10+ Great Color Grading Tutorials

Finding good color correction tutorials are hard to come by. Color correcting your film is such an important part of achieving a good cinematic look and it’s too often overlooked or not taken as seriously as it should be.  

The following is a compiled list of some great color-correcting tutorials that you can use with your DSLR. 

05.23.13 – Update. Since I wrote this post originally 3 years ago a lot has changed. Apple Color is gone, now replaced simply by FCP X which never really caught on. Now Divinci Resolve is a new player that’s gotten more popular in the professional and semi-professional playing field and as always After Effects is still a great program for color grading. I’m going to spend this next month looking for tutorials for these separate applications and making it a bit more categorized. Also, Redcine has a great program for doing quick grades and even Arri has some software now for applying LUTs as well as quick grades when shooting the Alexa. I’ll try to find some of these tutorials as well.

  1. How to Color Correct footage from your Canon 5D or 7D with After Effect
    Watch this tutorial to learn how to color correct, grade, and finish your DSLR footage in After Effects.

     

  2. Basic Color Grading with Color
    Benji walks through the process of color grading in Apple’s new color software.

     

  3. Film Wash with After Effects
    Curious Turtle’s Film Wash for After Effects. Uses color correction to make the video look more like film.

     

  4. Film Wash for Apple Color – Usage & Adding Vignettes
    Add a cool color grade to your footage with Film Wash, then simply tweak the effect to best suit your footage.

     

  5. Graphic B&W & Enhancing Skylines
    We add a powerful black & white conversion with just a click, before deciding on a more fashion-oriented style. We add a diagonal vignette to add drama to the shot. Finally, we change a rainy beach into a sunny one, using a Film Wash and a Film Wash skyline enhance filter.

     

  6. Custom Vintage Film Look  
    We add a full-color grade with Film Wash, before creating a unique retro film style effect. Learn how to use the Film Wash film damage filters, including Fast Grain, Gate Weave, Film Warp & Film Flicker.

     

  7. Sin City Effect using HSL key
    There are bunches of ways to get the sin city effect. This method is one of which we use an HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luma)keyer to key out the colors we don’t want or the ones we do want. I will go over other methods to get this effect in color such as the saturation curves etc but in this lesson, we do it using a common key.

     

  8. The Bleach Bypass Look 
    Use simple tools to create a great bleach bypass. Can be done with earlier versions of AE.

     

  9. The Old Film Look
    Create an authentic old-film look.  Introduction to transfer modes and masks.

     

  10. Preserving Skin Tones with Color
    Preserving Skin Tones when really pushing your footage for a more extreme look.

     

  11. More Vignettes & Applying to multiple clips in Color
    Tutorial showing how to use Film Wash Color Effects for Apple Color. We add tweaks. We then look at using Film Wash just as part of your overall color-correcting strategy. Finally, we duplicate the grade quickly across multiple shots.

     

  12. Blooming Highlights & Dynamic B&W in Color
    Tutorial for Film Wash and Apple Color. We quickly balance a shot up before adding a bloom to the highlights. Finally, we look through some of the Film Wash effects to create unique color to black & white effect, including a stunning graphic, comic-book red.

     

  13. Mojo Tour
    Magic Bullet Mojo has been out for a few months now.  Here is a quick tour of its capabilities and how quick and powerful it can be.

  14. Shoot Your Friends – Color Grading Master Class

Color correcting not only can be used to save poorly shot DSLR footage but is also useful when trying to direct your audience’s eye and controlling their mood.  Please feel free to share any more tutorials you come across in the comments. Or if you’re looking for something specific you can also ask me in the comments. I work with video 10 hours a day almost every day doing tv spots and trailers so feel free to ask me anything. 

If Photography is your thing you can check out my Digital Photography Tips page as well. Lots of great stuff and more to come. 

Happy shooting my fellow film nerds!

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Professional editor, blogger and photographer from Los Angeles California.

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