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I'm trying to color-correct a video I'm working on. This is an example frame from the footage:

Original footage

Since I'm a newbie and pretty clueless about good-looking color correction, I've tried playing around with some Picasa filters. Eventually I've came out with this:

Picasa color correction

This supposed to be a reference for me to later on immitate with Premire's color correction tools.

In Premiere, I've tried using Levels:

Levels

And RGB curves:

RGB curves

And this is the result:

Premiere Attempt

After a lot of small adjusments, still you can see a big difference:

Picasa vs Premiere

My main problem is that whenever I'm fixing one color, or one area of the frame, always another part is affected in a non-wanted way. For example you can see the wall in the Picasa version is more yellow than the one in the Premiere version, but the left-hand closet is less yellow than the one in the Premiere version. Meaning making the whole thing more yellow might fix the wall's shade but make the closet's shade worse.

My question is, what method should I use while using these filters (or others) in order to achieve a known effect? Is there a specific filter I should use before or after another? Or how could I determine the proper adjusment for affecting one color/shade but leaving another as it is?

This is important to me not only for this specific project, but also because I assume this method is what professional editors use when trying to achieve a specific vision they have for a frame.

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  • Do you particularly like the the color grade you accomplished with picasa? Did that achieve something artistically and cinematographically that you were going for? Jul 28, 2014 at 20:37
  • Which filter in Picasa did you apply, and with which parameters? Jul 29, 2014 at 1:19

2 Answers 2

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This might be better suited as a comment to your original post, but alas I do not yet have those privilegies.

Anyway, my answer to you would be a cliché one: Keep tinkering.

It's really a matter of finding out what effects Premiere can offer, deciding which will be able to assist you the most and then going back and forth between them until you find a result that pleases you.

That said, you might want to check out the Color Balance effect. I find it very useful in most projects.

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If your goal is to get better at coloring.. yes keep tinkering. If you want a push button possibility download try SpeedGrade and try some of the preset "Looks". Ultimately, for any auto correction to look exactly like the Picasa one would be a piece of chance.

I am by no means a color guru, but I found these resources helpful in some recent projects:

  • Some quick basics
  • Kind-of Concept Overview but interesting
  • Color Correction Tutorials

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