What’s in This Chapter

Before we jump into these effects, I want to give you an idea of what’s coming up. Many of you might not want to read such a large chapter straight through. You may be somewhat new to After Effects or color adjusting, and may want to know which color effects perform simple tasks quickly. Or you may be more experienced with After Effects, and you might want to know the most powerful tools to use here. In this little intro section, we’ll also look at which effects are mostly worthless in my opinion.

The Auto Color Effect

The Auto Color and Auto Contrast effects are quite similar. They both attempt to automatically fix color and contrast, respectively. They also work on all of the luminance values of an image, as opposed to individual channels like the Auto Levels effect. Because they don’t process each color channel individually, they don’t have the potential of introducing a color cast into the footage.

A color cast is when the entire layer has a slight tint towards a particular color. Open the Auto.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder of the exercise files. This is a little project that I created for use with the “auto effects”: Auto Color, Auto Contrast, and Auto Levels. This project contains a comp called beluga, which has an image of a beluga whale.

This comp contains the beluga image duplicated twice. The bottom layer is the untouched duplicate. The top copy has a transition effect applied so that when you apply color correction effects, you can more easily see the difference from the original. Sometimes subtle color changes are difficult to see in separate images in print.

Beluga whales are white, but you couldn’t really tell from this image. It is too dark, and has an aqua-colored tint from the water and glass. Apply the Auto Color effect to the top layer, beluga EFFECT. This will lighten the image, restore much of the true color of the beluga whale. Remember that there is also a transition effect here, which allows you to see the before (left) and after (right).

The Auto Contrast Effect

The Auto Contrast effect is similar to the Auto Color effect, except that it doesn’t do much in the way of shifting colors. Its primary purpose is to adjust brightness values, which it does fairly well. If you’re continuing along with the Auto.aep project, choose File>Revert to reset the project to its default status. Or you can open this project from the Chapter 6 folder of the exercise files. Apply the Auto Contrast effect to the beluga EFFECT layer. Notice how the image on the right (the adjusted part of the image) is lighter, but the colors are still similar. Our beluga whale still doesn’t appear white.

The Auto Levels Effect

The Auto Levels effect is unique from the other auto effects we’ve already looked at in this chapter. The other auto effects process the entire image, while the Auto Levels effect processes each color channel independently. Because of how this effect works, there is a possibility of it introducing a color cast into the image. Imagine if you had an image that didn’t have a full range of highlights in the Red Channel. The Auto Levels effect would increase the red highlights, which could create a reddish tint (cast) in the image.

Open the Auto.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder and apply the Auto Levels effect to the beluga EFFECT layer. Notice how the results are similar to what we saw with the Auto Color effect—the image is brightened, and the color cast is neutralized.

Although these results look similar to what we saw with Auto Color, there is a difference worth mentioning. The Auto Levels effect actually did a better job at removing the color cast than Auto Color did.

To compare all three results, duplicate the beluga EFFECT layer. On the new duplicate (beluga EFFECT 2), delete the Auto Levels effect, and apply the Auto Color effect in its stead. Finally, take the Transition Completion value of the Linear Wipe effect on the beluga EFFECT 2 layer to 75%.

Hopefully, you can see the subtle different in print, but if not, try this on your own. There is a subtle but real difference between the Auto Levels and Auto Color effects. The center portion of Figure 6.5 has the most neutral beluga whale tones, because of the Auto Levels effect.

The Black & White Effect

Seen also in Photoshop, the Black & White effect is perhaps the best way to convert footage to black and white, and even to footage tinted with one color such as sepia tinted footage for that vintage look.

The Black & White effect converts footage to black and white as soon as it’s applied. But then it gives you control over how bright or dark you want specific areas of color. Let’s look at an example. Open up the Black and White.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder of the exercise files. I like this clip, and I love how the turquoise hat of the actress just pops. It was designed to make her stand out from the rest of the scene, which has mostly warm tones.

Now apply the Black & White effect to this layer (called Footage). It instantly makes our image black and white, which is convenient. But now that this is converted to black and white, I don’t like the way her hat looks anymore. I loved the color contrast of the cool hat against a warm environment. It made her appear as both the most innocent thing in the scene, but also the focus of the scene. But without the color contrast, the hat is just distracting.

In the Black & White effect controls, you’ll see that we have controls over various color families. A positive value will brighten that color family, and a negative value will darken it. So not only does this effect just desaturate an image, it gives us control over the transformation from black to white.

The hat was originally in the cyan family, more or less. So I’m going to take the Cyans value to negative 10 (–10.0), which darkens color values that were originally cyan, hence the hat darkens considerably. Now it blends much better into the rest of the scene.

Another benefit of this effect is that you can also use it to add a single color tint. This isn’t that much different from the Tint effect or similar functionality in the Hue/Saturation effect. However, those other effects don’t give you control over the black and white conversion like the Black & White effect does. So,

to give something a vintage sepia tone, simply enable the Tint option in the Black & White effect controls. The default Tint Color is a little strong, so I clicked the swatch to lighten a bit. Note that you can change this to any color—it doesn’t have to be that vintage yellowish tint.

For this particular scene, I actually don’t want to go all the way gray. But there’s not a Blend with Original function in this effect, as you might find in a lot of other color correction effects in After Effects. So instead, I cut this effect using Edit>Cut, and then created an adjustment layer placed above the Footage layer. Then chose Edit>Paste to paste the Black & White effect to the adjustment layer. This gives me a lot more control and flexibility. So, I reduced the opacity of the adjustment layer (and, since the Black & White effect is the only thing on the adjustment layer, this is essentially just reducing the opacity of the Black & White effect) to 60%. This gives me the best of both worlds: I have a strong vintage color tint going on, but I also retain some of the original coloring. Note that if I’m blending these two together like this, that I might want to go back and adjust what we just did to the cyans. But for now, I’m happy.

The Brightness & Contrast Effect

The Brightness & Contrast effect is another effect that is also seen in Photoshop. The difference is that Adobe revamped the Brightness/Contrast adjustment for Photoshop CS3. Unfortunately, the After Effects version of Brightness & Contrast is still the old, terrible version, at least when it comes to lightening images. Even though I recommend eschewing this effect when it comes to lightening footage, it can still have some other useful purposes. And knowing why this effect can be destructive can help you understand why effects like Levels and Curves are so powerful.

The Brightness & Contrast effect only has two properties: Brightness and Contrast. Many users of Photoshop and After Effects turn to a Brightness & Contrast adjustment to quickly brighten an image without the steep learning curve of, say, Levels or Curves. But there is a great problem here. The Brightness & Contrast effect universally lightens or darkens every pixel on a layer. Let’s see this in action.

Import the KS103.mov clip from the Artbeats folder in the Media folder of the exercise files. This stock footage clip from Artbeats contains some children playing. Notice the depth of the shadows in the trees behind the kids on the right side of the image.

In the Project panel, drag this piece of footage down to the Create a new Composition button at the bottom of the Project panel. This will create a new composition with the same specs (e.g., size, pixel aspect ratio, duration, frame rate) as the footage. Then apply the Brightness & Contrast effect to the KS103.mov layer in the newly created comp. Take the Brightness value to 50.

Now look in the shadow areas by the trees. They’ve been lightened, too! That’s bad news, folks. When you brighten an image, you want to keep shadow areas dark. So, this is not the way to go.

You could use the Contrast part of Brightness & Contrast, but there are many other ways to increase image contrast that are much better. Another valid use for the Brightness & Contrast effect is to use it on grayscale patterns or maps to control effects. Because it operates at 32 bits per channel, you could also use this effect on HDR footage.

Personally, I just hate the Brightness & Contrast effect. Does that make me a bad person? You may disagree, but there so many other ways to adjust brightness and/or contrast, that you really shouldn’t need to use this effect.

The Broadcast Colors Effect

The Broadcast Colors effect probably belongs in the Utility category, and is unique among effects in this category. The Broadcast Colors effect forces colors into compliance with video standards, such as NTSC and PAL. One of the purposes of these video standards is to specify the limits of allowable color and brightness. Sometimes, if you stay up late enough, you’ll see badly produced infomercials and local TV programs that have colors that are beyond the limits of what is allowed. The results are that those pixels look too intense; almost glowing, as if only those pixels had just come out of a nuclear experience. The Broadcast Colors effect makes sure that all colors and brightness levels are broadcast safe so that this never happens.

Open the Broadcast Colors.aep project in the Chapter 6 folder of the exercise files. This project contains an image of one of the cutest kids you’ve probably ever seen in your life. She must have an extremely attractive father, whoever that lucky fellow might be. But with all the beauty of this image, it’s far too saturated and intense for video. Apply the Broadcast Colors effect to the hanging out layer in the hanging out comp.

As soon as you apply the effect, you’ll notice it springing into action, ridding your layer of any renegade colors that will look bad on video. You’ll first want to select a Broadcast Locale, which will be either NTSC or PAL, depending on the country your video will be watched in. I’m in North America, so I’m going to leave this value set to NTSC. Unfortunately in this example image, the results of applying Broadcast Colors look terrible.

The results don’t quite look up to par here because the default method of making the colors comply with video standards is to reduce the luminance of the offending pixels. That doesn’t work out well in this case because of the textures in her jacket and in the background (which is actually a Lego replica of the Titanic). So, we need to adjust the How to Make Color

Safe drop down. Change the value of this drop down to Reduce Saturation to make After Effects reduce the saturation (instead of the luminance) of offending pixels. In this case, the results look a little better.

Also in the How to Make Color Safe drop down, you’ll find a couple of settings that don’t really make too much sense. But they allow you view the problem areas in your footage. You can completely remove all pixels that are out of compliance by choosing Key Out Unsafe. Or, you can view only unsafe pixels by choosing

Key Out Safe. After seeing which pixels are out of compliance, you may choose to use another color adjustment effect to adjust those values so that you have more control over how their color is corrected.

The last value at the bottom of the effect in the Effect Controls panel is Maximum Signal Amplitude (IRE), which monitors the brightness of footage. IRE is a unit of measurement, used to measure brightness in a video signal. This value sets the maximum allowable value of brightness in your footage. You can create a higher maximum brightness by increasing this value, but that also increases the chances of creating unsafe colors when viewed on some monitors.

Usually, when using this effect, I don’t apply it to individual layers. In my final composition, I will create an adjustment layer and put it at the top of the layer stack in the Timeline panel. Then I will apply the Broadcast Colors effect to the adjustment layer so that all of the layers in the composition have broadcast safe color.

The Change Color Effect

The Change Color effect and the Change to Color effect (that we’ll look at next) have annoyingly similar names, and identical purposes—to change a color in your footage from its original color to another color. This is helpful for a wide variety of circumstances. Let’s say that you had a shot of a large crowd, and an extra in the shot was wearing a shirt of a color that was distracting. You could use these color changing effects to choose a more suitable color.

From my experience, the Change to Color effect works a little better on average, but again here, it ends up as a matter of personal preference. For the sake of comparison, let’s look at the Change Color effect.

Open the project Color Change.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder of the exercise files. We’ll be using this simple project to compare the Change Color and Change to Color effects. With both effects, we’ll be trying to change the color of the dot on the bird’s face. Apply the Change Color effect to the bird layer in the bird comp.

First off, we need to tell the Change Color effect the color we’d like to change. Click the eyedropper next to the Color To Change property, then click the orangish-red spot on the bird’s face in the Composition panel. If you did it correctly, there should not be any visible change in the Composition panel, but the color swatch next to the Color To Change property should be should be the rust color of the spot on the bird’s face.

Now that we’ve told the Change Color effect what color to change, we need to tell it how to change it. Use the Hue Transform, Lightness Transform, and Saturation Transform properties to adjust the hue, lightness, and saturation to choose a new color that the rust color in the bird’s face will be changed to. Keep in mind that all of these properties can go to negative values to give you a wider range of choices.

In Figure 6.19, I used a Hue Transform value of 39, a Lightness Transform value of 10, and a Saturation Transform value of –50. This makes the red circle change color to blend in more with the rest of the bird’s face.

In Figure 6.19, you can still see a little orange edge around the part of the bird’s face that we tried to adjust. If you find that the Change Color effect isn’t affecting as many pixels as you’d like (or if it is affecting too many pixels), then you can adjust the Matching Tolerance and Matching Softness values. Increasing them will select more pixels, decreasing them will limit the number of affected pixels. I found that the default values of 15% for Matching Tolerance and 0% for Matching Softness worked well in this example.

If you’re not getting the results you’re looking for, you can also change the Match Colors value to use the hue or the chroma of colors to match them. You can also select the option Invert Color Correction Mask to preserve the Color To Change color and adjust all other colors.

The Change to Color Effect

The Change to Color effect is very similar to the Change Color effect. The difference is that the Change to Color effect allows you to select the specific color you’d like to change the other color to. This can be great for compositing two elements together in a scene. Maybe one clip has a different white balance, or some other color that is prominent. You can use the Change to Color effect to match the colors (almost) exactly.

Open up (or Revert) the Color Change.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder. Apply the Change to Color effect to the bird layer in the bird comp. In the Effect Controls panel, there are two color swatches here. The From swatch is the original color (what we are changing the color from), and the To color swatch is the color we want the From color swatch to become (what we are changing the color to). Click the eyedropper next to the From swatch, then click on the rust colored spot on the bird’s face. To make sure you’re getting the color you want, you can check the Info panel as move your cursor around. The Info panel displays the color of the pixel that your mouse happens to be over.

Now that we’ve selected a From color, click the eyedropper next to the To color swatch, and then click on the yellow of the bird’s face, next to the red spot. The results do need a little more work before they look decent.

One of the advantages of the Change to Color effect over the Change Color effect, is that we have three separate Tolerance controls for Hue, Lightness, Saturation. In the Change Color effect, there is only one Tolerance parameter. Having three values to help you select the exact color range to adjust is very helpful. The Change drop down allows you to select which of the properties you want to change with the effect, which determines which Tolerance controls get used to select color. Be aware that by default, only Hue is selected, which means that only the

Tolerance>Hue property will do much of anything until the Change drop down is altered.

In this case, all we really need to do is to increase the Tolerance>Hue value in the Effect Controls panel to about 17% to get a fairly believable result. We have a much smoother transition from the spot of new color to the rest of the bird’s face.

You might notice in Figure 6.23 (or in the project you’re working on) that we have some colored noise in this image caused by the high ISO value I used when taking this photo. The problem is that some of that noise is a rusty red color—the same color we’re trying to remove here. Because of this, the noisy red pixels are also turned yellow, which doesn’t look all that great. And, realistically, if it’s not noise, there will probably be something else in your footage that has a similar color to the color you’re trying to change.

If you find that, like in this case, there are pixels of the From color that you don’t want to change, you can duplicate the layer and create a mask on the duplicate (top) layer. You don’t have to create a mask that is tight around the object that you want to change the color of. I used a simple elliptical mask around the bird’s head, loosely and quickly created. That gives us a lot more flexibility, and a much improved result. Particularly, notice how much cleaner the black bar is in the background, as well as the bird’s body.

The Channel Mixer Effect

The Channel Mixer is great if you really know a lot about how colors work, and very challenging and unintuitive if you don’t. The Channel Mixer effect allows you to blend channels together, which alters the colors of footage. This is great for making precise color adjustments, or for color grading.

Before we get into a practical application of this effect, we’re going to take a step back and see exactly what this effect is doing. That way, we’ll know what we’re doing when using the Channel Mixer effect to adjust the colors of real footage.

Open the Channel Mixer.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder of the exercise files. In the Channel Mixer comp, you’ll find two layers—a simple shape layer, and an Artbeats video clip. We’ll first look at the shape layer, which already has the Channel Mixer effect applied for you. This shape layer contains three stars—one pure red, one pure green, and one that is pure blue.

The options for the Channel Mixer effect are a challenge to figure out without some help. With parameters like Red-Red, Red-Blue, and Green-Const, the Channel Mixer can certainly be a brain teaser. Even if you know this effect from the similar Photoshop adjustment, the interface is initially less user-friendly here.

Here’s the way this works. The name of the color on the left refers to the input color (before applying the effect), and the name of the color on the right refers to the output color (after applying the effect).

Let’s take for example the Red-Green property. By default, it’s set to 0, which means that there is no red (input) in the green channel (output). But if we took this value to 100, then it would add red to the green channel. When we add red to pure green (as seen in the green star in this comp), it becomes yellow.

You’ll notice in the Effect Controls panel that the properties that are duplicates (e.g., Red-Red, Green-Green, Blue-Blue) are set at 100 by default. This just means that there is a full amount

of red in the red channel, green in the green channel, and so on. If we took the Red-Red value to 50, it would mean that there is half of the amount of red in the red channel. Because the red star only consists of pure red, when we take the Red-Red value down halfway, in effect we reduce the intensity of the red in the red star by half. Notice that the yellow (formerly green) star isn’t affected, even though it has red in it. The Red-Red adjustment does not affect the red in the green star because it didn’t start out having red, it was added by the effect.

You can also use this effect to create a great black and white result by selecting the Monochrome option at the bottom of the Effect Controls panel. With Monochrome selected, you can still control how colors are converted to black and white (i.e., their brightness) by using the color sliders in the Channel Mixer’s effect options in the Effect Controls panel.

Each channel also has a Const value, which is short for constant. This property basically decides how much a particular color channel is in all color channels. So, if I increase the Blue-Const value to 50, you will notice blue mixed in to every other color.

Now that we understand what’s going on with the Channel Mixer effect, let’s turn off the visibility of the shape layer, and turn on the visibility of the Artbeats clip to see how this effect can help you in the real world. The Channel Mixer effect has already been applied to this clip for you.

This Artbeats clip has a slight bluish tint to it. Blue tones— such as those seen in this clip—often suggest a relaxed feel, or a professional tone. But I want to color correct this clip so that it looks like the Los Angeles inner city—hot, rough, dead, and abrasive. To get this look, I want add a yellowish tint, but with a little orange as well. How are we to do this, seeing that there aren’t any yellow controls? This is where it pays to know a little color theory. The opposite of blue is yellow, so we can actually add yellow by subtracting blue. Add just a touch of red to create orange.

To achieve the desired results, I took Red-Green to 45, Red-Blue to 10, Blue-Green to –30, and Blue-Blue down to 85. Basically, we added a little bit of red, and even more yellow by subtracting blue. The results look fantastic.

I’m satisfied with the results as they are, but we can also take this a step further. I added Hue/Saturation to desaturate the cityscape a little, then added a Curves effect with a typical S curve adjustment (both effects discussed later in this chapter). I also applied a mask and the Fast Blur effect to create a slight depth of field effect.

The Color Balance Effect

The Color Balance effect is one of the effects that I use most often. It is very similar to the Channel Mixer effect, but it gives you control over the color in each channel in the shadows, midtones, and highlights. Note that this effect is far superior to the Color Balance (HLS) effect, which actually has nothing whatsoever in common with this effect. And, as with the Channel Mixer effect, it really pays to know about color relationships when working with the Color Balance effect.

Import the UW225.mov clip from the Artbeats folder in the Media folder in the exercise files. This is some beautiful footage of water splashing around. Make a new composition that is the size of this clip, and add it to the comp. Apply the Color Balance effect to this clip.

As seen in the Effect Controls panel, you can adjust the color balance for each color channel in the shadows, midtones, and highlights.

What we we’re going to do is to add some more blue to this water. Increase the Shadow Blue Balance, the Midtone Blue Balance, and the Hilight Blue Balance to get blue water. Just a little adjustment will work here, especially if you’re increasing shadows, midtones, and highlights. I used a value of about 50 for each.

But let’s say now that we wanted to add a slight cyan tint here. We can accomplish that in a couple different ways. We could add cyan by reducing the amount of red. We can also add cyan by increasing green (because there is extra blue here). I’m going to take

the Hilight Blue Balance value down to about 25, and then increase the Hilight Green Balance to 50. We could add more green in the shadows and midtones, but the results here look pretty good as is.

When using the Color Balance effect in this example, you might have noticed how the luminance changed in addition to the colors. As we add more light (by increasing the amount of red, green, or blue in the image), things naturally get brighter. The opposite is also true. If we were to subtract blue to add a yellow tint, the image would become darker because we are removing light. If you’re worried about that shift in brightness, you can click the Preserve Luminosity checkbox at the bottom of this effect in the Effect Controls panel. In this case, the results become much more intense with added contrast.

The Color Balance (HLS) Effect

Contrary to what the name might suggest, the Color Balance (HLS) effect is nothing like the Color Balance effect we just looked at. Instead, it gives you but three parameters: Hue, Lightness, and Saturation. For the life of me, I can’t think of any reason to use this effect when you have the Hue/Saturation effect available, and even the After Effects help documentation says that this effect is included only for compatibility with older projects. The Hue/Saturation effect has the exact same controls (but with visual aids), and many others as well. Hue/Saturation also operates at 32 bits per channel, while Color Balance (HLS) operates at only 16 bits per channel.

The only real benefit to this effect is that the Color Balance (HLS) effect is keyframable. Whereas the only way to keyframe Hue/Saturation is to colorize the source layer.

The Color Link Effect

Like Broadcast Colors, the Color Link effect is one that I think would fit better in the Utility category of effects. Its main purpose is to convert an entire layer to the color of another layer. You can have Color Link discover and use the average pixel value of any layer in the current comp, or the brightest or darkest pixel, or the median pixel color, or it can perform such analysis on the alpha channel. This is helpful for quickly creating a layer that is the color of the background color of another layer. One of the best potential uses for the Color Link effect is for color correction with other effects. That’s what I thought this effect could be used for. Unfortunately, the Color Link effect is unaffected by other applied effects unless first precomposing the layer, so it’s not as helpful as it could be as a reference for color correction.

When you apply the Color Link effect, you first specify which layer will be analyzed by the effect in the Source Layer drop down. Then, in the Sample drop down, determine how the Color Link will find the color it returns. Selecting Average, for example, will cause the Color Link effect to examine the layer chosen in the Source Layer drop down, and fill the layer with the color that represents the average pixel value. You can also then blend this color into the source layer using opacity or blend modes.

So, all in all, Color Link is a valuable effect for analyzing the makeup of a layer, color-wise. This information can then be used for other purposes. But the effect itself is not really a color correction effect.

The Color Stabilizer Effect

The Color Stabilizer effect attempts to stabilize the luminance of video that varies from frame to frame. This is especially helpful for those doing stop motion video, or time lapse photography. Both types of shooting are often plagued by wild variations in luminance from frame to frame because of the difference in time between the capture of each frame. Luminance randomization might also happen because of the inability of a video camera’s white point correction to establish a consistent white point. If you’d like to practice stabilizing color, import the shaky luminance.mp4 file from the Video folder in the Media folder of the exercise files.

While it is next to impossible to demonstrate luminance variation over time in a book, it’s not difficult to describe the steps to fix this problem with the Color Stabilizer effect. First, let’s take a look at the options in the Color Stabilizer effect.

This effect stabilizes color by analyzing colors from a sample frame to determine how to conform the luminance across all frames. Move the current time indicator to a frame that has the appropriate luminance levels. The click the Set Frame text (button) at the very top of the effect in the Effect Controls panel, next to the Reset and About buttons. If your colors completely freaked out when you first applied Color Stabilizer, clicking Set Frame should also return the look of the layer back to normal.

Before we set Black and White Point locations, we need to adjust the Stabilize drop down. There are three options here: Brightness, Levels, and Curves. If you choose Brightness, the White Point value will be grayed out and you will only be able to specify a Black Point value for luminance stability. Selecting the default value of Levels gives you both a Black Point and a White Point. Selecting Curves allows you to use the Black Point, White Point, and Mid Point values. The default value of Levels is usually what I prefer to use.

Next, put the Black Point effect control point in a dark area of the image, and the White Point effect control point in a light area of the image. Note that it doesn’t need to be in pure black or pure white. As a matter of fact, I put my Black Point in the water, and the White Point in the sky, and both of these spots are distinctly blue. The most important aspect of the Black and White Point locations is that the areas must have areas of colors that are easy to track. They must also be in areas where it will be easy to spot changes in brightness. The Black Point and White Point areas also need to be in areas that should have consistent luminance (so, don’t put them on a strobe light). Finally, the Black Point area and the White Point area must contrast significantly from each other.

In our case, particularly with the Black Point in the water, we want to make sure that our stabilization isn’t thrown off by white-caps and shadows. We just want it to take an average of the surrounding pixels. You can increase (or decrease) the size of the area used by the Black Point and White Point by increasing (or decreasing) the Sample Size value.

Be sure that as you use this effect, your effect control points never come into contact with any object that has a different luminance value than its initial spot. Remember that you can animate these points, if needed, to avoid obstacles that might interfere with their ability to consistently track and correct the luminance of the layer. The results here are not perfect, but they are an impressive improvement over the original.

The Colorama Effect

The Colorama effect is one of the most powerful and complicated effects in all of After Effects. It is an effect used to recolor layers, and it’s probably the most powerful tool for this purpose that I have ever seen. Even though this effect is so complex and powerful, it also has some quick and easy presets to use if you don’t feel like tackling the steep learning curve here. Colorama was created by After Effects genius and legend Brian Maffitt, who also created such great effects as Shatter and Radio Waves, so you know it’s good.

Because of the complexities involved with the Colorama effect and the sheer volume of properties here, I strongly recommend following along with this section by opening up the Colorama. aep project you’ll find in the Chapter 6 folder of the exercise files. We’ll start in the Colorama START comp. Apply the Colorama effect to the Rad Rockets layer in this comp.

Many people are initially scared away from the Colorama effect because the default settings create a garish rainbow effect. To make matters worse, the parameters for the Colorama effect are quite numerous and not always intuitive.

The Curves Effect

The Curves effect, also found in Photoshop, is another one of my go to effects, and is generally one of the more common effects out there. The most popular use for Curves is to adjust luminance, but you can also adjust the values of each color channel independently if you wanted to use Curves as a color adjustment tool.

Curves is often compared to another luminance correcting Photoshop favorite—the Levels effect. We’ll talk in detail about Levels a little later in this chapter. For now, all you need to know is the difference between Levels and Curves. Basically, Levels allows you to adjust three components—shadows, midtones, and highlights. Curves, on the other hand, gives you individual control of up to 256 different tones. As you can imagine, with all of that extra control also comes an extra degree of challenge when learning this effect. But once you understand what’s going on, you’ll find yourself turning to Curves all the time.

I’ve created a project that we’ll use for both Levels and Curves so that you can use them both on the same files to get a better idea of how to create the same results with both effects. Open the Levels and Curves.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder of the exercise files. First, we’ll start with the fireworks comp, which is in desperate need of some Curves love.

In this otherwise cool photo, the fireworks aren’t quite bright enough as this shot was taken when it wasn’t late enough at night. Additionally, as a result of the time of the shot, the night sky isn’t quite dark enough. Apply the Curves effect to this layer. In the Effect Controls panel, you’ll see the baffling Curves interface.

This diagonal line represents how the luminance values of this image are mapped. The bottom edge of this graph represents the current luminance values, from black (left) to white (right). The left edge represents how the colors will be remapped, from black (bottom) to white (top). That is why this line is a diagonal line, because by default, black is mapped to black, white is mapped to white, 50% gray is mapped to 50% gray, and so on. But if we were to click 50% gray (the point in the center of the graph), and drag it upwards slightly, it would make the midtones lighter.

Remember that the left edge represents the new (output) luminance, from the dark tones at the bottom to the bright tones at the top. So, when we move a point up, we brighten those values, and when we drag a point down, we darken those values.

I’m going to click the Reset button at the top of the effect to get our curve back to the way it was. What I really want to do to this image is to darken the shadow areas and brighten the highlights. In doing so, we will use such a common method that it has its own name—the S curve. The name comes from the way the curve looks when we’re done editing it. To create the S curve, click on the line over the input shadow area (on the left hand side of the curve), and drag downwards. This will darken the shadows. Next, click on

the line over the input highlights area (on the right hand side of the curve) and drag upwards. This will brighten the highlights. The results in the Effect Controls panel now look like an S curve, and the contrast has been increased dramatically in our image.

The real benefit of Curves is that we have this entire curve to adjust, not just three points. If there was a precise shade of gray that you wanted to adjust, you could make it brighter or darker without adjusting other shades. This is much more control than you could get with the Levels effect. On the other hand, this may be too much control in some instances.

Another feature that you’ll find in both Levels and Curves is the ability to adjust individual color channels. This is almost like having a built in Color Balance effect. I like the result we achieved with the fireworks image. But it’s a little too red for my taste. Let’s fix that by going to the Channel drop down, and changing this value from the default RGB, to Red. This gives you a brand new Curves adjustment (a fresh diagonal line), just for the red color channel. To reduce the amount of red in this image, I’m going to click in the center of the curve and drag down slightly. Now our image looks a little more balanced. Taking away red light, also made the image a little darker, which actually works in our favor here. If you take the Channel drop down back to RGB, you’ll see that our curve is still here, and was left untouched by what we did to the red channel.

Now open up the sea lions comp in this project. This contains a layer with a photo I took of some sea lions. The photo was taken from a large distance with a budget quality lens, while these sea lions were being covered in the mist from crashing ocean waves. All of these things combined do not a well balanced image make. Apply the Curves effect this image in the sea lions comp.

Obviously, we need to darken this layer quite a bit. But, if you try the previous method of darkening (i.e., grabbing the curve and pulling downwards), you’ll notice that you can’t quite get it as dark as it needs to be.

The solution here is to do something we haven’t yet attempted. We need to darken the black point. In other words, we need to darken the darkest part of the image. So far, we’ve adjusted the curve itself, but the lower left and upper right corners of the curve represent the darkest and brightest parts of the image, respectively. To darken the black point, drag the lower left corner point of the curve to the right, along the bottom edge of the graph. I stopped at about 40% of the way. If you’re wondering how I knew to take it to that particular spot, I used the Info panel as a guide. Thankfully, the Info panel gives you the live update of the color value of the pixel that your mouse is currently over, after all applied effects. After darkening the darkest point, I then made a slight S curve in the small, remaining part of the curve to boost the contrast. The results look much better.

The Equalize Effect

If there were a luminance-based communist movement, the Equalize effect would be its leader. The purpose of the Equalize effect is to redistribute luminance values across an image, so that there is a greater balance among all pixels.

Open the Equalize.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder if you’d like to follow along. This project contains a shot of the Space Needle in Seattle, Washington.

This image is out of balance, as it was taken as part of an HDR sequence. Because of this, it has a lowered aperture value (f-stop), which eliminates the highlights. However, we need to call in a favor from another tool to really see what’s going on with the luminance in this image. Apply the Levels effect to see a histogram, which gives us a readout of the luminance values in our image.

We’ll obviously talk much more about this when we cover the Levels effect, coming up later in this chapter. For now, just know that the left side of this chart shows us shadows and the right side shows us the highlights. The height of the graph indicates the amount of that particular luminance value. This histogram is telling us that there are no highlights, loads of middle range values, and a little bit of the darkest shadow areas.

Now, delete the Levels effect and instead apply the Equalize effect. You can instantly see a significant difference in the tonal balance.

The results look much better as the luminance values are redistributed, or equalized, across the entire spectrum. But in all fairness, you should be aware that the Equalize effect is not always the instant improvement that it was here. What we really wanted to do was to create more tonal balance. If you apply another instance of the Levels effect after Equalize (below it in the Effect Controls panel), you’ll see that the luminance values are now more balanced, and there is a little bit of each brightness value.

There are only two options here—the Equalize drop down and the Amount to Equalize value. Amount to Equalize is basically like the Blend with Original property we see in other effects. Really, it’s reducing the amount of equalization, but it acts similar to an opacity property for this effect. The Equalize drop down allows you to choose from three different equalizing methods. Photoshop Style and RGB are very similar, as they

both attempt to equalize your layer, while still keeping the basic shape of your histogram intact. The other setting, Brightness, tries to make a literal equalization, making most luminance values exactly equal.

The Exposure Effect

The Exposure effect is another luminance correcting effect, like Curves or Levels. And although you can use the Exposure effect in projects that are 8 or 16 bits per channel, it was created for the purpose of adjusting the exposure of footage that is 32 bits per channel.

If you’d like to follow along, I’ve created the Exposure.aep project in the Chapter 6 folder of the exercise files. This contains a camera raw image that is 16 bits per channel (you can tell this from selecting the image in the Project panel and seeing Trillions of Colors at the top), in a project that is 16 bits per channel. That might seem like useless information now, but it will be important soon, so just remember this.

Apply the Exposure effect to this image. There are two ways to adjust an image with this effect—by adjusting the luminance of the entire image, or by adjusting the luminance of each color channel individually. You choose what type of adjustments you’d like to make by choosing either Master or Individual Channels from the Channels drop down at the top of the Exposure effect in the Effect Controls panel. When Master is selected, you can adjust the properties in the Master area, but the individual color channel controls are not adjustable. Selecting Individual Channels

as the Channels value will allow you to adjust the Red, Green, and Blue values, but it will gray out the controls in the Master area.

I usually leave the Channels value set to its default of Master. This is because the Exposure effect attempts to use camera terminology and behavior to adjust luminance, and the Master controls are more fitting for this.

The After Effects help documentation suggests viewing the Exposure property as f-stops on a camera. Accordingly, increasing the Exposure value will brighten an image, and decreasing it will darken an image. The results are pretty good, and we can get these results by just adjusting one property.

The Gamma Correction property can make images lighter or darker by respectively increasing or decreasing its value. The Gamma Correction default value of 1 has no effect. We can use the Offset property to adjust (darken or brighten) shadows and midtones while leaving highlights largely unaffected. However, if I decide to reduce the Offset value (by even –0.06!), you can see that things fall apart very fast.

The reason why this looks terrible is because we’re editing in 16 bits per channel. Technically, this effect also works at 8 and 16 bits. Realistically, however, it doesn’t work all that great unless you’re in 32 bits per channel. So, let’s fix this. We

can’t put this layer or even this comp into 32 bits per channel mode. Bit depth is a function of the entire After Effects project. So, go back to the Project panel, and Alt(Win)/Opt(Mac)+click the project color depth display at the bottom of the panel until it displays 32 bpc.

As soon as the bit depth of the project is changed to 32 bits per channel, the results are instantly corrected. This is because there are more colors available in 32 bits per channel mode, so there is more editing room.

The Gamma/Pedestal/Gain Effect

The Gamma/Pedestal/Gain effect is an effect that I rarely use. It’s yet another luminance correcting effect, like Levels or Curves, but without a graphic interface. The downside of this is that it’s a little more challenging to learn and use. One benefit of this effect, is that you can use these controls to power expressions. Of course, if that was your reason for choosing this effect, you’d probably be better off going with the Levels (Individual Controls) effect. Regardless, I think you should still go through this section. It always helps to know as many ways to color correct a layer as possible. This way, if your pet color correction effect doesn’t work, you’ve got some alternatives.

If you’d like some practice with this effect, you can open up the GPG.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder of the exercise files.

The Gamma/Pedestal/Gain effect actually works much like the Curves effect does, except that you don’t have any control over the master luminance values, only individual color channels. The Gamma/Pedestal/Gain (GPG) effect gives you a gamma, pedestal, and gain control for each channel. The Gamma settings would be like adjusting the center (midtones) of the luminance curve in Curves.

The Pedestal values control the darkest point of the channel, which is the equivalent of the lower left corner point in Curves.

The Gain values control the highlights in the channel, which is the equivalent of the upper right hand corner point in Curves.

The value at the top of the GPG effect in the Effect Controls panel is Black Stretch. This property might as well be called shadow brightness or some such. Increasing the Black Stretch value will increase lighting and details in shadow areas, although from my experience, it seems to leave pure black alone.

The Hue/Saturation Effect

The Hue/Saturation effect is one of the most useful and intuitive effects in this chapter. The Hue/Saturation effect is a favorite in After Effects like it is in Photoshop. And, unlike other Photoshop transports (such as Channel Mixer and Color Balance), Hue/Saturation in After Effects works very much like it does in Photoshop. It’s a great effect for universally shifting all colors, or for globally changing the saturation of an entire image. You can also use it to colorize an image, which turns the image grayscale and then adds a color tint. Finally, you can also use it to selectively choose which color groups to adjust independently. So, if you wanted to desaturate only yellow tones, you could with the Hue/Saturation effect.

For demonstrating this effect, I’m going to use the colorful Artbeats video clip, KS103.mov that you’ll find in the Artbeats folder in the Media folder of the exercise files. Import it and add it to a composition. Add the Hue/Saturation effect to this clip.

First, let’s look at how Hue/Saturation deals with global changes, or in other words, changes that affect the entire image. If we adjust the Master Hue property, it will cycle all colors in the image around the color wheel. This usually creates a psychedelic effect that I still haven’t found a practical use for. This hue parameter will prove to be very useful a little later, though, so don’t judge this book by its proverbial cover.

We can also adjust the Master Saturation property to manipulate the saturation for the entire image. This is much more helpful than Master Hue, in my experience. In Figure 6.89, I reduced the Master Saturation amount by about half (50), which creates a nostalgic feel.

Going down the list in the Effect Controls panel, the next property we come to is Master Lightness. Don’t ever ever use this on images. This property is the equivalent of the Brightness slider in the Brightness & Contrast effect. It universally lightens or darkens every pixel, which results in bad images. See the Brightness & Contrast effect earlier in this chapter for an example of the kind of havoc wreaked by this kind of image edit. Only use this property if you are adjusting unrealistic subjects (such as with vector art), or if you have changed the Channel Control value and you’re adjusting a specific color set. For most images and video, you want to keep darks dark and brights bright.

If you want to colorize an image, simply select the Colorize checkbox at the bottom of the Hue/Saturation effect in the Effect Controls panel. This will convert the image to grayscale, and then tint it with a color you select with the colorize properties. After selecting the Colorize checkbox, the colorize properties at the bottom of the effect become available to use. Adjust Colorize Hue and Colorize Saturation to tint this image in the exact color you’re looking for. Note that Colorize Lightness is a bad idea to use, just like Master Lightness is a bad idea to use.

I’m going to hit the Reset button at the top of the Hue/Saturation effect in the Effect Controls panel to start over with the Hue/Saturation effect. The real power in this effect in my opinion, is in the Channel Control drop down. By default, this is set to Master, which means that the hue, saturation, and lightness properties that we’ve been adjusting apply to all colors universally.

Let’s take the Channel Control drop down to Blues. This will restrict our changes to only the blues. Note that this is not specifically referring to the blue channel, but instead just to blues in general. You can tweak the lines in the Channel Range area to hone in on the exact color that you’re looking to adjust. I took the Blue Hue value to about +100. Because the only blue objects in this shot are the sky and the shorts of the girl on the right, only those colors were adjusted.

We can also perform more practical adjustments. I’m going to change the Channel Control value to Yellows, which will allow me to adjust the field that the girls are running on. It looks like it should be green, but it’s kinda dying, yellow, and dry. Remember the opposite of yellow? It’s blue. So here’s a little trick—if you want to make grass and other greenery seem more alive and rich, add a little blue. With the Channel Control value at Yellows, take the Yellow Hue value to 40 degrees to add some life to this dying grass.

For what it’s worth, I use the Hue/Saturation effect frequently. It’s very simple to use, and you can do a lot with the few parameters here. It also does a pretty good job of selecting colors to isolate for editing.

The Leave Color Effect

The Leave Color effect allows you to select a color to leave behind, while you desaturate other colors. This can create a really cool effect, like that seen in the movie Schindler’s List. And I’m not sure exactly why, but this effect seems to do a much better job at selecting color than other color-selecting effects, like the Change to Color effect. It also seems to do a better job of ignoring the large amount of noise in images.

For this example, I’m going to import the bird.tif image from the Images folder in the Media folder of the exercise files. Add this image to a comp and apply the Leave Color effect. This is the same image we looked at earlier in this chapter with the Change Color and Change to Color effects.

The first thing we want to do here is to select the Color to Leave. This is the color that will remain when all other colors are desaturated. I’m going to click the eyedropper next to the Color to Leave property, and then click in the blue background in the bird layer in the Composition panel. Then increase the Amount to Decolor property to determine how much other colors (besides the Color to Leave color) will be desaturated. A value of 100% will completely desaturate the other colors in the image. The other properties, which are similar to what we saw with the Change Color and Change to Color effect, can help you to tweak the results if needed.

The Levels Effect

And now we come to what is perhaps the most commonly used luminance adjusting effect. The Levels effect is quick and easy, and it also has a histogram, which gives us information about the luminance values in our footage. Although the Curves effect gives us more control when color correcting, the ease of use and histogram that the Levels effect offers makes it one of the standard go to effects in After Effects.

To follow along, open the Levels and Curves.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder. This is the same project that we used earlier in this chapter when we looked at the Curves effect. We’ll be using the same project for both effects so that you can more clearly see which tasks are easier to do with which effect. We’ll start in the sea lions comp. This is a perfect candidate for the Levels effect because it’s lacking pure white and pure black, as well as any shadow data. Apply the Levels effect to the sea lions layer.

After applying the Levels effect to the sea lions layer, look at the chart, called a histogram, in the Effect Controls panel. From left to right, this chart represents the dark to light colors in the image. As a reference, you can use the gradient bar immediately beneath the histogram. Note that you might need to expand the Effect Controls panel to see all of the histogram

and gradient, as they’re rather wide. The height of the graph represents the amount of that particular tone in the image. As you can see in Figure 6.96, the left side of the histogram is completely flat, which means that there are no black (or even dark gray) pixels at all.

The key to fixing this image is in the three little triangles at the bottom of the histogram. These represent (from left to right)

the black point, midtone, and white point. If there are no black pixels, we need to click and drag the black point triangle slider to the right until it is under the darkest pixel in the image. This will force that pixel to black, and reshuffle the other luminance values accordingly. Be sure that you stop dragging the black point slider to the right once you’ve gotten to the first pixel. If you go any farther, you’ll lose details in the shadow areas. You can also fix the highlights in your image by dragging the white point to the left to the first pixel (bump on the graph) that you come to.

Our sea lion image is now starting to look much better. The contrast particularly has had a major improvement. The highlights are a little brighter, and there are now dark portions of our image as well. But even though the highlights and shadows look good, overall the image is too light for my taste.

We can adjust the midtones of this image by using the middle triangle slider underneath the histogram. Remember that dragging to the left increases brightness, and dragging to the right reduces brightness. Drag the center triangle to the right to darken the midtones to taste. This is like clicking in the center of the curve and dragging downwards in the Curve effect. The results are a big improvement over the initial image.

Another trick when using the Levels effect (or any other color correction effect for that matter) is to apply another

instance of the Levels effect on top of all of the other effects that you’ve added. This extra copy of the effect is not to make adjustments, but to use its histogram to get a readout of the new luminance values.

Next, let’s switch gears and go over to the fireworks comp. This comp contains an image of fireworks, taken while it was still dusk. So, the fireworks aren’t quite so bright, and the sky isn’t quite dark enough.

Apply the Levels effect to these fireworks. As before, check the histogram to see the exact problem with this image. Notice that

even though we want this image to be darker, there is still pure black already here. And we’re also missing pure white and almost all highlights.

So, as before, drag the white point slider in to the first pixel, and drag the midtone slider to the right to darken the midtones to taste.

As with this example in Curves, the results are too red for my taste. We can fix this by going to the Channel drop down at the top of the effect in the Effect Controls panel, and changing the value from RGB to Red. When looking at the histogram for the red channel, drag the midtones slider to the right to remove red light from this result. The final is a little more balanced.

Note that you can also change the Channel drop down to work on the alpha channel of a layer. While it’s not super common to use Levels like this (that I know of), I find that it helps often to fix holes or remove specks in an alpha channel. Because of this functionality in the Levels effect, the Alpha Levels effect has been removed from After Effects. They basically did the same thing.

Finally, you may be wondering about the sliders underneath the gradient below the histogram. The three sliders below the histogram—from left to right—correspond to the Input Black, Gamma, and Input White properties. The two sliders below the gradient bar—from left to right—correspond to the Output Black and Output White values. These properties determine

the final output intensity of black and white. If you wanted to reduce the amount of white in an image (say from 255 to 240), then you would reduce the Output White value, or drag the slider underneath white in the gradient bar to the left. Or, perhaps, the black values in your image are too dark, you could drag that to the right to lighten them up. I use these often when compositing to get layers to have the same levels of luminance.

The Levels effect is so quick, easy, and ubiquitous, that we’ll be using it all over the place throughout this book.

The Levels (Individual Controls) Effect

The Levels (Individual Controls) effect is exactly like the regular old Levels effect we just looked at. The problem with the standard Levels effect is that it’s not really meant to be animated, or used with expressions. And in an animation powerhouse like After Effects, you kinda need that functionality. So, they created the Levels (Individual Controls) effect, which allows you to adjust all color channels and the composite at the same time. The real advantage to this is that you can connect these properties with expressions.

The Photo Filter Effect

The Photo Filter effect is another effect that has its roots in Photoshop. The effect mimics the physical filters that are put on the end of camera lenses to give a tint to photos. Typically these tints come in the form of warm tints (orange) or cool tints (blue), but they can be in any color. For all intents and purposes, the Photo Filter effect simply applies a color tint to an image.

Open the Photo Filter.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder of the exercise files if you’d like to follow along with me. This project contains a photo I took of a lioness, and it’s a little on the warm side, meaning that it is tinted in warm colors like yellow, orange, or red.

Apply the Photo Filter effect to this image. The default results are so subtle that they’re almost imperceptible. I think this is Adobe’s way of hinting that we should use this effect to create subtle changes. I couldn’t agree more. But just so we can see the difference in the screenshots here in this book, let’s increase the Density value, which is somewhat like the opacity value for this effect. Increasing the value to a relatively high 75%, the results make this footage look like a photo taken in the 70’s.

I’m going to take the Density back down to its default value of 25%. One of the advantages of this effect is that it offers a quick way to remove color casts. We already had a warm tint going into this, so we can apply a cooling filter to counter act the warm tint. In the Filter drop down list, select the Cooling Filter (80). In case you were wondering, the numbers in parentheses can be thought of as the intensity of the filter. Thus, the Cooling Filter (80) creates a more subtle cooling effect than the Cooling Filter (82). This is just the right amount of coolness to balance out the warm cast that was on this image.

Remember that there are also other colors of filters to use. Typically, these photo filters are used to give an emotional tone to an image. If you wanted to create a formal, professional tone, you might use a cooling filter. If you were taking photos of a wedding or some other sentimental occasion, you might try shooting with a warm filter.

The PS Arbitrary Map Effect

The PS Arbitrary Map effect is essentially worthless, although it is a really interesting effect. It is an old effect that is mostly kept around just to provide compatibility with older After Effects projects. It’s basically like the Curves effect, but the only way to get it to work is to click the Options button at the top of the effect in the Effect Controls panel. This action will open the Open dialog box, at which point you will need to navigate to an AMP (arbitrary map) file. This is a file created by the Curves effect (in After Effects or in Photoshop), and saved from the Curves effect while the pencil tool is selected. For more information on how to create these files, refer back to the section on the Curves effect from earlier in this chapter. Note that this effect can’t even use the ACV files from the default style of Curves.

Once these AMP files are imported, that exact luminance adjustment curve will be applied to the current layer. The Phase property allows you to shift the curve through the layer. While it is a fascinating intellectual curiosity, the PS Arbitrary Map effect is better fodder for nerdy museums and history books than for practical application in the modern age.

The Selective Color Effect

Another Photoshop transplant, the Selective Color effect allows you to really play with the mixing of colors. To be honest, I used this all the time when I worked in the print industry, as it really helped to get all of the color out of the blacks. I don’t use it as much in After Effects. But I can see how it would be helpful. It’s almost like a more specific version of the color range selection tools in Hue/Saturation, except that you have less control over the range selection, but more control over what you do with the colors in that range.

We have some footage here to play with. This is a 16-bit raw clip, so we’ve got a lot of room to play with colors (which room might not be available with all formats). Right now, the forest is darker than the sky, and the whole thing is kinda washed in cyan. It’s a little over the top, but I like it.

As mentioned, the Selective Color effect allows us to work on specific color ranges. So, we’re going to create more separation between sky and trees. First, take the Colors drop down to Greens. As you can see here, we can add more cyan (with positive

values) to the greens or take out cyan (with negative values). You can also do the same for magenta, yellow, or black.

In this case, we want to make the greens more green. There’s no “green” slider here, but we know that green is the opposite of magenta. So, take the Magenta value down to –100%. We’ve now essentially added green to only our forest, leaving the sky the way it was. Note that because this selection is color-based, we can just set this up once, and barring any major lighting changes, no tracking, rotoscoping, or keyframing is necessary to maintain this adjustment throughout a shot.

Next, let’s work on the sky. There is a “Cyan” option from the Colors drop down, and that’s probably the closest color to the sky. However, this is too close in color to the forest, and any adjustment would affect the entire image. And again, we don’t have the flexibility to alter what “cyan” is, so we need to choose another color family to work on. I’m going to choose Blues from the Colors drop down.

I want to make this more blue, and like with green, there’s no blue value to adjust. But since blue is the opposite of yellow, we can add more blue by subtracting yellow. So take the Yellow value to –100%. This is looking good, but to provide a more equal balance between sky and forest, increase the Black value to 100% to darken the blues. And there you go.

The Shadow/Highlight Effect

The Shadow/Highlight effect is akin to the auto effects that we looked at in the beginning of this chapter. It attempts to restore details from shadow areas that are too dark, or highlight areas that are too bright. If you are new to image correction, this is a great effect. If you know your way around Levels or Curves, I recommend sticking to those effects as they will usually produce far better results.

For this effect, open the Shadow Highlight.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder. This contains a photo that I took that has some cliffs that are a little dark.

Apply the Shadow/Highlight effect to this layer. The effects are instant, but not necessarily fantastic. The results are overblown and noisy, even though this photo was shot with an ISO setting of 100, which typically creates an image with relatively low noise.

To fine tune this effect, you can open the More Options section, and adjust those settings. You can also uncheck the Auto Amounts checkbox to get access to the Shadow Amount and Highlight Amount properties. This allows you to customize (read:reduce) the effect of the insanely intense defaults.

I got some pretty good results by deselecting the Auto Amounts option, and then taking the Shadow Amount value down to 20 (from its ridiculously high default of 50). But I would still prefer to be using Levels or Curves.

The Tint Effect

The Tint effect (and the Tritone effect coming up next) is used to recolor footage by remapping all of the color values. In the case of the Tint effect, all color values are remapped to two values— one that specifies what black is remapped to, and one that specifies what white is remapped to. This effect can be used to remap the colors in already-colored footage, or it can be used to add color where there is only grayscale values, such as with patterns created with the Fractal Noise effect.

For practicing with the Tint and Tritone effects, I’ve created a project called Tinting.aep that you’ll find in the Chapter 6 folder of the exercise files. This project has two compositions. The gray-scale pattern comp contains a watery pattern created with the Fractal Noise effect that is in desperate need of color.

The other comp contains a cool Artbeats video of some CG elements spinning around.

Let’s start with the grayscale pattern comp. Apply the Tint effect to the layer here. When the Tint effect is first applied, it remaps the darkest tones to black and the brightest tones to white, turning it grayscale. When applied to grayscale footage, there is no visible change.

The task now is to click the color swatches for the Map Black To and Map White To values to reassign these tones to other colors. For the Map Black To value, I’m going to click the color swatch and select a dark blue color. For the Map White To value, I’m going to click the color swatch and select a really bright blue. Although you can fade the tinting by using the Amount to Tint property, I’m going to leave this at the default 100% to get the tint in its full strength. The end results look much more like water.

Remember that effects often work better when used in conjunction with other effects. Sometimes when using colors other than black and white with the Tint effect, you can lose contrast. In this case, I added contrast with the Levels effect.

Now let’s see what the Tint effect looks like applied to video. Switch over to the other comp with the Artbeats video footage in it. Apply the Tint effect. As previously mentioned, when you first apply this effect to footage, it is completely stripped of color.

In the case of this video clip, I want a totally different look. As seen in Figure 6.120, the whole footage is tinted in cool tones. So, I’m going to choose a deep dark red for the Map Black To value, and a pale orangish-yellow for the Map White To value. The results are very different, but not a “me in high school” kind of different. Good different.

If the grayscale pattern comp got to use extra effects to create a better result, then it’s only fair that we add some extra effects to this video clip as well. I added the Curves effect to deepen the shadows and brighten the highlights, and the Glow effect to make it look, well, glowy.

The Tritone Effect

The Tritone effect is exactly the same as the Tint effect, only that it has three adjustable color values, instead of the two you find in the Tint effect. The Tritone effect allows you to remap highlights, midtones, and shadows.

Open (or Revert) the Tinting.aep project from the Chapter 6 folder if it’s not open already. First, apply the Tritone effect to the fractal water pattern in the grayscale pattern comp. Because of the default brown tone of the Midtones value, the default settings turn layers brown.

I changed the Highlights color swatch to a light pale green, the Midtones value to light blue, and the Shadows to dark blue. Since there isn’t much pure white in this pattern, we don’t see as much of the highlight color. The obvious advantage of the Tritone effect over the Tint effect is that it has an additional color property that you can control. But one of the disadvantages of this is that it becomes more difficult to balance these three color values in your image. The Tritone effect doesn’t really give you a way to adjust the way colors are mapped, which would be a handy feature when you have more than two colors. If you need control over the mapping of colors, you can apply a luminance adjustment effect (such as Levels or Curves) before the Tritone effect in the Effect Controls panel.

Let’s go over to the comp with the video clip in it, and apply the Tritone effect to this footage. I changed the highlights color to a light pale yellow, the Midtones to a vibrant orange, and the Shadows to a dark rich purple. Remember that we can also enhance these results with additional effects.

The Vibrance Effect

Oh boy, do I love me some Vibrance effect! On the surface, Vibrance seems just like a regular old saturation effect. And in fact, it does indeed saturate stuff. However, Vibrance is significantly better.

To understand the magic of the Vibrance effect, let’s look at what regular saturation does. We have this image of my lovely wife. Although she looks pretty and is still very sexually attracted to me, this image is a little washed out and could benefit from some saturation.

So, I’m going to apply the Vibrance effect because it has a regular old saturation slider on it. But you can increase saturation in a number of ways (Hue/Saturation, etc.). I’m going to take the Saturation value to 70. Uh-oh. That’s not good. Although it does boost the color, it turns her a hideous, Jersey Shore orange.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was some tool that would allow me to increase saturation but take it easy on skin tones? And that, ladies and gentlemen is where Vibrance comes in. Vibrance does exactly that: it saturates an image with extra care towards skin tones so that they saturate much more slowly than other colors. This allows us to make really beautiful cinematic imagery. Take the Saturation value down to 0, and now take Vibrance all the way up to 100. It’s a very high value, but as you can see from Figure 6.127, it can handle it.

The background and her pink hair are an almost cartoony level of vibrance, but her skin tone still looks normal. We’d probably want to dial this back a little bit, but I wanted to show you just how far you can push Vibrance before skin tones start to suffer.