Color Correcting and Grading in Final Cut Studio

Color 101: An Introduction to Color

Duration: 3 days
Time: 10am - 5pm. Breaks are scheduled throughout the day and lunch is typically scheduled between 12-1pm
Course Materials: Vendor Authorized Courseware provided
Locations: Reston, VA / On-Site
Related Courses:
Cost: $1495
Registration: Click Here to Register

Course Description
This three-day hands-on course will familiarize students with Apple’s masterful new color grading and finishing software. Start with the basics of color balancing and correction, and move on to the fine points of secondary grading, including scene matching, using vignettes to isolate and track regions, creating advanced color effects and “looks,” skin tone adjustments, adjusting the composition and framing of a shot, and much more.

Who Should Attend?
This course is designed for existing Final Cut Pro users who want to learn more about the color correction and grading capabilities of Color. The course is designed for those who prefer hands-on and interactive instruction to best explore the functionality of Color.

Prerequisites
Students should have the following prerequisite knowledge prior to attending the course:
Basic knowledge of the Macintosh OS
Level One Final Cut Pro End User certification is preferred. Ideally, students will have attended a Final Cut Pro 101, 200 or 250 course.

Course Outline - Day 1

Lesson 1
Working with the Color Interface Setting Up Your Computer, Setting Up a Project, Understanding the Eight Rooms: Color’s Task-Based Workflow, Navigating Your Sequence, Exploring the Setup Room, Applying Basic Grades, Viewing Your Images, Performing Secondary Grades, Employing Color FX, Applying Final Touches, Panning and Scanning, Utilizing Still Stores, Correcting the Sequence and Introducing the Render Queue Room

Lesson 2
Basic Grading Exploring the Primary Room, Using the Auto Balance Control,Grading with the Color Balance Controls, Grading with Curves, and Understanding Additional Controls

Lesson 3
Basic Secondary Grading Three Types of Secondaries, Performing Key-Based Secondaries, Keying with HSL Qualifiers, Performing Vignette-Based Secondaries, Creating a Look, and Secondary Curves

Course Outline - Day 2

Lesson 4
Advanced Secondary Grading Using Multiple Secondaries, Combining a Key and a Vignette,Using Multiple Keys, Creating Custom Mask Shapes, Combining Vignettes, and Incorporating Curve Effects

Lesson 5
Grade Management Managing Grades on a Single Shot, Switching Between Grades, Adding and Deleting Grades, Duplicating a Grade, Setting the Beauty Grade, Saving Corrections and Grades, Deleting Saved Corrections, Organizing Corrections,Saving Secondary Corrections, Saving Grades, Moving Grades from Clip to Clip, Dragging Individual Corrections, Grouping Shots, Applying Grades to Groups, and Working with Multiple Grades

Lesson 6
Color Effects Using the Color Effects Room, Applying Nodes, Building Color Effects, Controlling Node Order, Monitoring Inactive Nodes, Adding Nodes to Existing Trees, Saving and Reapplying Effects as Presets, Modifying an Applied Preset, and Working with Preset Color Effect

Course Outline - Day 3

Lesson 7
Common Recipes Black Hawk Down/Mogadishu Look, CSI Miami Look, Schindler’s List Look, Flashback Look, Saturated Sunrise Look, and Skin Diffusion and Beauty Tricks

Lesson 8
Keyframing Effects Animating Effects in Color, Manipulating Keyframes, Navigating to Keyframes, Deleting Keyframes, Keyframing Other Rooms, Changing Interpolation Settings, Animating User Shapes, Adding Intermediary Keyframes, and Keyframing Color Effects

Lesson 9
Recomposing and Tracking Using the Geometry Room, Recomposing Shots, Animating Pan and Scan Effects, Applying Tracking Data to Corrections, Offsetting the Vignette, and Manual Tracking

Lesson 10
Primary Out and Rendering Global Changes and Final Tweaks, Modifying and Replacing Primary Out Room Settings, Creating a Stylized Look for a Finished Project, Applying Stylized Primary Out Corrections to Grouped Clips, Manually Controlling Broadcast-Safe Output, Adjusting Black Levels, Limiting the Range of Black Level Adjustments, Manually Adjusting White, Black and Chroma Levels , Rendering Color Projects, Adding Clips to the Render Queue, Rendering Shots and Sending to Final Cut Pro, and Using Color’s Archive Feature