Colour correction and grading

Every picture input carries its own colour correction, independent of every other input. Open an input’s settings and go to its Colour tab, then switch between Correction, Grading and LUT at the top.

Colour applies live, as fast as you move a slider: if that input is on Program, you see the change on air as you drag, while framing a source waits until you let go.

Correction

White Balance has a Red, Green and Blue stop each, two stops either way, plus an overall Hue shift up to 180°; Neutral clears all four in one press. To match a camera automatically instead, press Pick Reference…, then click something in the frozen, uncorrected picture that should be neutral grey or white, such as a grey card, a wall or a shirt. The picture updates from that one click; picking again replaces it.

Temperature and Tint at the top are quicker ways to the same three: Temperature makes the picture warmer (right) or cooler (left) by moving red and blue against each other, and Tint takes out a green (left) or magenta (right) cast by moving green against them. Both run from −100 to +100 with 0 changing nothing. They follow the Red, Green and Blue sliders and a picked reference, and the Red, Green and Blue sliders follow them.

Exposure has one Stops slider, five stops either way.

Tone adds six more: Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Vibrance, Shadows and Highlights. Brightness lifts everything, including black, which exposure cannot touch; Vibrance makes the dull colours more or less colourful and leaves the vivid ones, and skin tones, mostly as they are; Shadows and Highlights each reach only one end of the range and leave the other alone. They behave like the Shadows and Highlights sliders in a photo editor: black stays black and white stays white while the tones between them are brought up or down, and a colour that is lifted stays the same colour, only brighter. Every slider here has its own reset arrow, and Reset All, beside Pick Reference…, clears the whole tab in one press.

Grading

A three-way grade pushes a hue into each of three tonal bands (Shadows, Midtones and Highlights), independent of the correction above. It works like the colour grading panel of a photo editor. Each band has:

• Hue (0–360°, shown as a small colour swatch) and Strength (0–100%), the colour it pushes the band towards and how far. At 0% the hue does nothing.
• Luminance (−100 to +100), which makes the band brighter or darker without adding any colour. Shadows +100 lifts black, and Highlights −100 brings white down.

A tint never colours pure black or pure white: the Shadows tint is strongest in the dark greys rather than in black itself, and the Highlights tint fades out just before white.

Presets save a grade under a name and bring it back later, or onto another input: a look you built once, put on a whole show, without repeating the work. A preset carries the three grading bands alone: applying one changes an input’s look without disturbing the white balance or exposure it needed to match its camera in the first place.

LUT

A LUT applies a ready-made look from a .cube file, the format editing and grading software, and camera makers, publish theirs in. It acts last, after the correction and the grade, so you match the camera first and then put the look on top.

• Choose… picks the file. The line under it says In use once the file has been read, with the LUT’s own title if it has one.
• Strength (0–100%) blends between the picture without the LUT and with it. Its reset arrow puts it back to 100%.
• Reload reads the file again, after you have edited it or put it back.
• Remove takes the LUT off the input.

The Show keeps a reference to the .cube file where it is, as it does with media files, so keep it with the Show’s other files. If the file goes missing, it is listed with the Show’s other missing files to point at again, and Save As with Files copies it beside the Show. A file that cannot be read never stops the input: it shows without the LUT, and the LUT tab says, in orange, what is wrong with the file.

Reset All removes the LUT too.

Next

Framing a source, the other half of what an input’s card opens, and Chroma key, for a presenter in front of a green or blue screen, and Video FX, for black & white, blur and the other effects. Program has its own colour and Video FX too, from the gear beside Fade to Black (Video FX › On Program).