Lost Video Island

[Jen]

Just a warning: this is neither dial up friendly or short.

Okay, so, as requested, here is my tutorial on colouring in Sony Vegas - particularly when it comes to using Colour Curves. But I figured I might as well just go through everything I'd mentioned in Julia's thread, so here we go!

First things first, it's always best to start off with a well rounded (in terms of colour) clip - not too much blue/red/yellow/whatever, or that'll just screw it up a lot of the time. This is my starting clip:



(Yay! PBJ!)

Then, under Video FX, head to levels and click/drag the "Brighten" option to your video track.



Ah, much better Now, time for the fun part! Under Colour Curves, click/drag the Cool Colours option. Now we're going to muck around with the curves. Hee!



As you can see, there's a drop down menu to the side that says "RGB." That basically means by shifting the curve (i.e. the brown line) you will alter all colours, like so:



By clicking the drop down menu, and picking either Red, Green or Blue, you will be able to move each individual curve.

For example, say I wanted to move the Red curve only:



Now you can see all three curves. So basically by shifting each individual curve you can alter the colouring.

It's looking a bit too green in this for me, so I'm going to move the Green curve now.



And then the blue:



You might want to save any particular colouring you like. Now I'm just gonna play this back a little bit and see how it looks in different shots:



Not bad! But it's a bit dull on the vibrant side. Maybe another Brighten layer?



WHOA. TOO MUCH. So I'm just going to play with the settings a little bit...



Much better. Now, for some final touches - head off to Colour Corrector and add a Green Midtones layer onto your track:



And if there's anything you should've learnt from this, it's to play with the settings So in that middle circle, I'm just going to shift that little dot around a bit - because there's just a little too much green in this at the moment.



Et voila!

Now just because it looks good on Charlie here doesn't mean it's gonna look good throughout, so make sure you constantly play back the clip to test it.



Ahhh, see? Too much blue. So I'm gonna reopen that Colour Corrector preset and shift the Midtones around a little more.



Mm. Better.

Now, you can say "OMG! PRETTY! DONE! YAY!" orrrr, you could keep going and do one final thing - GLOWWW! Because Glows are just so pretty, Y/N? So I've added a White Soft Glow onto the track as well. Usually the presets are always going to be way too intense anyway, so I'm just gonna bring it right down and have it just enough to look soft and pretty:



TA DA!

And just so you can see the difference:

vs.

With other clips:



(Chances are with night clips you will always have to add more Brighten layers to that specific clip. I've had to do that here.)

The End.

Feel free to ask me any questions if you have 'em! And if there's a particular style of colouring you're after, let me know, and I'll do my best to help. I quite like colouring

/J.
_________________

[Aislynn]

Woot, thanks so much, Jen! We really appreciate you writing this all up with handy screencaps and everything! Linking you into the Technical Guide list now!

[Charmed_Charlee]

Oooh awesome Jen!

[Lostwithoutdom]

Thanks Jen! This is really helpful! I know I'm always looking for some coloring tips, and this is really easy to understand!
_________________
Morgan

banner by: everythingwasfallingapart on tumblr

[Jen]

Yay! I'm glad it was haha
_________________

[eloramoon]

OH JEN!!! I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU!!!

:::swoons:::

LOL! Thank you! That was exactly what I was hoping for!

I am so excited to try it out... WOOT!!!

(((HUGS)))

~ Julia
_________________

[Jen]

Aw, you're welcome Julia! Glad I could help! *hugs*
_________________