Color Tune

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.

• The Lift controls make adjustments that most strongly affect dark colors in the layer, and only mildly affect light colors. Specifically, the amount p by which a color is affected by the Lift controls is calculated as p = (1-y)², where y is the color's perceptually adjusted luminance. This is essentially a power curve that is strong in dark colors and falls off rapidly in the midtones.

• The Gamma controls make adjustments that most strongly affect midtones in the layer, and only mildly affect light or dark colors. Specifically, the amount p by which a color is affected by the Gamma controls is calculated as p = 1-|2y-1|², where y is the color's perceptually adjusted luminance. This is essentially a symmetrical power curve with the peak centered in the midtones.

• The Gain controls make adjustments that most strongly affect light colors in the layer, and only mildly affect dark colors. Specifically, the amount p by which a color is affected by the Gain controls is calculated as p = y², where y is the color's perceptually adjusted luminance. This is essentially a power curve that is weak in the dark colors and midtones and clumbs rapidly in the lighter colors.

• The Offset controls make adjustments that affect all colors in the layer the same way.

Each set of controls has three properties:

• The angle around the color disc selects a hue.

• The length of the line inside the color disc determines how strongly the selected hue is applied to existing colors. This is a relative operation, so existing colors are "pushed" in the direction of the selected hue without changing luminance.

• The vertical slider controls the luminance adjustment applied to each color. As with hue, this is a relative operaiton based on the existing color.

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

• Balance the colors and luminance of images and video to create a consistent look and feel across clips or scenes in.
• Push the color of Lift towards cyan, and the color of Gain towards orange to produce the look popular in early 21st century cinema.
• Adjust the color of Gain by itself to evoke the feeling of illumination with a differnet color light source.
• For outdoor scenes, adjust the color of Lift and Gain in opposite directions, and boost the Gain or Gamma luminance to evoke the feeling of an alien world.