The best way to use color match is after you’ve color corrected some footage and now need to apply those same corrections to a target clip. If you do, it will completely throw off the value of your colors and ultimately make your life a lot harder than it needs to be. This is fine for your color grade, but don’t do this to color correct. Some people even like to use popular film clips as their reference image, and their own personal footage as the target image. This is an automatic calculation, so it is important to check your scopes and use your judgement as to the quality of the color match. Color MatchĬolor match allows you to choose a reference image that will then be analyzed and applied to your target image.

You can always zoom in and add another drag point to make a small adjustment. This generates gradual changes rather than big extreme changes. And that’s a good thing, because it means the change isn’t isolated, but interconnected. When you make a curves adjustment, you control the entire color channel shift with any movement of the drag points. With curves, you can add points to drag colors to new values, and change shadows, midtones, and highlights with much more precision. CurvesĬurves are helpful for precise color correction and color grading, and you will want to pair these with your scopes. Scopes are a monitoring tool that show color and light information on a graph so that you can see the precise balance of these characteristics and how they compare to one another. Here’s an older tutorial that explains what the limiter does.As you can see, scopes are a simple but powerful tool that allow you to properly color correct your footage. If your color grade is done, and you still have illegal levels, apply Video Effects > Color Correction > Video Limiter to clean them up. When evaluating your final project technically, turn clamping off, then make sure no values are above 100 or below 0. In general, when doing creative work, turn clamping on. This clamping does NOT affect any clips in the timeline or browser display or media being exported. NOTE: These excess values are called “super-white” or “super-black.” Both are illegal values for broadcast, DVD or digital cinema. This means all grayscale values fall between 0 – 100 IRE. What the Clamp Signal checkbox does, when turned on, is compress, or clamp, any grayscale levels over 100 IRE or below 0 IRE that are displayed in the scopes. As I was researching my recent webinar on “ New Features in Adobe Premiere Pro,” I talked with Adobe about this.

The Lumetri video scopes have a “Clamp Signal” checkbox.

The Clamp Signal checkbox in the Lumetri Waveform Monitor.

Lumetri scopes explained