From the course: Premiere Pro Guru: Fixing Video Exposure Problems

Sharpening your video - Premiere Pro Tutorial

From the course: Premiere Pro Guru: Fixing Video Exposure Problems

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Sharpening your video

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- In the world of digital photography, sharpening is often used to counteract the effects of the digital sensor. Even a perfectly in-focus shot can show some softness due to compression or the way that the sensor handles things. But sharpening can help counteract that. Now that same ability is available in video and with the Lumetri effect, it's likely a real time filter. Previously, sharpening could be very processor intensive, leading to very long render times. But that's just not the case anymore. Let's go to our next sequence here, three dot three. And we'll take a look at some sharpening. Here we go. I'll press the backslash key to fit things and you can see the after state and the before state. Well, what's at play here? Well if we take a look at the Effect. I'll double click to load it. You'll see that I've applied the Lumetri effect. In fact, two instances of that effect. Now in this case, the first mask is applied and what's happening here is we could adjust the overall sharpness. So I can bring up the details in the bird. Then a second Lumetri effect is applied and this can actually effect everything else. So let me walk you through this. So let's start with the shot here. And I'm going to lower the overall exposure first, darkening a bit. Now I'll click on the four point polygonal mask. And we can drag the corners here. I'm going to put those slightly outside so let's fit this in here so we can see the control handles, there we go. And remember, you can use the Image tool here to effect the feather for a little bit of transition as well as grab the other handle to move things in or out. That looks good. What I'm going to do is darken that a little bit and go down to Creative and reduce the sharpness. If we view this at a hundred percent and full quality, what you'll notice is that the rocks have lost some detail. Here they are sharpened, and reduced. Now, the out of focus areas are still out of focus but if we toggle that on and off, you'll notice that the exposure change and reduction in sharpness has helped really push that foreground out of focus and drawn less interest. I'll also pull down this saturation slightly since darkening it made the color stronger. Now, in the Effects panel, I can click on the Lumetri effect and choose Edit, Copy. And then Edit, Paste to add it again. Let's zoom this out by choosing Fit. In this case, the adjustment has been applied twice now. But I want to flip it so under the Mask Controls for the second instance, I'll click Inverted. Now, I can adjust the top of the shot, richening the color. Let's click Auto for the exposure. It's looking better. We'll recover the highlights a little bit but lift the shadows. And now, take sharpness the opposite direction from the Creative section, helping sharpen the details on the feathers. Let's punch that in there to 50% and if we toggle that off and on, you'll notice that the details in the feathers are sharper as well as a targeted adjustment to exposure and color. Let's fit that in there. So now, we have the improved shot. Our eagle is clearer and the ground in the foreground has been darkened and blurred. This helps guide the eye to the subject and ensures that by using sharpening, we can enhance detail or subtract detail as needed within the shot. Remember, this is not the same as blurring. You can apply a Blur effect with it's own mask if you want to get heavier handed. Sharpening is a subtle adjustment and it can be used to naturally influence how the footage looks. A little bit of sharpening goes a long way so be careful not to over-do it. You'll also note that this slider stops at 100, you can't drag it beyond, even clicking on the numbers and trying to. I recommend a little bit less and remember, consider viewing at a hundred percent. This'll help you really judge the effects of sharpness. Blurring and sharpening, that looks a lot better and the feather details are really coming through on the bird.

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