Tutorial: Inspecting the Inspector in Final Cut Pro X, Pt. 1
This tutorial on Apple Final Cut Pro X inspects the Video Inspector, a context-sensitive area of the FCP X interface that allows you to change settings of various filters and settings, and focuses on making basic but effective color adjustments.
Choosing and Customizing a Color Preset Look
Back in the Color Adjustment panel, at the very bottom of the panel (regardless of whether you’re in the Color, Saturation, or Exposure tab), there’s a button that says Presets with a downward triangle (Figure 15, below).
Figure 15. Click this to see FCP X’s Color Preset looks.
If you click that it opens up a bunch of presets. Final Cut Pro X has its own list of looks. I wouldn’t say they’re as sophisticated as, say, Magic Bullet looks, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless. You can go through here and click around and experiment with different looks (Figure 16, below).
Figure 16. FCP X’s collection of color presets.
What’s especially cool is that if you see a look that you might like, but find it a little harsh you can go into the Color Adjustment panel and tweak it, and you can actually see what it’s done to the Color, Saturation, and Exposure to achieve this look. So if you feel like, “Whoa, they really pushed the highlights a lot,” you can pull that back and make adjustments (Figure 17, below).
Figure 17. Customizing a preset.
Even beyond that, you can make your own look and save the preset and use it in the future (Figure 18, below).
Figure 18. Saving a preset.
So that’s a pretty basic overview of the Color area of the Video Inspector. In the next tutorial we’ll delve deeper into Balance Color, Match Color, and the various color masks.
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