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647Final Cut Pro User Guide
Step 4: Add additional color corrections as needed
It’s important to remember that you don’t have to do everything with a single application of
a color correction effect. For example, if you can’t get the colors in both the dimly lit areas
and the highlights of your clip right with a single effect, focus only on the dimly lit area.
You can then adjust the highlights with a second application of a color correction effect.
For each color correction effect, you can use a color mask and an unlimited number of
shape masks to isolate a region of your clip, limiting the color correction effect to just that
area. This way, you can target the green grass, the highlights in the trees, and the red
lipstick of an actor in the scene with three separate corrections, giving you an extremely
fine level of control over your image. See
Add a color mask in Final Cut Pro and Add a
shape mask in Final Cut Pro.
Step 5: Add other effects to address specific needs
After you’ve finished color correcting your footage, you may find yourself with some
additional issues to resolve. For example, the combination of effects you’re using may
cause the chroma or luma to extend into levels illegal for broadcast. In this case, you can
use the Broadcast Safe effect (in the Effects browser) to bring down the offending parts of
Rec. 709 clips to acceptable levels.
Step 6: Match the rest of the scene to the reference shot
After you’ve finished defining the look of the reference shot in a scene, you can move
on to the rest of the shots. It’s easy to copy the settings of the color correction effects
you’re using to other pieces of the same reference shot. For example, if you cut back to
the reference shot five times in your scene, you can simply copy the effects from the first
piece of the reference shot you corrected to all other instances in your sequence. You can
also combine multiple color correction effects into a single effects preset and copy it from
clip to clip. See
Save color correction presets in Final Cut Pro.
As you work on other shots in the scene, you’ll probably repeat steps 3 through 5 for
each shot. You can compare each new shot with the reference shot that you corrected,
switching back and forth rapidly to compare the look of one clip with that of the other. By
comparing the clips’ values on the video scopes, you’ll see how you need to adjust the
color correction effects to make the clips’ color, blacks, and whites match as closely as
possible.
Tip: You can use the Command Editor to assign a keyboard shortcut to turn color
corrections on and off while making adjustments, and to assign keyboard shortcuts to
many other color correction functions. See
Modify keyboard shortcuts in Final Cut Pro.