Quetion about adjusting brightness.

harmonica44 · Mar 26, 2012

Some of my shots in the short film don't match the scene and are either too dark or too bright, compared to the rest of the scene. If I try to raise the brightness up or down, it works and the light looks all the same, but the image looks faded. Should I do this in Premiere Pro, or should I change nothing, and wait till my locked edit, then put it in After Effects and use possibly something better they have for it? Or none of the above?

chilipie · Mar 26, 2012

If you use a "brightness" control you are making everything in the image lighter or darker - of course the blacks will look washed out if you make it brighter, and the whites will look grey if you make it darker.

To avoid this, a) get your exposure right in camera and b) use colour correction tools with a greater level of control. Tools such as curves, levels and the three-way colour corrector (which is probably the easiest to understand) let you can control the shadows, mid-tones and highlights separately.

Any good editor will have at least one of these features - After Effects has all three. However, you should avoid investing huge amounts of time into colour correction until the edit is locked - how can you make shots match properly when you don't know exactly which shots will be used and where?

Mod note: thread moved to Post Production.

harmonica44 · Mar 26, 2012

Oh okay thanks. I didn't think of using curves for that as well. I tried it and it works somewhat well but still can't quite get it too match. I have done one scene of my final edit so far and parts of it are locked for sure. Those parts I am working on. What about the whole changing colors from one shot to another, of people's skin and the room? I am still trying to figure out how to take the color from image and apply it to another.

knightly · Mar 26, 2012

Gamma will adjust the mids alone as well... but the 3-way color corrector and your scopes should let you use the numbers to get the shots to match the most efficiently... the RGB Parade or the Histogram will be your friends... the color wheel will allow you to dial in your skin tones as well.. Flesh is orange, crop your frame to a cheek, then adjust your hilights and mids until the wheel shows pixels falling on the "flesh line" (all skin tones fall on a single line in the color wheel, just different amounts of melatonin make the skin darker, but the same color). From there, adjust your black and white points, then dial the mids until the key side of the subject falls where you want it to (normally exposed faces range from 60-85% depending on the darkness of the skin -- 85 is caucasian)... readjust the black and white points to 0 and 100 respectively and your "color correction" is done... then you can add a style to it once all the shots are the same.

rayw · Mar 26, 2012

Knighthly -

Are you able to link us a couple of good online tutes for adjusting skin tones and such?

knightly · Mar 27, 2012

Quetion about adjusting brightness.

harmonica44

chilipie

Pro Member

harmonica44

knightly

rayw

knightly