out until
it snaps back into place. You can use the zoom
out button here, too. And finally, to put
it all together, I'm going to add a vignette. We could also add a bit
of grain noise to this. Now that we've denised it, we could purposefully
add a bit of noise. We need to change
the aspect ratio, so it's a bit more oval, but horizontally, you can
see here and the wave form, the shape of it looks nice. The waves and all.
Anyways. I'll increase the center clear side, making the center clearer, then I'll increase
the border radius or softness as they call it
here, and there we have it. Now we can always tweak
some of these values. And we have a few more effects for color correction
or color grade. So if we were to write color up here over the effects
the video effects, you can see we have quite
a few more options here. So we can work on color balance, use the color contrast. We also have the color levels. But in terms of basics, this right here would be enough for you to
get a certain look. And of course, with
the if we move over to our templates again,
clear the search. With the L M secondary, we can always pick
the skin tones or based off of the luminance, the brightness, or even
the chroma, right? So we can isolate parts of our footage the same
way we did over here, and that is it for
the color grade.
14. Class Project - Kdenlive: Now, this is the
end of the class. It is time for your
class project. And what I would like for
you to do is to grab one of the fake log footage that we've used
throughout the class, or even some of those that we didn't use and color corrected. Put a screenshot of
the original clip, a screenshot of the
color corrected, and a screenshot
of the color gray that you decided to do with it. And that will be your training. So remember, you don't have to push the values all the way to the darks or all the way to the whites when
you're color correcting. And once you get to
the color grade, remember what tone
are you going for? You can use a movie as
a reference or show, whatever helps you solidify a final look that
you want to get. So don't be afraid to
look for inspiration, and that is it for this class. Thank you for watching
and happy Editing.
15. Conclusion - Kdenlive: Alright. The class is over. You now know how to color
correct and color grade, at least the basics of it. I'm looking forward to
seeing the work that you have made following
along with this class. If you have questions,
suggestions, doubts, go ahead and leave them in the discussion below. I
will get back to you. And really, it was a pleasure sharing this
information with you. Feel free to share it
with friends and family, anyone that wants to
learn Caden live or color correction, and take care.
Nuxttux Creative, Motion Graphic Designer
