Speaker 1: Hi there, this is Unmesh from PiXimperfect. How are you doing? I hope you're having a great day and making it a beautiful one. And if not, know that you can turn it around anytime you wish. In this video, let's color grade and we're going to color grade in levels. Now, what are these levels? Well, in level one, we will do basic correction like this. Now, if we post something like this just with the basic correction, nobody's going to complain. We are just going to make the image look okay. That's our primary goal. In level two, we will even out the skin tones like this. If there's a lot of harsh shadows happening in the skin, if there's a greenish tint in the shadows, we will fix it here. In level three, we will actually color the skin and add mood to the entire image. Now, I don't have excellent lighting here. A couple of bulbs from the hardware store in a softbox. So, I completely color the skin. That takes away all the chances of color shifts that happen with these kind of lights. Level four is very special and we have not talked about it in any videos before and that is targeting and modifying individual colors. Let's take a look at it again. Here's the before and here is the after. As you can tell, the blues have been boosted and you can do it with any color that has to be a little different from the skin tone. For example, if you're wearing something, by the way, please make sure to wear something that doesn't match so much with the skin tone. If you're wearing, let's say, a green shirt, you can target just that color, boost the contrast, boost the color, up to you. Also, towards the end, I'm going to share with you how to make a 1080p footage look like 4k. It's not going to be exactly that, but it can be a little closer. Also, we have a gift for you towards the end, which may be extremely helpful if you're willing to practice. I'm super excited to share with you these

Speaker 2: techniques. So, without any further ado, let's get started. Did you notice the background music?

Speaker 1: It has vocals as the intro rolled and as I speak now, the vocals are off. Where do you think I get such amazing music for YouTube videos where all the tracks are available separately? Well, that brings us to today's sponsor, Epidemic Sound. If you're a content creator looking for high quality music, Epidemic Sounds is the best platform to musicalize your videos as you will never receive copyright penalties. You might say, Unmesh, I'll just download free music from YouTube channels that give non-copyright music. Well, when I was starting out, I used a ton of music from these channels. But one to two years down the line, I started getting copyright claims back to back. And that's when I subscribed to Epidemic Sounds four years ago, way before this sponsorship. And yes, I paid for it. Besides the peace of mind, they also have 35,000 tracks from various different genres and more than 90,000 sound effects. And the music is produced by professional musicians. And here's my favorite part. You can break down the music and get as creative as possible. You can listen to the full mix or just the drums or just the melody. And of course, you can download them separately. I have teamed up with Epidemic Sounds to bring you an exclusive Cyber Week discount on their music service. Get 30 day free trial, absolutely free, get creative and an extra two months with 75% off only by clicking the link in the description. The discount is valid for the personal plan and the offer will only be available for five days from today. So make sure to not miss out on this offer and the diverse catalog from Epidemic Sounds. Back to the lesson. And before we get into the meat of the lesson or the tofu of the lesson, if you're vegetarian, let us take care of a few housekeeping items. So first of all, I'm working with the latest Premiere Pro 2023, but all of it is applicable to 2022 version as well. So no worries there. And if you're watching from the future, I'm sure most of it is applicable to 2024 as well. Secondly, you want to make sure that we are not lost and your workspace looks like mine. So for it, double click on the editing tab at the top. This will reset the workspace, click on Reset. And now it should look exactly like how it is looking for you. If you're a professional, you don't really have to do this. Another thing you need to be careful about with Premiere Pro 2022 onwards is the color space. Take a look at it. So right now I have dragged in a screen capture right here. If I drag in one of these clips right here, take a look at it. It is overexposed. What is happening? First of all, let's take a look at the sequence. So what did we first drag in? We dragged in the screen capture and the color space of the screen capture became the color space of the sequence. So if you go to Sequence, Sequence Settings, first of all, make sure the sequence is selected. Let's go to Sequence Settings. You will notice the working color space is Rec. 709. Now we dragged in this clip. What is the color space of this clip? Right click on it and just look at Properties. Take a look. It's HLG, which is a bigger color space. So that's why it looks overexposed. So how do we fix it? Very simple fix. Right click on it and then go to Modify, Interpret Footage and set Color Space Override and set it to Rec. 709. Hit OK. And there you go. That is fixed. The final thing to keep in mind is that we need to add color grading to the source, not the individual clip, unless you want different color grading for different clips. With the clip selected, any of the clip from the same footage selected, click on Source under Effect Controls. Now, apply presets or any effects here. That way, everything is color graded. Let us start with Level 1. That is the basic correction. We're just going to make the image or the video this time look right. With the clip selected under the Effect Controls, make sure you are in Source. By the way, if you cannot see Effect Controls, you can go to Window and make sure Effect Controls is checked. That's kind of applicable for every Adobe program. If you just cannot see a panel, just go to Window and turn it on. Let's apply Lumetri preset by going to Video Effects, Color Correction, and inside of that, you should have Lumetri Color. Let's drag it and drop it right here. Make three copies of that, select it, Ctrl or Command C, V, V, V. Hold the Ctrl while you're doing that. Make sure there are four of them. You can also make one more copy for safety if you need more than that, but that's fine. The first one is for basic corrections. By the way, to do color grading, I just drag it like this, drag it like this. You can go to different workspaces, but I always stay in editing. We'll only do the basic correction. We are not going to touch creative curves or any of that. So inside of the basic correction, since this is a little greenish, we're just going to increase the tint just a bit. So let's drag it to the right, not that much, about 6-7 is fine. I'm going to go with 6. Now do keep in mind, we're not doing photojournalism here. This is art and you can create whatever color you want. If you feel Tint 28 is stylish for you, do that. There's nobody hammering you like my last video. This is art. You can do whatever you want. So I'm going to set it to about 6. And of course, the shadows are brighter here. So let's take it down, just click and drag it to the left. I think about, by the way, it's a bit difficult for the pen to do it. Sometimes it just doesn't respond. With Premiere Pro, I usually use my mouse. So actually, minus 21 is good. I like round figures. So let's set it to minus 20. The basic goal of level one is to be subtle and to make the image look ready. So I feel, just to make it ready, it looks all right. We're just going to increase the contrast a little bit to about 10. And there you go. I think it's done, ready to post. So here's the before, here's the after. Looks okay. Now let's start with level two where we even out the skin tones. Now some of you might ask a very valid question and that is, why not just make all of these adjustments right here inside of one Lumetri? You can do whatever that works for you. And what works for you is the best workflow for you. I'm just going to share with you what I do and the reason behind it so that it helps you build your personal workflow. It doesn't have to be exactly like me. So the reason I only touched the basic correction right here so that it's easy for me to keep track of what each Lumetri color is doing. So that later if we find there's a lot of sharpness right here, there's a lot of color shifts right here, we know which Lumetri is doing that. And we don't have to just go and hunt inside of each Lumetri, go through every setting and see where that anomaly is. So let's open up the second Lumetri color and to even out the skin tones, first of all, let's zoom in by clicking on this drop down or drop up right here, 400% so that we have a good look at the skin. Now let's open up HSL secondary. What we want to do is to brighten up the dark areas of the skin, like the dark circles right here. It's not much of a dark circle, but natural lines as you can tell. And then you can select this eyedropper, click on a dark area that you want to target, for example, this one. Now it does a basic targeting. Of course, we need to improve it. First of all, let's turn on show mask to see which areas it has selected. Now I first like to work with H, then S, then finesse the L. So let's just make everything else except for H all selected so that we can nicely work with H to get the most precise selection. You can also make the panel wider to get more precise. And here's the tip. Make it as narrow as possible and move it around. Make sure only dark areas are selected. So there you go. Dark areas are fully selected. I know other areas are selected as well. Don't worry, we're going to make it precise with saturation and lightness. So now let's expand it. Make sure everything is selected right here. Yes, it is. Expand the outer triangle. This just makes sure the transition is smoother. Now let's work with S. Make it narrower now and move it around to make sure only those dark areas are selected. Have a look at it. Come right in the middle of most selection, then expand it and make the transition smoother like this. Now let's work with L and bring it to the position where most of the dark areas are selected and then expand it. Now let's zoom out. Click on this and fit it. Make sure all of the dark areas are selected and turn off show mask. Now all we need to do is to even that out. And in this case, we'll just brighten it. So we are just going to zoom in and brighten it from this. So take the slider up like that and that brightens it. Now what I see are artifacts right here. So for it, we need to go back right here. Maybe we have to expand it a little bit. Maybe that will help. Also a little bit of expansion right here might help as well. And I can see an artifact right here as well. So we need to expand at the top. There's still a little bit of a line right there. So let's expand it a little more. Do we still see that? No, this is perfect. Let's take a look at the before and after. Here's the before, here's the after. Adds that glow to the skin. But it also adds that glow to the background a little bit as well. Now take a look at it closely. Most of the background is very dark, much darker than the skin tones. So we just need to take it away from extremely dark areas. So let's make it a little narrower like this and take it away from the background and only keep it in the skin. So I'm going to make it 400 right here. Turn on Show Mask. You want to make sure it stays in the skin like this. That's nice. You can extend it a little bit or make it narrower if you like. And now let's fit it. There you go. It's taken away from most of the background. Let's turn it off and turn it off and on. See if it looks all right. See if there are any artifacts. Much better than before. There's a lot of glow in the skin, but I still feel if you look at it closely, there's a slight green in the dark areas like this. And we want to add a little bit of magenta to it. So in this selected color, if you want to add magenta, just increase the tint just a little bit, three or four. So about four makes all that difference. By the way, you might not be able to see, so I'm going to add a lot so you can see it. See, it's making it pinkish right here. Earlier, it was very, very greenish. So I'm just adding a slight bit of it. So that little bit greenish tint just goes away. I'm not sure if you're able to see it on YouTube. Moving on to Level 3. This is where we color the skin and add mood to the entire image. This is where the magic happens. So let's get started. I like to call it the punch level, the mood level, the magic level. Let's open it. And we are going to do some basic correction here to add more punch. First of all, remember Level 2 because of that glow, a lot of background was also made brighter. So we need to take care of the shadows. Let's take the shadows down. Let's take it even more down, 27, 45. Let's keep it minus 40. And just by doing that, this image starts looking amazing. Now on top of that, if you want to make the subject stand out, let's play with the highlights. Let's increase it. How about 10? What about 20? I think 20 is nice. So here's before, here's after. I think that's also slightly, just slightly blowing out some bright areas or details. For that, let's decrease the whites, maybe a little bit more, 25 or 30. Now for the extreme blacks, you can give it a faded effect like this. So this creates a kind of film look. However, if you want it punchy or crisp, let's take it to the opposite direction, minus 10. I think it's crushing too much. Let's go with minus 5. There you go. Now to make the colors pop, you can also increase the saturation. So inside of Creative, let's increase the saturation to about 110. There you go. Now you have more colors. Now it already looks ready, but we still need to add the warmth, color the skin a little bit, because if you zoom in, take a look, it still looks a little bit greenish, yellowish at some places. So let's add that warmth. And to do that, you know where we have to go, HSL. So let's go to HSL secondary where we target the skin tones. Now, the reason I do it, again, I told you in the intro, I'm going to tell you again now, is because my lighting does not consist of professional gear. It is just a DIY kit where you put on CFL bulbs and most of them blew out. So I bought them from the hardware store next to my house and then just fit it in. It's just fitted with a DIY softbox and it just works. And the reason why I color all of it, and you might ask, Unmesh, why are you not buying professional lights like a Poocher and all of that fancy stuff and expensive stuff? It's because I don't want to reset it again. It just works and, you know, gets the job done. That's all that matters, right? I don't want to make it complicated. Now one person I know in the comments is going to say, Unmesh, but you're making it complicated with the color grading. Well, you cannot please everybody. So we set the targeting right here, just as we did before. Now again, we're going to turn on Show Mask and this time we'll select all of the skin tones. So first of all, we select all of it in L and S Lightness and Saturation, just like this. And then we play with H. Most of the skin tone is properly selected. Also, we want to make sure there is no line right here. So we need to move it a little bit to the left. There you go. Make it a little bit narrower like that. Now let's adjust the saturation. And for the lightness, we want all of the skin. That seems to be about right. We still want to have a smooth line. So for it, let's turn off Show Mask. Now let's make adjustments. If the lines or the artifacts come up, we'll adjust it later. So let's start with coloring the skin. I go severe here. And for it, I just increase the temperature. As you can tell, it simply colors the skin. It also increases the saturation. So we can always reduce that. So I'm going to keep it to about 75. And that's a nice color. Let's keep the temperature to about 45. Now to add a little more blood to the skin, let's increase the tint. Now do keep in mind what looks nice to you might be completely different to what looks nice to me or anybody else. Everybody's taste is different. Now still we see this slight line right here. So we'll try to play with it. That line slightly goes away if we move it a little bit to the left. But there is not much to be honest. But I still feel we need to add some warm tint to the highlights. For it, let's open up Creative right here. And in the Highlight Tint, you can take it in any direction you like. So I'm going to take it in this direction slightly. So this looks about all right. And let's zoom out. And there you go. Let's take a look at the overall before and after. So this was level one, level two, we added the glow, evened out the skin tones and level three. That was the magic. Now level four, five, six or how many other levels you want to make are for individual colors. So in this video, I'm wearing this jacket. Let's say I want to boost the colors of this jacket. So I'm going to target the color of this jacket and boost it. Or if there's a special light, special colored light hitting you, in this case, the blue light, also the blue jacket, we can easily boost that. I recommend that you wear something that is a little different from your skin tone so that when you target it, you don't accidentally target the skin tone. So let's open up the fourth Lumetri. And in here, we're just going to open HSL Secondary, and we're going to set the color to this jacket, blue color, we're going to keep it this way. And first of all, we need to brighten this light. So let's brighten it just like this. Yes, so that we have more light. And to boost the blues, we know the temperature is going to go in the opposite direction. So it adds the blues. So let's decrease the temperature, you can go extreme if you like, minus 84 is too much, but it's creating that nice style. I like it, but it's just too much. So let's go for somewhere around minus 40. To boost the colors, you already know it is the saturation. So you can go for 110. Or let's go for 120. That's even better. And also, let's boost the contrast. And there you have it, my friend, this looks marvelous. Also, you want to make sure that as you zoom in, there are no lines, but there is this line right here you need to take care of. One of the ways you can do it is by taking the lightness away so that it completely goes away from bright areas. Let's do it. Yes, it takes it away. Let's take it even further. There we go. That's gone. Now after this, if you're wearing purple or green, you can target that and boost that color. But for this example, it's pretty much done. So here's the before. And here is the after. Now I promised you a trick towards the end of the video to make the video look like it's 4k. And that is simply adding sharpness. So in the last Lumetri, whatever last Lumetri you add, just open it up. And inside of Creative, just add a bit of sharpness. So right now, it looks a little blurred. So if we add a sharpness of let's say 60, take a look at it. Now I know there are little halos here and there. But if you zoom out, nobody's going to notice that and it's hard to tell. So here's the before. See, not looking like 4k. And here is the after. You want to see it in a live video. So here's the before and here is the after. Now how do you save all of this as a preset? Very simple. First of all, select all of it. How do you select all of it? Right click, select all. So at the top, you need to right click, select all. And then right click right there and Save Preset. Let's name it Pix Preset and click on OK. That's done. Now at the bottom, you will see under the Presets, there is Pix Preset. You can delete all of these. All is gone. No color grading. Let's fit it right there. All you need to do is to drag and drop Pix Preset. Boom, done. Now I do remember I promised you a gift. I don't know how helpful that's going to be. If you're willing to work and practice with the sample footage, it might be helpful. And that is, I have turned all of these adjustments, all of these intricate adjustments into one, just one, LUT. Yes, let's take a look at it. So I'm going to add a preset that I had created before. Out of that, I turned it into a LUT. So this is the one. All right, we turned all of these adjustments into a LUT. By the way, you might be curious why this one is turned off. That is for the red adjustment. If I'm wearing something red, it just boosts that. In this video, since I'm not wearing that, it's just turned off. Let me give you a proof. I'm going to add one more Lumetri color right here. Okay. And in here, first of all, let's turn off all of them, except the last one that we added. In the Creative section, we're just going to load. So this is the LUT. You'll be able to download it. Links in the description. Let's open it. And there you go. The same adjustments with just one LUT. Now, to show you the proof, here's the one with the LUT. Here's the one with all the adjustments. Can you tell the difference? So how did we create this LUT? That's a suspense. That's for another video. By the way, if you're really curious, you can look up solutions on the internet. But the method I used is a little special and can be used in various different applications across video editing, photo editing, and a lot of other things. That's for some other video. If you're interested, let me know in the comments. So that's how I color grade my videos in Premiere Pro. Keep in mind, we do it in levels. Level one is for basic correction. It is just to get the image look right. Level two is for evening out the skin tones. Level three is for coloring the skin tones and adding mood to the entire image or video this time. It is the level where we add all the punch. And level four, five, six, or how many ever levels you want to add is for targeting individual colors and modifying them. That's all. I hope you enjoyed this video. And if you did, I'm sure you will also enjoy this video where we learn how to automatically caption your videos with Premiere Pro. Inside of Premiere Pro, you don't have to look elsewhere. Thank you so much for watching this video. And if you liked it, make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe. Ring the bell so that you don't miss any other future tips, tricks or tutorials. I'll see you

Speaker 2: in my next one. Till then, stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating.