Tutorial: Inspecting the Inspector in Final Cut Pro X, Pt. 2
This tutorial on Apple Final Cut Pro X takes a closer look at color correction in the Inspector, exploring the Balance Color, Match Color, and Color Mask and Shape Mask features.
Welcome to the second installment of our series on inspecting the Inspector in Final Cut Pro X. In the last tutorial we discussed how to make sure your clips were properly selected to load them into the viewer and edit them in the Color section of the Inspector. We also went over the three major boards in the Color section, which are Color, Saturation, and Exposure (Figure 1, below).
Figure 1. The Color, Saturation, and Exposure tabs in the Color section of the Inspector.
The Color section of the Inspector (Figure 2, below) is chock full of functionality, and in the last tutorial we only scratched the surface. In this tutorial we’re going to round it out and talk about the rest of the functionality it offers.
Figure 2. The Color section of the Inspector
Balance Color
The first thing we’ll look at is Balance color; note that in Figure 2 it says, “Balance: Not Analyzed.” Balance Color refers to Final Cut Pro’s ability to look at a shot and balance the color to what it thinks it should be. For example, if a shot was captured with the wrong white balance--say, if it’s too blue or too red--Final Cut Pro will try to look at all of the pixels, analyze the color, and try to balance it.
The problem is, I’ve found from experience in my edits is that it’s not very effective. If a shot is a little too warm, it tends to cool it off too much; if a shot’s too cold, it’ll make it too warm. What’s more, once you click the Balance Color checkbox and Final Cut Pro changes your image to what it thinks it should be, and then you go into the color board, you’ll find Color, Saturation, and Exposure at their neutral settings, so it doesn’t actually show you a representation of what it did. So even if it got it close and you just need to tweak it, you can't do that. You have to start from scratch; it’s not going to show you the correction.
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