SpeedGrade CC
SpeedGrade CC brings some really cool new features, including a redesigned user interface, which puts all the tools you need right at your fingertips; Shot Matcher, for matching different clips automatically; Mercury Transmit, for external monitoring via AJA and Matrox cards; a Luma Waveform display for accurate color balancing, a Snapshot Browser for saving and loading reference images (including images imported from Photoshop CC), film stock emulations, Look Manager, and more. For an overview of the new features, check out our SpeedGrade CC preview post from last month, or the Reveal videos we did for NAB.

Adobe Creative Cloud
We think the best thing about SpeedGrade is Adobe Creative Cloud. Creative Cloud was first launched one year ago and it has already been more successful than we dared to hope. Well over half a million members have signed on so far and the number is climbing daily because people love the new model. It’s easy to budget for and it is much more than just a great way to deliver software to your desktop. Creative Cloud provides the backend infrastructure that connects the dots in your creative process:

• Collaborative Tools: powerful Adobe applications like Photoshop and Illustrator have been reinvented to support a more intuitive, connected way of creating.
• Community: showcase your work, get feedback, and gain global exposure.
• Publish: deliver your creations in immersive, engaging new ways.
• Stay Inspired: No matter how creativity evolves, Creative Cloud lets you evolve with it.

The new CC applications, like SpeedGrade CC, still run locally on your Mac or Windows machines (or both!), but Creative Cloud provides integration and services that keep you connected. Installations, updates, files syncing, posting work to Behance, notification, and invitations to collaborate are all managed through Creative Cloud, your new creative dashboard.

Adobe SpeedGrade CC

Get SpeedGrade CC and Adobe Creative Cloud
If you join Adobe Creative Cloud today, you will immediate access to the current versions of our applications. Next month, you will be able to download SpeedGrade CC – along with the rest of pro video applications, including Adobe Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC, and all the other CC tools, such as Photoshop CC, and much more. Then, as new features become available (and they will), you’ll be able to download the new version right away. The days of waiting 12, 18, or 24 months for new releases are over.

You can also join for free and get 30-day trials of any Adobe Creative Cloud desktop application. Paid membership offers ongoing access to all of the Adobe creative desktop applications, including new features as they become available, plus online services for file sharing, publishing, and more.

We have some great offers on: Now is a great time to move to Adobe Creative Cloud. We think you’ll love it.

So what’s next? While we can’t yet tell you when the next launch will be, we do want to share some of the exciting things coming in the next version of Adobe SpeedGrade.

Redesigned interface
The next version of SpeedGrade gets a complete UI overhaul, which accomplishes three things:

• provides a more familiar screen layout for Adobe Premiere Pro users
• puts all the tools you need right at your fingertips
• Makes better use of limited screen real estate, especially important for laptop users (and we know there are a lot of you out there!)

Adobe SpeedGrade will offer a clean, new UI design which places all the tools you need in easy reach.

Tabs on the top left of the screen reflect the sequence of the SpeedGrade workflow: locating your media, grading, rendering and reviewing final output.

Adobe Premiere Pro users will feel right at home in the new media browser. The monitor now automatically resizes to show the whole image. This is great for all the usual grading tasks. Of course you can always zoom in and out when you need to see more detail for pulling a secondary or creating a mask.

The mask pane is now located next to the Look panel, so the mask and grading tools are now side-by-side for a much faster mask workflow.

The new Look manager makes it easy to organize your .look files. You can open the Look manager to view dozens of .look files, reduce it to the size of the current Look browser, or hide everything except for a line of tabs at the bottom of the screen, saving space for grading work.

Use the new Look Manager to organize your own look library.

Shot Matcher
SpeedGrade will include a really powerful new tool which automates the arduous process of matching different clips, for example if they were shot on different cameras, or under different lighting conditions – which we all know happens all the time. With Shot Matcher you can match a second clip to a source clip just by clicking the Shot Matcher button. This adds an adjustment layer to your grade for that clip. You can tweak the opacity or add additional corrections on top, if necessary, but this one tool is going to save you a LOT of time.

Use Shot Matcher to quickly establish visual continuity across different shots, so that it is obvious they are part of the same scene.

You can also use Shot Matcher to match a clip to an image brought in from Photoshop, so if someone sends you a still and says “make it look like this,” you can – with a single click.

Mercury Transmit
With Mercury Transmit integration in SpeedGrade, you will be able to use a second display for reference monitoring via video I/O cards from AJA and Matrox. Of course, Windows users can continue to use native support for NVIDIA SDI-Out as well.

Film stock emulations
SpeedGrade will include a set of film stock emulations so you can add vibrant cinematic palettes to your shots quickly, or include a film stock emulations as a grading layer within your looks.

Add a richer, filmic look to your digital footage with film stock emulations.

Snapshot Browser
Grab still images of your grades, to use as scene references, or to guide grading on other shots. You can also import images from other applications, such as Photoshop, so you can view inside SpeedGrade to inform you color grading decisions.

The Snapshot Browser is a great tool for saving or importing grading reference images to guide your work.

Lumetri integration in Premiere Pro
The next version of Adobe Premiere Pro will include the Lumetri Deep Color Engine, so that you can apply native SpeedGrade looks, including masks and effects, within Adobe Premiere Pro. This means you can edit to the aesthetic of your grade, knowing that what you see in Adobe Premiere Pro is exactly what you saw in SpeedGrade – call it “visual integration.”

New Luma Waveform scope
We added a whole new scope in SpeedGrade. The new Luma Waveform display gives you a handy left-to-right representation of the luminance of your images. Many of you will probably find the Luma Waveform quickly becomes your go-to tool for precise black- and white balancing.

You will have four scopes to choose from, including the new Luma Waveform display.

Continuity Checker
Compare your shot to the one before it with a click on the 2-Up view. Or check it with the shot before and the shot following it with the 3-Up view. Continuity Checker adds playheads so you can see your shots in context and make sure your scenes look consistent from clip to clip. Use Continuity Checker together with Shot Matcher to tweak shots so they match just right.

Custom grading layer names
Add custom grading layer names to help keep complex grades organized, or to remind you how a saved .look file was built when you open it up again later on a new project.

Type in custom names for grading layers in the new version of Adobe SpeedGrade.

Support for Tangent Elements
SpeedGrade will also add support for the popular Tangent Element control surface series. Use one, or use all four of the panels to control SpeedGrade via intuitive tactile input. We’re proud of this implementation: the immediacy of the controls and the sensitivity this provides for color adjustments is fabulous!

How to get Adobe SpeedGrade Next
The release date has not been announced, but there is a great way to get yourself to the front of the line. If you join Adobe Creative Cloud now, you will immediately receive the entire stable of currently shipping Adobe CS6 applications AND you will automatically receive the new versions of SpeedGrade and all your other favorite Adobe applications as soon as they are available. From April 4 through 19, 2013, we’re offering our NAB Show Special giving you 40% off Creative Cloud for your first year – that’s only $29.99/month It’s an amazing way to keep your production costs really low and your tools up-to-date all the time.

Learn More
Discover more about what’s coming to the next versions of the Adobe pro video tools at: adobe.com/go/nab_reveal.

 Cross-Processing –  by Alexis Van Hurkman

Cross-processing refers to the deliberate use of the wrong chemistry to develop film. For example, color negative film developed in a reversal film bath, or reversal film developed in a color negative bath. Typically, this produces strange and unexpected nonlinear color interactions for creating bizarre and exciting looks that are appropriate for editorial magazine shoots and music videos.

Of course, the disadvantage of cross-processing with photochemical processes is that if you don’t like the result, you’re stuck. With digital technology, however, cross-processing is simply a license to abuse the color channels of an image. If you don’t like what you’ve done, you can simply reset the layer and try again.

This simple example of a cross-processing look gives you something to think about.

1.   Move the playhead to the fifth clip in the Timeline, and click the +P button to add another primary layer.

A typical result of cross-processing is stark blue shadows and faded yellow highlights that interact across the midtones of the image. This is an easy look to create using the different tonal modes SpeedGrade offers.

2.   Click the Shadows mode button, and drag the Offset color balance control towards blue to add a distinct blue tone to the darker parts of the image.

3.   Next, click the Highlights mode button, and drag the Offset color balance control towards yellow.

At this point, you’ve got a reasonable approximation of a cross-processed look. The added bonus, here, is that because the two women’s faces fall squarely into the as-yet-untouched midtones, they remain relatively neutral and naturalistic, which clients often prefer.

4.   These adjustments have caused some really large signal excursions above 100 and below 0 in the Waveform scope. To fix this, click the + button, and choose fxLegalizeNTSC (if you’re in North America or Japan) or fxLegalizePAL (if you’re in Europe).

The overshoots and undershoots of the video signal as seen in the Waveform scope immediately compress so that the entire signal falls between 0 and 100%. However, you should notice that all the nice yellow color you added to the highlights has been desaturated.

This is a function of the fxLegalize Look layer. Since too much saturation in the highlights is a signal violation, a certain amount of desaturation occurs along with compression of the signal. This is correct, but it’s depressing. Fortunately, you can do something about this by controlling the order of operations in the Layers list.

5.   Click the +P button to add a primary layer.

The new layer appears above the fxLegalize layer you added. This is a problem because you need to use this layer to adjust the video signal before the fxLegalize filter, so you can manually adjust the highlights before they get clipped.

6.   In the Layers list, drag the top primary layer to below the fxLegalize filter. As you drag, a red line shows where the layer will go when you drop it.

7.   Now, click the eye button of the fxLegalize layer to hide it, and select the primary layer that you just moved.

8.   With the top primary layer selected, click the Highlights mode button, and then drag the Gain contrast ring to the left to lower the top of the red and green channels as seen in the Waveform until the top of the red waveform is at approximately 95%. Please note that it may require more or less adjustment then is shown in the screenshot below for the desired result.

At this point, you’ve used the restrictive Highlights mode to compress the highlights yourself, “pre-legalizing” the signal to ensure that all highlight values fall far enough under 100% so that they’ll remain saturated after you legalize the signal.

9.   Click the eye again to show the fxLegalize layer again. You should now notice that desaturation no longer occurs in the image as a result of the legalization.

It’s important to understand that the automatic legalization performed by the fxLegalize filters is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Indiscriminate clipping can cause problems, and it’s sometimes better for you to make decisions about how to compress the signal rather than use an automatic effect.

Excerpted from Adobe SpeedGrade: Getting Started. Copyright © 2013. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and Peachpit Press.

If you enjoyed this excerpt and want to read more, you can save 35% off the regular price if you buy it on the Peachpit site. Use the PPSPEED code on checkout to get the discount. Thanks to our friends at Peachpit Press for this special offer.

We’re big fans of Alexis Van Hurkman and his fantastic introduction to the art of color grading - The Color Correction Handbook - has a special place on our bookshelf. So we were thrilled when we heard that Alexis would be writing a new SpeedGrade book for our favorite publisher, Peachpit Press.

Adobe SpeedGrade: Getting Started guides the reader through the powerful SpeedGrade toolset, but does much more than just telling you which buttons to press. Every section, indeed every exercise, provides new insights into the colorist’s art and the real-world business of working with clients. Best of all, it’s a great read!

Adobe SpeedGrade Getting Started by Alexis Van Hurkman is available as an eBook for Kindle and other eReader applications and devices. Word to the wise: read this book on a device with a color screen. I read it on my Kobo eReader app on my iPad and it looks fantastic. I have come to really like having How-To books on an eDevice: bookmarking and notes make it a snap to go back to sections I want to review.

Special offer for readers of this blog
The good people at Peachpit Press have extended a special offer to our readers: Save 35% off the regular price. Buy it on the Peachpit site and use the PPSPEED on checkout to get the discount.

Let us know what you think of the book!

Here’s how you do super-easy EDL export from Adobe Premiere Pro into SpeedGrade:

1. Render out your edited content in Premiere Pro as a single flat clip. You could use a format such as DNxHD in a QuickTime wrapper, or any another QuickTime format.

2. Still in Premiere Pro, export the EDL for the project (File>Export>EDL)

3. Now move over to SpeedGrade and load the clip.

Here you see the flat rendered project as a single clip on the SpeedGrade timeline. The EDL is ready to load from the Desktop. All you need to do is drag it onto the clip…

4. In the SpeedGrade Desktop  (the SpeedGrade media browser) locate the EDL.

5. Drag the EDL onto the timeline and … presto! … all your cuts are added!

After you drop the EDL onto the sequence, all your cuts appear.

Once you have all your cuts, you can apply color corrections to individual clips (for example, to match shots) , or add stylized looks across scenes (your creative grade).

Open the Look panel to apply color corrections to invididual clips or add creative grades across clips on the timeline

When you are finished grading, render out the project as individual clips, or as a one big clip. You can open the graded content in Premiere Pro or After Effects (for example, if you want to add titling), or you send it to Media Encoder or Encore to create your deliverables.

What if I don’t have an EDL?
I’m glad you asked that, because SpeedGrade has yet another great tool to help you with longer pieces, such as archived material. No EDL? No worries! You can still to flag your cuts with our awesome Automatic Scene Detection tool.

Use automatic scene detection to identify cuts in footage that has no associated EDL

We’ll cover that workflow in an upcoming blog – but if you want to start playing with this SpeedGrade power feature, you’ll find the Scene Change Detect button on the right side of the Setup pane in the Timeline panel.

Can it get any better? Yes, with Adobe Creative Cloud
Have you made the ultimate upgrade to Creative Cloud yet ? Keep all your Adobe applications up to date for one low monthly fee – including future versions when they become available!

Creative Cloud includes all of the Adobe desktop applications, so now is your chance to try out applications like Adobe Muse, or finally get Lightroom.

Also, with Creative Cloud you only pay when you are using the apps. Work slowing down? Going on a vacation? Just suspend your account for a month or two and activate it again when you’re ready to get back to work.

Happy color grading, everyone!

SpeedGrade CS6 ships with four collections of .Look file presets which you can use right out of the box (so to speak), or as a starting point for building your own looks. The four sets  are called Cinematic, Desaturation, Style, and Temperature. Each of the folders includes eight Looks, for a total of 32.

The SpeedGrade Look presets, along with any new Looks you create yourself, are displayed in the Look browser at the bottom of the Look panel. After loading content, close the Desktop (D) and click on the Look tab to open the Look panel.

Sepia is one of the Cinematic Looks included with SpeedGrade CS6

Tabs along the top of the Look browser allow you to move quickly between different folders of .Look files. When you first launch SpeedGrade CS6, tabs for the four sets of Look presets are displayed.

SpeedGrade CS6 includes a set of eight desaturated Looks

You can browse other locations by clicking on the plus sign (+) to add a new tab to the Look browser.

Apply a Look
To apply a Look to your footage, make sure that you have a clip or a grading track selected on the Timeline. Click on a Look to see a preview. Press enter to apply it to the clip.

Hide the Look Panel
You can hide the Look panel by pressing P. This provides more screen real estate for your image. Press P again to bring back the Look panel (or any other panels). You can also get a full screen preview with Shift+H, which is like cinema mode in Premiere Pro.

Dude, Where Are My Look Presets?
The Look presets are stored in the pre-installed “Look-Examples” folder. To find them, click the ellipsis (…) on a Look browser tab to open up a folder tree view.

You can navigate to to any folder on your system from within the Look browser

You will find the Look Examples folder inside your application folder.

On a Mac:
/Applications/Adobe SpeedGrade CS6/Adobe SpeedGrade CS6.app/Contents/MacOS/Look Examples

On a PC:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe SpeedGrade CS6\Look Examples

Please note: if you accidentally delete a Look preset, you will need to re-install SpeedGrade to retrieve any missing Look presets.

You can avoid this problem by copying the Look presets to another folder. Generally it is best to do this using the Finder (Mac) or Explorer (Windows)  and manually copying Looks (or whole folders) to new locations. Then navigate to the new folder from the Look browser.

Organizing your Looks
Once you are up and running with your own Looks, you will probably want to create your own file system for organizing them, such as by project, or by type of Looks. You can also exchange Looks with other users by email (they’re tiny little XML files) or by posting them online.

Saving New Looks
And remember you can modify an existing Look and save it with a new name by clicking on Save .Look at the bottom of the Layer pane. The new Look will automatically save to the currently open folder on the Look browser.

Saving a Look adds the new .Look file to the currently open folder in the Look browser

We’ll be back soon with more tips, tricks, and info on Adobe SpeedGrade CS6. Thanks for reading!

New to SpeedGrade? Download it as part of your Creative Cloud membership - or get a 30-day free trial to test it out.

Video2Brain

First out of the gate on June 21, 2012 June was Video2Brain, who published Getting Started with SpeedGrade CS6. Here’s how they describe the course:

SpeedGrade is a color grading and finishing tool that lets video editors control color and light for any type of content, and it is now part of the Adobe Creative Suite. In this workshop filmmaker and author Chad Perkins teaches you the basics of this powerful software. You’ll learn how to perform a basic color grade, create looks, mask footage, apply grades to multiple clips, and much more. You’ll also see how SpeedGrade fits into your overall post-production workflow.

Getting Started with SpeedGrade CS6 includes 30 lessons, clocking in with a total of 2 hours and 10 minutes of footage. The course includes some cool sample projects (“Hollywood Blockbuster” and “Horror Movie) to give you and idea of how creative look design can be approached in different ways. The cost, including project files is $34.99 – or via a monthly subscription to Video2Brain.

fxphd fast forward

The next online course to arrive on the scene (August 15, 2012) was SpeedGrade CS6 Fundamentals in the fxphd fast forward training series. 

SpeedGrade CS6 Fundamentals will quickly get you up to speed on how to more effectively use the new grading software from Adobe. Taught by Joost van der Hoeven, this all-new course contains over three and a half hours of training covering the fundamentals you need to know to get most out of this new release. This course is intended for users who are new to SpeedGrade or even a dedicated color grading program in general. While it is targeted towards editors and effects artists using the Production Premium bundle, the course will help get anyone quickly up to speed.

SpeedGrade CS6 Fundamentals is broken down into 10 lessons, generally around 30 minutes each. The cost, including project files, is $99. You can also get this course through an fxphd subscription.

Lynda.com

We knew Lynda would come through, and they did! Up and Running with SpeedGrade, was released on October 2, 2012.

In this course, professional colorist Robbie Carman guides colorists and video editors through this new dedicated color correction application. The course walks through the interface, and then shows how to import footage and start making primary and secondary color corrections. Discover how to use masking and create and apply looks for maximum impact. The final chapters show how to make sure your corrections match shot to shot, and how to render your final output.

Up and Running with SpeedGrade includes six chapters with 24 lessons, and a total running time of 2 hours and 43 minutes. Monthly subscriptions to Lynda.com start at $25, but you will need a premium subscription ($37.50 per month) to be able download the project files. Of course the membership includes access to all of the Lynda.com training content. A seven-day trial membership is available.

How to choose?

Each of these courses includes free introductory videos to give you an idea of which one might be the best fit for you.

We on the SpeedGrade team want to send out a big “Thank You!” to fxphd, Lynda.com, and Video2Brain for creating these wonderful courses and helping so many of our users make the move to color grading with Adobe SpeedGrade CS6.

In this post we’re going to look at how to get an Edit Decision List (EDL) out of Premiere Pro and into SpeedGrade CS6. Rather than creating a whole new set of files, this approach allows you to load your cuts and “conform” your source material on the SpeedGrade timeline. This is often the fastest way to get a project into SpeedGrade.

Exporting Your EDL
Once you have finished editing in Premiere Pro export your EDL by selecting the File>Export>EDL command.

Use the Export EDL command in Adobe Premiere Pro

Make sure you have selected the correct Video Layer in the Export EDL settings dialog – you can only export a single video track with an EDL! Click OK and then choose a location for saving your EDL file.

Select your Video Layer in the EDL Export dialog

Check Your Settings in SpeedGrade
Before you load the EDL in SpeedGrade CS6, check your settings to make sure they match your source material.

In SpeedGrade open the Settings panel (tab in top right corner of the screen) and select the Editing settings pane. In the Editing settings pane, make sure your base frame rate matches the Premiere Pro sequence.

To avoid “Reel Out Of Range” errors in SpeedGrade, match the base frame rate to the frame rate of the source material.

Choose the Timeline tab on the lower part of your screen and click on Reels to open the Reels browser. Set the default time base from the dropdown on the right side of the Reel browser.

Set default time base from the Reel browser pane

Load Your EDL
Now you are ready to load your EDL. Open the Desktop (tab near the top left corner of the screen) to locate your EDL file. Double-click the EDL to load it on the Timeline.

The first thing you see is an brown clip placeholders on the Timeline with empty grey boxes in the Reel browser. The next step is to link your clips (aka “load your reels”) on the Timeline. This process is referred to as conforming an EDL.

This is what the EDL looks like before you link your clips.

In the Desktop, navigate to the folder where your clips are stored. Make sure that all the clips listed in your EDL are there!

Finally, in the Reel browser, click on Load from Desktop. Your clips are now linked and you are ready to start grading!

EDL conformed on the SpeedGrade timeline. Note that one reel (clip) in this image did not load. To solve this, locate the missing clip and drag it into position.

If you want to substitute a specific clip, you can do that by dragging the replacement clip from the Desktop onto the corresponding reel in the Reel browser, or onto that clip on the Timeline.

Final note: If you want to include your audio tracks with your EDL in SpeedGrade, manually drag the audio file onto the Timeline.

Four things to watch out for with EDL workflows:

1. Make sure you use CMX 3600 supported key, such as cross-dissolves or speed changes. Other keys, such as dip-to-black or audio transitions are not supported in SpeedGrade.
2. I already said this, but I’ll say it again: use a single-track video sequence, or the EDL won’t work in SpeedGrade!
3. Ensure that you are using a SpeedGrade-supported format! MXF, for example, will not load in SpeedGrade. GoPro owners should convert MP4 files into .mov files to play them in SpeedGrade.
4. Do not rename your clips in Premiere Pro if you plan to export them with an EDL.

__________________

And in Other News…

Adobe held a fantastically successful Create Now event yesterday showing how artists and filmmakers are using Creative Cloud to bring their work to the next level. If you missed the live broadcast, you can still watch Create Now on Adobe TV.

Yesterday also saw the announcement of Creative Cloud for Teams – a better way of working together.

Recommended reading: our fabulous colleague Kathy Charneco has written a great post on the Pro Video Coalition blog – Reinventing Video Creation with Adobe Creative Cloud.

New to SpeedGrade? Download it as part of your Creative Cloud membership – or get a 30-day free trial to test it out.

Comments o

Director Richard Jobson gave a lively presentation on the project, and described in detail how the Adobe tools enable him to deliver high production value on modest budgets. He does it with vigorous storytelling, well-crafted scenes, and immersive soundtracks.  Those who know their music history will recognize the name: Richard was lead singer for The Skids, a popular punk rock band in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

Richard Jobson, director of Wayland’s Song, speaking at Adobe&Filmmakers on November 15

For the past decade Richard has been very active as a filmmaker, producing visually rich pieces, powerfully influenced by the Expressionist art movement.

Wayland’s Song will be released in the spring of 2013

We’re proud to report that the Wayland’s Song team used the whole suite of Adobe CS6 production tools:

• Adobe Story for script writing and production scheduling
• Adobe Prelude for ingest and logging
• Adobe Premiere Pro for editing
• Adobe After Effects for VFX and titling
• Adobe Audition for audio mixing and mastering
• And our special favorite here on Moving Colors: Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 for grading and finishing.

Colorist Dado Valentic spoke about the color grading workflow with SpeedGrade. He described how changing to the palette impacts the narrative, in one scene even subtly altering the storyline – just through the use of color!

Colorist Dado Valentic demonstrates how he graded Wayland’s Song

A full house at the Covent Garden screening room enjoyed the presentations and the opportunity to mingle and chat during the reception afterwards. We loved it, too! We love to meet the artists who use our products, hear about their work, and learn what they need from us to take their art further.

Special thanks for Richard Jobson and his team for joining us for Adobe&Filmmakers.

Like what you see? Make the ultimate upgrade to Adobe Creative Cloud and get all of the Adobe desktop applications as part of your membership!

It gets even more interesting when you add grading tracks on the Timeline. Grading tracks allow you to add a new set of grades on top of your clip-based color corrections – and they allow you to do this across multiple clips, or a whole project.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to add a grading track.

Color Correcting Individual Clips
If you’ve already worked (or played around) with SpeedGrade, you will be familiar with the Layer pane on the left side of the Look panel.

Add and restack grading layers in the Layer pane.

The layer pane is where you can apply primaries, secondaries, effects, and masks to a clip. Depending on the power of your GPU, there is virtually no limit to how many adjustments or layers you can add.

Clip-based grading is ideal for color correction tasks which are clip-specific, such balancing colors and matching shots, but what if you want to apply a look across a whole scene?

Using Grading Tracks
Grading tracks are color adjustments which are placed on the Timeline above the clips which they affect.

Grading tracks display above the video tracks.

Grading tracks are good for any adjustments that you want to apply across multiple clips. For example, you might want to use a LUT across your whole project to give it a filmic look.

You can also use grading tracks for applying creative looks to scenes, a key aspect of visual storytelling. These looks tell your audience where they are in the story, conveying locations, times (such as when you move between the present and flashback to the past), and atmosphere – for example when  the story becomes darker (literally and visually) or happier, or to help the audience distinguish between parallel story lines.

SpeedGrade allows you to craft the right look for each scene.

How to create a grading track in SpeedGrade
With your project on the Timeline, open the Timeline panel on the View pane. Drag the grading icon onto the Timeline above your clips.

Drag the grading icon onto the Timeline to create a grading track.

As you hover over the Timeline with the grading icon, a red line appears over your clips.

If the red line is thick, an empty grading clip will be added to each clip on your Timeline. Drag the icon slightly higher and the red line become thinner. Drop the icon and a grading track appears with a single (empty) grading clip over just one clip. If you make a mistake with the grading track, just undo and try again: you will quickly get the hang of it.

With a single empty grading clip on the Timeline, grab the right end of the grading clip to stretch it across the shots in your scene.

Stretch the grading clip across multiple clips so that you can apply one look to all of them.

Once it is positioned correctly on the Timeline, select the grading clip and then open the Look panel.

You can now apply a predesigned look, or create a new one. You can use all the same tools as with clip-based color correction: primaries, secondaries, effects, LUTs and masks.

Check your work as you go by toggling the visibility button on the grading track. If your keyboard has a number pad, you can toggle grading on and off with the 0 (zero) key

Summary
Grading and look design are integral to modern digital filmmaking workflows. For visual storytelling, grading layers provide a fantastic way to play with color adjustments and develop highly refined looks – and your creative scope is exponentially increased when you bring grading tracks into the mix.

Behind the scenes, as you develop your looks, the Lumetri Deep Color Engine in SpeedGrade is working its magic, instantly re-calculating the values as layers are added, or restacked – so you can focus on the results.

Keep on having fun with SpeedGrade!

Meanwhile…
Robbie Carmen has just released a new training series on Lynda.com:  Up and Running with SpeedGrade.
Remember, if you have technical questions, visit the SpeedGrade forums for lots of friendly help.