How to Color Grading in Final Cut Pro for 2024

How to Color Grading in Final Cut Pro

Have you ever questioned the purpose of those odd video scopes or how to build super grades from the start in Final Cut Pro? In contrast to editing talents, color grading is a technical and difficult ability that takes practice.

In order to help, we decided to compile a thorough beginner’s article to color grading in Final Cut Pro.

With that said, let’s begin!

1. Discover how you color grade in Final Cut Pro

Color grading may be a tedious and time-consuming operation, therefore it’s a skill set that calls for a lot of patience. Some editors won’t conduct any color grading or correction beyond the bare minimum. But even mundane-looking film may look remarkable if you know how to give it a dramatic touch.

A more cinematic grade requires a number of procedures, and there is no one method that works for all situations. We’ll therefore walk you through the process of creating a cinematic color grade in Final Cut Pro, but depending on your material, you might need to add or omit some phases.

Step1Filming

Since the raw video is essential for producing a cinematic image, an outstanding grade begins with the camera.

Use the greatest quality settings your camera offers while recording your video; the more information in your picture, the more you can manipulate it during grading.

While it may seem preferable to shoot with as much color as you can, using a duller color profile is very necessary. Your camera will have color settings, and although the washed-out, drab appearance may not inspire confidence in you, it will offer you a lot more editing possibility.

Step2Create a color profile

After importing your film, you may be concerned about the general dull look of your recordings. The reason for that is because you have not yet matched the color profile of your sequence to the one of your camera. To start on this process, it goes as follows.

Drag your clip onto your timeline and make sure it is selected. Click on the Inspector icon.
Then click on the Information tab of the clip.
Navigate all the way down through the options to find the Color LUT option.
Then choose the Color profile that matches your clip based on the camera it is filmed with.
You’re done!

Step3Checking the scopes

The Scopes in Final Cut Pro are panels that display the color information of your shots. They are quite complicated and can be difficult to comprehend if you did not use them ever before. You can activate Video Scopes by clicking View > Show in Viewer > Video Scopes from the View menu. The three components of grading are the highlights, mid-tones, and shadows. Your highlights are shown at the top and your shadows are at the bottom in all grading tools and scopes.

2. Include Color Wheels

Now that your setup is complete, you can begin grading your footage. Grading is done in multiple layers stacked on top of each other. It may take multiple levels to create the desired look. Follow the instructions below to modify your settings to match your clip if you want to give your footage a cinematic look.

You may access a wider range of color manipulation tools with the built-in color wheels, exposure adjustments, including isolation of color selection, RGB modifications across tone ranges, and simple masking.

3. Color board

A vertical color spectrum is shown on the Color Board, and it is intersected by a horizontal line that features four nodes. These are the ranges of the footage that are designated as the Highlights, Midtones, and Shadows, respectively.

Adjusting a node to a new color space has an immediate and noticeable impact on the corresponding section of the image. If you move above the horizontal line, it will increase, and if you go below the line, it will decrease.

You also have control over the Saturation and Exposure settings. These are wonderful to have if you want to increase the contrast in your photographs and make particular colors more vivid or muted.

4. Masks

Using the Shape Masks feature, each of these individual effects can be perfect for particular regions of your footage. In addition, by utilizing a Color Mask, you can alter the appearance of a specific color. It is possible to apply multiple iterations of each color adjustment to a clip and find it listed under the Effect heading.

The order can be changed by dragging and dropping, and either method can be disabled or enabled. Utilizing keyframes allows for the effects of color grading to be specifically timed as well. Last but not least, keep in mind that the quality and color sample depth of the clips determine how much of an overall adjustment you are capable of making to a color.

5. Color Curves

If you are experienced with more advanced picture editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop, you will benefit greatly from using color curves. Adjustments can be made independently to both the Luma (the brightest areas) and the primary composite colors (red, blue, and green).

6. Match Colors

Match Color is an additional choice that may be made from the improvement’s menu. This function will try to replicate the visual style of one video clip in another. First, choose the clip whose color you want to change, click on that clip that has the desired appearance, and last, choose Match Color.

You will still be able to utilize these settings as shortcuts even after you have gained more experience with manual grading and are comfortable making finer adjustments manually. It is important to keep in mind that while using Final Cut Pro X for color grading, effects can be layered on top of one another.

It’s not likely that a single tool or adjustment will solve an issue or produce the desired result; rather, it’s more likely that a number of different impacts will be required. In the same way that different visual effects in Final Cut Pro X may be toggled on and off, any layers that you add to a clip can have their visibility controlled from the Inspector window.

Conclusion

In Final Cut Pro X, you may choose from a wide variety of grading plugins, ranging from more affordable solutions like FCPeffects to more expensive ones like Magic Bullet Looks, which are designed specifically for feature film-style grades.

Additionally, there is a variety of stand-alone applications for color grading, such as DaVinci Resolve and FilmConvert. You might be comfortable with their gear, but you should also know that their professional-grade color package includes some rather complex editing options.

Beginning to experiment with all of Final Cut Pro X’s functions and determining which ones are most useful to you is the best method to gain an understanding of the program’s color grading capabilities. If you don’t currently have a project that requires your attention, you can download stock footage and experiment with it.

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Simple Tricks Make 3D GIF Production of Inspiration Pop Up

Simple Tricks Make 3d GIF Production of Inspiration Pop up Constantly

An easy yet powerful editor

Numerous effects to choose from

Detailed tutorials provided by the official channel

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Making and sharing animated GIFs that practically pop out on your friend’s screen can be just the magic one needs to start their day.

3D animated GIFs are growing in popularity and surprisingly, because of a simple trick that even you can try out.

What separates 3D text GIFs or 3D animation GIFs from your regular GIFs is that they are bit more difficult but far more fun to make.

3D GIFs are where it feels like the picture is coming out of your screen. Of course, this is just a visual illusion which can be recreated over any video GIF that meets specific parameters.

Part 1 Examples of Inspiration for Fun 3D Gifs?

Remember that simple trick we mentioned earlier? This approach lets you create convincing 3D GIFs in an easy but deceptive way.

The actual magic behind this trick is the use of white lines that act as reference points separating 3 panels in the image.

Now, any animated elements of the GIF image will seem like they are popping out beyond the pre-set white lines and towards the viewer.

These white lines are used as referencing lines on the screen allowing our brains to bewilder at a passive 3D GIFs coming at us from the screen.

You can recreate this same affect with a few popular GIF makers.

Just to give you a taste of what it looks like, we have enlisted few trending pop culture 3D GIFs that are trending;

● We have all heard of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and Cap’ throwing his shield is certainly a fan favourite 3D GIF.

● Heard of Skull Island? Then you better call Skull Pest Control.

● Who wouldn’t love puppies? Well, here’s two.

● When you’re tangled up in things you don’t understand.

● You definitely don’t want to see this squirrel in your backyard.

● Make sure to get a good shot of caffeine when commuting through Elm Street.

● Ray Advertising is getting more innovative each year.

Part 2 Top 5 Ways to Make 3D GIF

The most instantaneous thing you can do to start making GIFs in your own free time is by using a GIF maker online. Online platforms like GIPHY and Imgflip (three more mentioned below) uses pre uploaded image and video content to create GIFs with the help of filters, texts, emoji’s and background effects.

You can simply create creative GIFs and share them directly to your social media pages. Of course if you are running your own business, you can choose to hire your own GIF animator for more personal banners and adverts.

On the other hand, if you are just sparking your creativity using a GIF creator to start out making simple animation GIFs. You can also use a GIF generator to create your GIFs from existing videos.

Now buckle up your imagination and let’s get GIFing.

01Wave.Video

This GIF creator earns its place among the best with sheer convenience. It is by far the easiest GIF maker to use on this list. You can get used to its editing interface in a shorter span of time and make amazing 3D GIFs using versatile features that are bound to impress your friends. Sharing your GIF is quite effortless with Wave.Video. You can take on small portions of your video and make a GIF out of it. It offers an amazing library of stock footage which you can use for a lot of other things too like creating intros for your videos.

02Make a GIF

If you have an image or a URL of a video and you wish to make an animated GIF out of it then Make a GIF is the GIF creator you need. Using this online free tool you can make GIFs out of any Facebook image or video URL. The Make a GIF interface also facilitates using your device’s webcam to click pictures and short clips for our GIFs and add them to the interface using drag and drop facility. You can select from pre uploaded stock samples from over a dozen different categories.

03Imgflip

When you not only need a GIF creator but an Editor as well, go for Imgflip. You can adjust and make changes in your GIF while creating it. It has tools designed into its interface that enables you to adjust the quality of the pictures you upload, their height and width as well. In terms of editing video GIFs you can tweak with the animation time and make adjustments in terms of placement of images using some of Imgflips amazing free tools.

04GIFMaker.me

Yet another animated GIF generator which simplifies your path to unlocking your GIF creativity skills a lot faster using images and videos. GIFMaker.me is compatible with all operating systems namely Windows, Mac and Linux. Although its arsenal of tools is quite basic and lets you only size/resize and reverse your GIFs. GIF maker has a very basic interface but can fulfil a fair average of your GIF creation needs.

05GIPHY

We kept the best for last and even if you type in making GIFs on Google, you might come across this search name quite often as pretty much lot of people are using it. Spark off your GIF creating drive with GIPHY which is an all-rounder in this arena. GIPHY has several awesome features that let you create GIFs by uploading images, videos and even URLs from YouTube or Vimeo or GIPHY itself. Its interface is simple and hassle free to use and lets you add filters, text, stickers and drawings to your GIFs.

Part 3 How to Make 3D Gifs in Videos More Textured

You can use GIF makers to create loops in videos you upload but the trick to making your 3D GIF stand out is about to be explained in the following.

● Step 1: Choosing an Image.

The first step in creating a 3D image is to carefully sort out which moment in your video you wish to convert into 3D. Pick an images or video clips that already have an element that pops out in a forward moving motion.

● Step 2: It should have a smart composition.

Becoming a creator means you need to know more about composition. This can be applicable to anything from making virtual designs to creating GIFs. 3D GIFs requires you to use a special Tumblr ‘frame’ that adds two breaks to the image which creates three horizontal panels. In exceptional cases, you could also use three break points and divide the image into four panels.

● Step 3: Become a content creator.

It’s okay to feel a bit off beat when trying out new skills but the prospects are rewarding. Try taking your own video footage, edit in Photoshop or any similar editing software. You can also opt for instant GIF creator apps that directly converts the footage or image you clicked into a GIF.

● Step 4: Making the split.

The next step would be splitting the image or frame into three panels as guideline for the 3D effects. In Photoshop you can import a GIF and choose ‘View’ from the navigation menu and then click on ‘New Guide’ from the drop down menu. Set the guide to 33% at first and 66% in the second.

● Step 5: Placingthe magical white lines over the guides.

From the shape menu on the sidebar, select the rectangle tool. Right click on this tool to get the shapes menu. Set ‘Fill Colour’ to white and set the weight to five pixels. Click and drag the lines over the guides.

● Step 6: For the final touch.

Merge these line layers and add a layer mask. The objective here is to only mask the panel where the main 3D element of the image which will be moving beyond the guides. How it is done is that you make copies of the frames where the animation goes beyond the guidelines and mask the layers where the element is over the visible layer.

● Step 7: Enjoy your GIF.

Once you are done masking every frame that you have copied. Replay your GIF to see if everything is in order.

Bonus Tip: Use Wondershare Filmora Video Editor to easily edit your videos using amazing tools, filters and affects. You can then make cool 3D GIFs from the videos you make.

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Build unique custom animations without breaking a sweat.

Focus on creating epic stories and leave the details to Filmora’s auto features.

Start a creative adventure with drag & drop effects and endless possibilities.

Filmora simplifies advanced features to save you time and effort.

Filmora cuts out repetition so you can move on to your next creative breakthrough.

● Key Takeaways from This Episode →

● Animated GIFs are interesting and fun to share with friends. They also make for effective advertising banners and conceptual promotions. So there are lot of applications for learning this skillset and is certainly is fun none the less.

● The easiest way to creating GIFs quick and easy would be by using a GIF creator. There are several amazing GIF creators online with fantastic features you can leverage to make amazing 3D GIFs.

● The basic trick which you should remember is using horizontal guidelines and an element which is moving towards the viewer. Keeping this in mind you can recreate amazing videos in fun GIF moments.