Tutorial: Applying Looks and Matching Shots in Adobe CC
Recent upgrades to Adobe CC make it easy to apply graded looks in Adobe Premiere Pro CC and match shots with different color temperatures via seamless roundtripping between Premiere Pro CC and SpeedGrade CC.
Shot Matching in SpeedGrade
So that’s a pretty easy way to add a quick look to a shot that you have. Let’s say you’ve got two shots that look distinctly different, or a series of shots that look similar and another shot that doesn’t match at all. In Figure 3 (below), we see a shot from a series of shots that have a cool, bluish, industrial look juxtaposed another shot from somewhere else that looks a bit green by comparison. This could create a jarring transition.
Figure 3. A dramatic change in look that we can smooth out in SpeedGrade. Click the image to see it at full size.
So what are we going to do there? We don’t want that to be such an abrupt transition. I could apply the Color Balance effect and start tweaking it, but that may take a while depending on my knowledge and skill set. So instead I’m going to use SpeedGrade and show you a feature called Shot Matcher.
Since the latest upgrade, the easiest way to go from a Premiere Pro project to a SpeedGrade project is choose Direct Link to Adobe SpeedGrade from the File menu (Figure 4, below). This is going to automatically launch SpeedGrade in the background after you save your project.
Figure 4. Launching SpeedGrade from the Premiere Pro File menu.
It will immediately load your Premiere Pro timeline in SpeedGrade (Figure 5, below), so you can quickly get to all the same clips. And you can choose whichever timeline you want if you have more than one sequence in a project.
Figure 5. Our Premiere Pro timeline open in SpeedGrade. Click the image to see it at full size.
Now, the easiest way to use Shot Matcher to match the “blue” shots with the “green” shot is by, first of all, clicking the 2-Up button on the right side of the UI just above the timeline and changing to a two-up display. You can see in Figure 6 (below) that the 2-Up display gives you two images and two playheads.
Figure 6. The 2-Up display shows the 2 shots we want to match. Click the image to see it at full size.
To move one playhead, #2, which is the image on the left, I’m going to hold Shift and move it to the shot that I want (Figure 7, below).
Figure 7. Moving playhead 2.
All the “blue” shots look pretty good, but I’m specifically going for the clip shown in Figure 8 (below)--that’s the one I want to match with the “green” shots. Now I’m going to move the first one to one of the clips that’s green, which is the one shown in Figure 8. Then I’ll click the button shown in Figure 8, which, as you can see, has a left-to-right-pointing arrow. It’s going to move the color temperature in the image on the left onto the clip on the right.
Figure 8. The shots I want to match, and the button that tells SpeedGrade to match them. Click the image to see it at full size.
You can see in Figure 9 (below) that it does a pretty good job. The two shots look virtually identical.
Figure 9. The matched shots.
Of course, you shouldn’t judge it by one shot--go back and play the transition through to see if it works. If it’s too much for you, you can always go back and redo it by choosing a different frame or a different clip. It’s based on an algorithm that chooses the exact frame that you’re looking at and tries to match the overall color temperature. If you try again with a different frame, you might get a significantly different result (Figure 10, below), so it’s very critical that you choose a frame that’s going to give you what you want. Experiment with it until you get it just the way you’d like it to look.
Figure 10. Matching the shots using the wrong frame. Click the image to see it at full size.
Now, the downside to this automatic stuff is that it’s not adjustable. You can layer primary or secondary effects on top of it and tweak it, but you cannot edit the AutoColorMatch layer that it creates, which is essentially a preset that’s not adjustable. You can turn it off if you don’t like it, but you can’t change it. And, of course, you can delete it.
Lumetri Looks, by contrast, are editable. So if I bring, say, one of the Saturation filters up to a clip in my SpeedGrade timeline, I can then go in and make adjustments.
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