To properly Color Correct, you need to know what you’re doing. Well, you can do some, but it’s definitely a lot easier with an understanding of the theory behind what you’re doing. This tutorial from ReelClever.Net goes into that theory, and will help you understand what those scopes actually mean.

Watch the video tutorial here.

I was shooting an early morning rally, as the sun came up, on a pro camera with a grayscale viewfinder. Great for focusing, but when I got it back to the studio, I realized that the color temp had changed over those 3 hours as the sun rose, and I hadn’t white balanced. Richard Harrington over at Creative Cow has this tutorial that would have helped me a lot on fixing White Balance.

Watch the video tutorial here.

Shooting outdoors gives you a lot more light to work with, but can also create some pretty big problems. If your subjects are backlit, you could be in big trouble. However, Richard Harrington from Creative Cow has this tutorial on how to use the powerful Limit Effect part of the 3-way Color Corrector to fix this mistake.

Watch the video tutorial here.

Over at Creative Cow, Richard Harrington shows you one of those little tricks that gave me a mixture of an “Ah-hah!” and a “D’oh!” moment the first time I saw it. You can easily keyframe the color correction, just like other parameters. Harrington also goes a little bit into the basics of keyframing if you haven’t done much yet.

Watch the video tutorial here.

A very good use of the 3-way color corrector is to match skin tones between shots. It helps with scene continuity if the hero’s face doesn’t flicker between a reddish and a bluish without ever leaving a room. Richard Harrington at Creative Cow shows you how to easily match skin tones.

Watch the video tutorial here.

The Pleasantville Effect is a fun and eye popping effect where everything but one thing is black and white, leaving that item to really become the center of attention. This tutorial from Final Cut King shows you how to use the 3-way Color Corrector to get this effect.

Watch the video tutorial here.

Films like Sin City have made the Pleasantville effect even more popular. Having one color pop with everything else black and white, is eye catching and looks great. CaptMench shows you how in this video tutorial. It’s a bit outdated, so I would encourage you to take the concepts, but use the 3 way Color Corrector instead of the Color Corrector.

Watch the video tutorial here.