Editing
Color Correction 101

Morgan Paar
August 2008

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Don't let the interface of the Color Corrector 3-Way window intimidate you (OK, some of us editors were intimidated by this less-than-intuitive window). Keep in mind that, even though this article will show you a few simple techniques, this color-correction tool and others are quite robust, and some editors make healthy incomes concentrating on this fix-it-in-post endeavor.

Let's start with some tools that will help greatly. The first is an NTSC monitor. Though we are aware that many editors work without this essential tool, due to its hefty sticker price (some over $10,000!), we really cannot see the true colors that viewers experience on a television set from our computer monitors. A consumer television set is better than no outside monitoring of the picture, but a true NTSC monitor is best. If you are sure your finished piece will live only on the internet, no monitor is necessary. But if you are making DVDs of your final project (which are usually viewed on television sets), or the Discovery Channel calls and wants to use your piece on air, it's a good idea to view your project through a non-computer monitor before output.

The other two tools we will use won't cost you anything extra if your editing software has them built in. They are two of the four video scopes: the waveform monitor and the vectorscope. We covered these tools in The Right Caliber, the May 2007 Editing column. Again, we will admit that these highly technical-looking scopes intimidated some of us at first viewing, but learning the basics of how to read them to assist in altering light and color will great improve our images.

The video scopes give us invaluable information on color and brightness within a single clip and even help us correct white-balance problems originating in production. They will also quickly tell us if our image is not "broadcast safe," enabling us to bring it within the safe zone with our color corrector.

Sir Isaac Newton gets credit for developing the color wheel as we know it, with the primary additive colors red, green and blue and the secondary colors magenta, yellow and cyan, formed by overlapping primary colors. The center of a color wheel has no color or is white. As you travel away from the center, colors become more saturated.

Please notice that we are working with the Color Corrector 3-Way filter in this exercise. There is another tool called simply the Color Corrector. We use the 3-Way for "primary color correction," which incorporates the manipulation of the overall color balance of the entire image. In a later article, we will cover the Color Corrector tool, which lets us manipulate individual colors (often called "secondary color correction").

Many higher-end editing programs will have a "color correction" layout that you can find under the Window pull-down menu. Most modern editing programs will let you work with most of your color correction in real time, that is if your processor is fast enough and you have a decent amount of RAM.

You can find the Color Corrector 3-Way in your Video Filters folder; usually you'll locate it under Color Correction.

The 3-Way has a visual interface as well as a numeric interface. We find it easier to work in the visual interface.

Most Color Corrector 3-Way visual interfaces show three color wheels with luminance sliders beneath them, along with other controls, including an eye-dropper. In primary color correction, we suggest you concentrate on image contrast first, then work on color balance. The eye is more sensitive to changes in contrast than to differences in color, so this is the best place to start. We use a work flow that starts with setting the black levels, then moving on to the white levels and ending with adjustments to the mid-tone levels.

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