IH: Colour Editing

Colour correcting is an essential part of editing, which allows the creators to make sure every image in a relevant sequence (i.e. with similar light sources) looks the same in terms of brightness and colour. This can involve brightening shots which are too dark, or darkening shots so they are correctly exposed.

After you have colour corrected the relevant footage, you can use grading to stylise it. In the example below I have shown the original image, which is desaturated and grey, next to the graded picture. The difference is obvious, the edited version has much more rich, healthy looking skin and colourful pebbles. The hair is also much less grey and the blue shirt pops with colour.

An example of the power of editing,

look at the difference in the pebbles and skin colours

From Utopia (TV Series) which features highly

unique colour editing

Colour Grading

Here is a video by a professional colourist who uses DaVinci Resolve to edit the colouring of images to enhance and stylise them. It's well worth looking at as it shows the power of colour editing in creating different moods. While none of us are anywhere near this experienced or talented, I have some experience with colour grading, so I will be using Adobe Speedgrade or DaVinci Resolve (the free version) to edit.

 

 

Colour Theory

 

By using similar colours you can create an analogous colour scheme, which means the colour palette (colours in the frame) are all very similar. This can be highly effective when creating an environment such as greens for a forest, oranges yellows and reds for a desert.

 

Another way of creating an interesting colour palette is to use colours from opposing sides of the colour wheel, which theoretically contrast each other. Instead, they actually compliment each other.

Colour Swatches

Colour swatches are squares of colour aligned together to allow for easy comparison. They show the major colours in a colour palette and can be used to analyse the colours of a piece or to analyse colour theory.

This Danish website, Adobe Kular, allows the user to sample huge amounts of premade colour swatches, and to even create new ones, which automatically selects complimentary colours.