What Is Color Grading
Lesson 1 from: Color Correcting and Creating a Cinematic Look in Photoshop CCJesús Ramirez
What Is Color Grading
Lesson 1 from: Color Correcting and Creating a Cinematic Look in Photoshop CCJesús Ramirez
Lessons
What Is Color Grading
08:43 2How To Make Color Corrections Using Curves
06:10 3Crash Course On The Curves Adjustment Layer
05:41 4How To Apply A Summer Blockbuster Color Grade
04:55 5How To Make A Selective Color Adjustment Layer
02:27 6How To Apply A Retro 50's Color Grade With The Selective Color Adjustment Layer
08:45 7Color Grading Techniques
12:58 8Color Grading Tips
05:20Lesson Info
What Is Color Grading
color, correcting and creating a cinematic look in photo shop. See? See, what that means is that we're gonna look at some of the tools that are available in photo shop, and we're gonna first of all color corrected image and then apply a color grade. Now, you might be thinking, What is color grading in what is color correction? What is the difference? Well, first of all, what is colored rating Color grading? Is you applying color to an image to help you tell the story? Um, at least for the purposes of this class, color correction means having unusual white balance. There's no color cast on your images, so at least in this class s or we're gonna define color correction. So color grading Have this while here that contains several different images and have this image here. That's image that contains no color. Caste is fairly neutral. You can sell. So by selecting any tool, really really matter. What will you have selected and when you hover over the image? If you have the info panel on, yo...
u can see the RGB values here. Notice that the RGB values change as I hover over the image notice that if I hover over any of the pixel, that should be a neutral gray. In this case is shirt. All the pixels are fairly even 1 61 for red 1 64 for green 1 67 for Blue. This means that we have unusual image. So we need to start with that in order to apply a color. Great. We don't need any color caste or anything like that on the images they're gonna be working with. So I mentioned the colored rating is telling a story with color. And in this class, we're going to focus on the cinematic look a little more specific on the summer blockbuster. Look, if ah, have you ever seen a movie like Mission impossible? Or maybe even the new Batman movie or the Superman movie? You'll notice a color combination that is very popular among action movies. And I've applied that color combination to, uh, this original image, which is the teal orange effect. Now, if you want to see more examples of how something like this looks on actual movies, you can actually go to my website where I have ah whole bunch of different examples of tool orange effects and different other effects that, uh, excuse me. Different color color color grading effects that color supply to movies so you can goto PTC vids dot com slash creativelive hyphen color PTC vez dot com slash creativelive hyphen color and you'll see a whole bunch of different movie stills from movies that you probably seen and the different color combinations that they use. Teoh create the stories that they're trying to tell the stories that they're trying to convey. Um, as I mentioned, Tool Orange is the one that we're gonna be focusing on in this class, but it is definitely not the only one. There's, um, for example, if you're watching a movie that might be, um, over dystopian future, you might have something that looks like that the saturated looks gloomy, maybe a hint of green. Um, I'm assuming everybody in here has seen or is at least aware of the movie The Matrix. It has a green color tend to it, and that is because that movie is telling a story. If you've seen the movie. Spoiler Alert came out in 1999 so I think everybody seen it. Um, the, uh, the movie set inside of a computer. So, for the most part, computer simulation. So the color has decided to use green as the color, the main color grade for this movie to help push that story forward. A different color tone would have not worked for that movie. Maybe dizzy, saturated, gloomy look might have not been a good choice for that. Um, there's also ah monotone effect that, um, this is probably something like you would scene in the movie Mad Max, where there in the desert, most of the times, everything looks just brown in just a single color. So these are a couple examples of the different color grades that you can apply to images and photoshopped. Obviously, when you're talking about movies you don't use photo shop, you would use programs like Adobe Speed grade or maybe even Adobe Premiere and adobe aftereffects. Um, and you wouldn't use adjustment layers. You would use something called the color look up table which Photoshopped can handle. And I will show you how those work within photo shop and you can actually export adjustment layers in photo shop as let files so you can use them in those video applications that I just mentioned, and I'm gonna show you how to do all that in this in this class. So these are the, um, different, um, samples that I wanted to show you. So I mentioned that we're gonna work with the teal orange effect, and this is again most popular in action movies and summer blockbusters. And it uses a combination of Thiel's in the dark's in orange and the lights specifically on the skin tones. The skin tones usually don't get any of that. He'll look in the shadows so you can see his hair doesn't have that teal look, really, and the darker shadows do not. But the shadows everywhere else in the image do have that effect. You might be wondering. Well, why? Why use those specific colors to create the cinematic look? That's because those colors pop fuel and orange are opposites in the clear wheel, and when you put opposite colors of a color wheel together, they tend to pop it stand out. In this case, we want our actor to stand out from the background. So if you're wondering, well, I don't know what complementary colors are, and how do I find out what they are. Well, though, he has a tool for you that you can use within photo shop, and it's under the window. Menu extensions, adobe color themes when I click on that and it's gonna bring up this panel here, and you have different types of, um, colors that you can select analogous, and you can just click and drag the color wheel and you'll see the color swatches here we have monochromatic. So just a single tone and we have Triad complimentary and complimentary is the one that we're gonna focus on today. We're gonna just focus on two colors. If I click and drag this point to the blue, you'll see that the opposite color is yellow orange color. So this is the, um teal orange effect that we're going for for our cinematic effect. So if you notice the skin, tones usually would lie anywhere along this range here yellow and red somewhere along there and you'll notice that the opposite colors to those colors are green Sigh in in blue. So that's why that teal orange effect has become really popular in movies, and it could sometimes be overdone. For example, the Transformers movie, the original one that there's a screenshot of that on my website, you'll see, is just completely blown out. And in my opinion, that's a bad use of this effect. So you don't wanna overdo it. You want to stay within reason and not make the characters to orange in the background to blue. So now that we have these colors in mind, now I'm gonna talk about how to apply these colors to images in photo shop. But before we do that, let's step back a moment and talk a little bit about color correcting images because you do need to have an image with neutral graze if you wanna apply a color grade correctly. So I'm gonna disable these layers and I'm gonna go into this color correction group, and I have this struck here in this truck, obviously has a green color cast. I'm gonna open up the info panel again. If I hover over the image and hover over an area that should be a neutral gray, for example, with white here which should be neutral, you'll see that the Green Channel right here RGB the Green Channel has the highest value. 1 81 1 33 and 1 77 on a neutral on ah, a section of a photo that should be a neutral color, those values, and to be as close, they need to be closely related that it can't be too far apart from each other. So what we need to do in photo shop is try to make those colors, um, lying.
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
Hstrymkrs
I watched this class live, and I thought he gave great examples as he explained techniques. I have been wanting to learn how to color grade images, and I am very happy with the three approaches he shared. I feel I have a great handle on this look now. Thanks so much CL for bringing him to teach us.
Alissa Rosenberg
I am only onto lesson 6 but already I have learned so many new things that I really needed to learn about color! Especially how to use the curves layer adjustment with blend modes! Wow!! Such a great investment!