Colour Grading Video for Photographers…

I have been asked a number of times recently how I colour graded the video of Myra @ Mirra. Although its no master piece I thought I would write about how I did it here…

I edit with Final Cut Pro and whilst I do have Color available to me I wasn’t getting the results I wanted immediately as it is all new to me. I do plan on spending more time experimenting with Color in the future however but a quick  fix for now, especially for photographers is to use programs you are already well versed at, Lightroom and/or Photoshop!

Here is how I did it (I wont go into the work-flow I use for importing the 5d MkII footage and transcoding it from its painful native format, but if you would like me to just let me know);

Firstly I edited all of my footage in FCP. Got it to the point where the sequence was pretty much complete. I then exported if from FCP;

- File – Export – Using Quicktime Conversion – Set a new folder and file name for this sequence.
- Format – Image Sequence ->
- Options  – Format = Jpeg – Frames per second = (whatever your footage is orignially running at.) ->
- Options – Quality = Best
- Then OK

This will export your enitre sequence to individual images so depending on its length you will most likely end up with thousands of still images.

I then import all of these images into Lightroom and make my colour adjustments on one of these still images. Copy these setting (Settings – Copy Settings) then select the rest of the images and simply Synch these settings (Settings – Synch Settings) to the remainder of the images and the changes will be made on them automatically. (This could also be done using Photoshop then running a batch.) Once you are happy with how it looks export all of the images as jpg’s again into a new folder.

Now using Quicktime;
- Goto File – Open Image Sequence
- Select the first of the graded still images and open it.
- Set the frames per second to what you are working with.
- Quicktime will now open the entire sequence and you should be able to play it to see what it now looks like.
- Now Export this graded sequence into a format you are comfortable working with.

I then re-imported this graded sequence back into FCP and made any other final editing adjustments. I also then took mine into Motion and added some titles.

Well that is it. It may sound very long winded but really the process is not much different form using Color. Once you render your footage out to go into Color then render again I found it really didn’t take much more time. And because I can make colour adjustments int LR far faster then Color I believe it actually saved me work.

Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any questions.