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Guiding Principles for Color Correction
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Neutralizing Color
Neutralizing color returns the colors in an image to the colors that a viewer would have perceived
when standing beside the camera. Most film or video images depart from that ideal to some degree.
One way to think about neutralizing color is to imagine working on a project where every shot
includes a large card that we know is a perfectly neutral midgray color when viewed in ideal lighting
conditions. If you can correct each image so the card appears midgray when your audience views the
final program, all other colors in the images should be correct also.
You cannot normally have such a perfect measuring device in your images, but you can select one
area of each image as a target for your color neutralizing adjustments. If you focus on getting the
color in that area right, color in the rest of the image should fall into place. In some images, there
might be an object or area that should be neutral gray, or nearly so, and you can use that area as your
principal target as you make adjustments. In fact, this is exactly how you make corrections to remove
color casts using the Remove Color Cast buttons. In other images, you might not have any gray color
at all, but you will probably have some other area where even a small departure from neutral color is
noticeable. Human skin is the most common example. Or you might choose to focus on an area
where you know the true color, such as a person’s hair.
In addition to identifying parts of your image on which to concentrate your attention, it is useful to
establish how the uncorrected image departs from neutral color before you attempt to correct it.
Sometimes this is obvious. You cannot mistake an image with an extreme pink or yellow cast. When
the problem is more subtle, you can sample a few areas with the Color Match eyedropper to get
information about the color characteristics of the image. Areas that should be white or black are
particularly helpful, since these are easily identifiable colors that should have nearly identical values
for red, green, and blue. If the red value is higher than the other two, the image has a red cast. If red
and green are higher than blue, the image has a yellow cast.
You can neutralize color using different controls in the Color Correction tool. For example, you can
use the Curves tab to adjust the proportions of each color. Or you can use the Hue Offsets
ChromaWheel controls, which let you quickly locate the sector of the wheel that represents the color
cast in the image, and then adjust in the opposite direction to that color. You can make either of these
adjustments automatically using the Auto Balance buttons, and then fine-tune manually if necessary.
(Symphony option) You can neutralize color using many different controls in the Color Correction
tool. For example, you can use the Curves tab to adjust the proportions of each color. You can use the
Hue and Saturation sliders in the Highlights, Midtones, and Shadows tabs of the HSL group. Or you
can use the Hue Offsets color wheels, which let you quickly locate the sector of the wheel that
represents the color cast in the image, and then adjust in the opposite direction to that color. Except
when a color problem is extreme, you are usually more successful when neutralizing color if you
make adjustments in individual colors or in specific brightness ranges rather than in the Master
controls.
The more experienced you become as a colorist, the better you get at judging even subtle color
problems by eye and knowing intuitively what kinds of adjustments to make.