What Nobody Told You About Colour Grading

The principle you're showing is good, but at the same time you have only two shots of yourself in the video and they don't match.

So your last name is lens?

Thank you so much !!

U wd make a hood lens brand

Everything makes perfect sense, I just don't get one thing: why did you put the Look adjustment layer under the Colour balance layer? Wouldn't it make everything look more cohesive to put it on top of everything? I mean, the whole point of the process is to build a solid foundation so you don't have to go back and forth with the steps you're taking.

Absolutely everything makes sense thankypuuuuu

And then, after all this great and hard work to achieve the best possible quality, prople will grab the clip and they will ''enjoy'' it on their TVs, monitors, projectors in dynamic mode!!!😐😐

This was ex-fuckin-zactly what I had been missing in my life.

your video looks so hazy my eye hurts by watching a minute of it

What coloring program is this?

I understand what you say and like where your going but don't get the black and white to set the lighting. Because to me seeing colour helps with how the lighting blends with the overall shots.

This is very accurate bro ❤
Over time, I’ve refined my approach to color grading into a streamlined and effective workflow. I start with color space transforms for all my clips, especially when working with footage from different cameras or formats. Once this is set, I focus on achieving a consistent exposure and balancing key elements like skin tones and white balance. By establishing this baseline, I’ve found that applying the look developed on the first clip across the rest requires minimal adjustment, as they tend to match seamlessly.

I typically place the creative look downstream or on the timeline level nodes, depending on the project's requirements. This ensures I concentrate on balancing the footage first, minimizing the risk of compromising the image integrity while applying the look. My process is heavily guided by scopes, particularly the vectorscope and colourised waveform, which I rely on to maintain consistency throughout. Lastly, I intentionally avoid using qualifiers unless absolutely necessary, as I believe this practice promotes a cleaner and more robust grade overall.

On the final Look adjustment layer, can we add a custom LUT or a plugin like cinema grade or color finale and refine the look ? I am looking at a workflow using these plugins.. Can you please create a video for that

Thank you for breaking that down. :)

Fantastic video, thank you. Well explained

Thank you for this.

Thank you, would appreciate if you give some project files for premiere to see it in the editor. Helps understand the sequence.

80% useless? Get lost. What a stupid title.

It's the best explanation dude, many thanks! 🖖

Whose hand is in the thumbnail?

Eric thanks for your great videos and sharing your knowledge, would love to know if white balance could be explored in the same way you did whit color grading, going beyond do this or that and doing a fundamentals approach

great video - very helpful.

BS

You talk about color grading but your own video looks bad bro. Whatever post process your using (bloom, glare, blur etc) is making it hard to look at.

You know it’s going to be a good video when he spells it “colour”

brother you're wearing a button up shirt without any kind of tie. If you had a bow tie I could trust your advice better.

Well explained in a not too well graded explanatory video? (Your headshot seems to yellow and red to me, really, plus shadows clipping)

What a legend

Very informative

I thought it's Bill Gates on the preview

Thank you so much for your channel, I am learning a lot from your channel.  I am new to color correction and at times past just applied film convert, but I want to do better.  I have a question on this video.  Is an adjustment layer advisable with clips that from multiple different lighting, and locations (outdoors/studio interspersed together).  Would that be the time we need to adjust each clip individually?  Thank you so much for your help and assistance.

This is amazing. In one video you've explained clearly and concisely what hundreds of other YT videos couldn't do. Subscribed!

Would like your opinion on this... I see most people use LUTs After converting LOG to 709 but if you put the LUT before and start doing the primaries and balance and all that before it seems to get a cleaner output and even the LUTSs take a better color with in the Convertion. Ive seen some pro colorist approach it kind of similar. Let me know what you think. I hope it made sense. Im not sure if i articulated this correctly.

Thank you for the knowledge

I would reformulate the three steps to this: 1. get some solid, technical color management in place and set a global creative look for your grade (might be more than one depending on scene variation, but the idea is to unify as much as possible under one look). 2. get your shots balanced underneath that pipeline. There's no sense in balancing and "neutralising" your shots first and then getting a look in place where you're going to stylize, therefore skew the image anyways. 3. deal with the small details – "secondaries" etc. and clean up shots that need more attention than others.

Eric this is the way tutorials meant to be done, by not being tutorials. Instead of talking about randomly pushing buttons, you are talking about concepts. Hi five man !

You make difficult things seem so easy. And explain the reason WHY to do something which is so important! Going to watch all of your videos now :D

At least one bookshelf in the background would convince me about your grades, sir!

Yeah this video is about to become my colour grading bible - thanks!!

This is just what i was looking for. Thank you

Amazing explanation as always. My only pain is that my timeline is consisting of footage from 2 cameras, one of them 8bit, lots of footages from different locations both indoors and outdoors, some footages with ND filter, that alters the colors a bit, but some without ND. Shots shot on different lenses, with different color as well, some of them sharp, some soft. etc😂 but at least I now really understood how to make them look as similar to each other as I never be able to do. Thanks a lot!

I used this workflow to color my latest wedding film, and dang did it help. I think it's my best colored film yet.

This is really helpful, question.
I am using files from two different cameras (DJI and Sony), should I apply luts on the 10bit and log files and then start using adjustment layers to match exposure, contrast, hue and then look?
Or should I apply luts at the end after look?
Thanks a lot in advance

waiting for the secondary adjustment video!

But isnt the color wheels adjustments supose to be above the cst, as you mentioned in other videos, with the purpose to not break the log image ?