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16.4: Fixing Color and Exposure

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    124302

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    Improving the look of your video

    A sure-fire way to improve almost any production is to do a color correction pass on your video once you’ve “locked picture”. This involves learning how to read video scopes to evaluate the amount of brightness captured in your clips and knowing how to correct or optimize properties that will improve the appeal of them. This process is color correction and it is fairly straightforward and easy to learn. The related step of creating a signature color and brightness profile for an edited film, called color grading, is a more involved process that goes beyond this guide. Here are some steps you can take, relatively quickly, to improve the overall look of your video by adjusting the brightness and color in your clips and across your timeline.

    Evaluation of Brightness and Color in video

    The first step to images with more impact and general appeal is an evaluation of both the brightness and the color in a clip. Brightness in video terms is called Luminance or shortened to Luma and is the “black-and-white” aspect of the image that defines the shape and lighting of the person or scene being photographed. Color, called Chrominance by video technicians and colorists, refers to all the color information, mixed from the primary channels of Red, Green and Blue (RGB) that are applied to an image.

    The image of the flowers shows Luma (left), Chroma (middle) and both together.

    Image of flowers displayed in three ways - as Luma only, Chroma only and both Luma and Chroma together (regular image)
    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Luminance only, Chrominance only, and full color image. (CC BY-SA 3.0; Imagage by Algr via Wikimedia)

    This page titled 16.4: Fixing Color and Exposure is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Misha Antonich (ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)) .