From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

960 Color grading tips and tricks

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

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960 Color grading tips and tricks

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- [Instructor] All right, now let's take a look at a bunch of color grading tips and tricks here inside Camera Raw. For starters, I'm going to expand my color grading options. You don't have to click on the triangle, by the way. You can just click on the words, Color Grading. Now by default, you're going to see this three-way view with mid-tones, shadows, and highlights all at the same time. If you want to hone in on any one of them, such as the shadows let's say, then you can click on these icons, black for shadows, gray for mid-tones, white for highlights. Notice these little dots underneath. They are badges that indicate that I have made changes to each of those options. So I could click on shadows right there or I could just click on the word Shadows, and now I have a lot more control here inside this color wheel. If I want to switch to mid-tones, all I have to do is click on this edge right here. That'll switch me to mid-tones, and then I could click right here to switch to highlights, or I could click on these left-hand edges in order to cycle back. And so, I'll go ahead and switch back to mid-tones right here. Notice that each one of these options has its own eyeball. And so, if I were to click and hold on this guy, then I would temporarily turn off my mid-tones modifications, and as you can see, we have a much cooler image compared to what I see when I release, which is more warmth. If you prefer to edit numerical values, then you can click on this triangle right here in order to expand the hue and saturation options. And then, you can just go ahead and scrub along the top of this slider, like so, in order to modify a setting. Now, as I was saying in a previous movie, if you drag this inner circle, that is the circle inside the color wheel, then you'll end up with this soft constraint, but if you drag too far away, then you're going to modify both the hue and saturation values together. If you want to ensure that you have a constraint where the saturation value is concerned, then press and hold the Shift key. And what was formerly a gray line, like so, becomes a black line indicating that you have a hard constraint. So that's a function of pressing the Shift key. If you instead press the Control key, or the Command key on a Mac, you're going to get this ring, which allows you to modify the hue value independently of the saturation value. Which is a little bit of a duplicate function because you can already drag this outer circle if you want. However, that is an option and I would be remiss if I didn't share it with you. If you want to make a more fine tuned adjustment, then press the Alt key, or the Option key on a Mac, as you drag, and notice now, that I'm adjusting both the hue and saturation values, but by smaller increments. And if you're working along with me, you'll be able to feel that as well. If you want to make a huge big change, just click inside of the color wheel and that will change the hue and saturation values to that location. If you want to reset any one of these values right here, then just double click on its slider triangle, like so, and notice that takes the hue value back to its default, which is zero degrees for red. I'll go ahead and click at a different location so I can show you how to reset everything, which is to just double click anywhere inside of the color wheel. And so, let me show you that again. I'll click over here in order to move both the hue and saturation values. If I double click anywhere, then I'll reset both values, or if you want things to look a little less clumsy on screen, than just double click inside that inner circle and that will reset the values, like so. Now, it's reset the saturation value to zero, which means I'm not colorizing the mid-tones at all. The hue value, because the saturation value's zero, does not matter. And then finally, if you want to collapse the panel, just go ahead and click on the words, Color Grading, once again. If you want to switch from this panel to the first panel, Basic, you just press Control + One, or Command + One on a Mac. That'll go ahead and expand the panel, like so. And so notice, I'll go ahead and click on the word Basic in order to collapse that panel. If you count down the list, you can see the curve is the second panel, detail is the third, color mixer is fourth, and color grading is fifth, which means another way to expand the color grading panel if you're just crazy for keyboard shortcuts is to press Control + Five, or Command + Five on the Mac. And those are all the crazy tips and tricks I can think of, at least off hand, when working inside the color grading panel here inside the most recent version of Camera Raw.

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