Color Tune

ColorColor & LightColor GradingMembers-OnlyRaster

Smoothly tune the color of dark and light parts of a photo or video segmented by lift, gamma, and gain. Use this to achieve various color "looks", to change the mood of the video, or to match the color of different takes.

Properties
Lift

Adjusts the color and lightness of the layer, affecting dark parts more strongly than light parts.

Default: 0.0º 0.0% +0.000
Gamma

Adjusts the color and lightness of the layer, affecting midtones more strongly than light or dark parts.

Default: 0.0º 0.0% +0.000
Gain

Adjusts the color and lightness of the layer, affecting light parts more strongly than dark parts.

Default: 0.0º 0.0% +0.000
Offset

Adjusts the overall color and lightness of the layer.

Default: 0.0º 0.0% +0.000

Usage

The Color Tune effect offers four sets of controls: Lift Gamma, Gain, and Offset.

Each set of controls affects all of the colors in the layer, but certain color are affected more strongly than others, depending on which set of controls you use.

Each set of controls has three properties:

Workflow

1. Luminance Adjustment

If you need to make adjustments that affect luminance, it's best to do that first, either using effects like Highlights and Shadows, Brightness / Contrast, or Exposure / Gamma, or by adjusting the luminance sliders for Lift, Gamma and Gain.

Be careful not to move the sliders too far, or there will be clipping which results in overexposed, blown-out areas, or loss of detail in dark aras.

2. Color Balancing

Once the luminane has been adjusted, use effects such as Color Temperature or the color discs in Lift, Gamma, Gain, and Offset to match your footage with other clips in your project.

3. Building a "Look"

After luminance has been adjusted and the desired color balance has been achieved with other clips in your project, the last step is to build your "look". For this, if you want natural-looking footage, it's best to stick with subtle adjustments in the hue discs for Lift, Gamma, and Gain.

One popular look is to push the lift disc towards cyan, and gain disc towards orange or yellow.

Color Tune for Multiple Images or Video

When using the Color Tune effect on multiple Image or Video layers, it's often good practice to use the effect twice for each layer: One instance of the effect is customized for each layer and allows you to compensate for inconsistencies in how the video or photo was recorded to achieve consistent color across the project. The second instance is where you apply your look: You can make it for one layer, and then copy and paste the same settings to other layers.

Images and Video

Color Tune works best on layers with a lot of color and contrast, such as images and video.

Keyframe Animation

When any property is animated with keyframes, the hue and strength components are tweened independently of each other. This means, for example, animating from red to cyan will pass thorugh the intermediate hues (yellow and green) on the way.

Colorize vs Color Tune

Colorize and Color Tune are very different effects. Colorize overrides colors in a layer while maintaining the luminance, while Color Tune merely nudges certain colors in the direction of a particular hue without changing the relation between the original colors.

Use Colorize if you want to make the layer look like it is being views through colored glass, or printing with a single color of ink, or illuminated with harsh monocromatic light.

Use Color Tune if you want to subtly adjust the colors in the layer. Color Tune is much more suitable for creating a cinematic "look".

Use Cases