Order of operations for Color grading Workflow

hello all,
I posted this before but may have zigged when I should have zagged!! ... LOL  in other words, I think while I was multi-tasking, I forgot to hit submit!!!

I need help with my color grading workflow.  I'm new to color grading, and I'm constantly getting confused as to what is the order of operation regarding color grading.  Can someone with a degree of experience help me?  I'm currently the proud owner of a new copy of Color Finale 2 Pro, and I believe I can grade but with all of the youtube, stuff out there I just need to know what the order is!!!!!!

If anyone can help it would be so helpful

All the best

GB

Hi GB:

Here is my workflow:

1. Make sure you start with your camera reasonably well white balanced before shooting your scene. If you are shooting Log or HLG make sure you expose properly for camera LUTs you plan to use.
2. Apply camera LUT if you have started with Log or HLG files. I use the Leeming LUT's for my Fuji X-T3.
3. Follow the advice contained in this video:
   This was a big help to me. But you may want to skip if you do not have a color card. You may be close enough depending on initial white balance and exposure.
4. Use Color Wheels to adjust highlights to just below 100%
5. Use Color Wheels to adjust shadows to just above 0%
6. Use Color Wheels to adjust mid-tones up or down depending on your taste.
7. Use Color Wheels to add some color saturation.
8. With Color Curves maybe add some contrast with a slight S Curve.
9. Add a little sharpening to taste.

Sorry that you purchased Color Finale. I did, and it is of little value.

Others contributors have a may more advanced process, but this is a rather simple format to follow before attempting something more advanced.

Hope this helps get you started.

Don

I taught Apple Color for it's entire life span, miss that app a lot. Start setting contrast, it'll fix a lot of white balance issues by itself. If not, then white balance. Then color for skin tones. Three memory colors to grade for and skin tone is number one. Secondary is blue of the sky, then green of foliage if people aren't predominant in the shot. From there it's just stylizing (personal preference). It's basically that easy as far as order of operations.

Very big topic so not one answer is the right one. That said Ben’s order of approach is a great ‘rule book’.
i respectfully disagree that Color Finale is not worth it. FCP own tools are very good and get you to very good results BUT you can’t beat the ease and helpful organisation of tools and once you get comfortable with the basics of grading ColorFinale gives you some amazing tools to add the ‘x’ factor
But back to Ben’s great points. Grading for me is all about 2 things: contrast and tone. And contrast includes between colours. First I think about how can I maximise the luminance contrast in the picture and where do I need to compensate for deficiencies. EG when shooting a lot with natural light you sometimes and end up with important content (face, main object) that is in the shadow. So I want to raise the luma of the main content and also compensate to not wash out everything. For this reason I use Curves when using FCP tools and Exposure in CF2. Curves has other advantages that I can precisely target luma values and not just the 30% lower/mid/high values like with wheels.
After I’m happy with the contrast (even if some areas like sky or skin need more work in a secondary pass) I work on the tone.
By tone I mean how I want my colours to look. Do I need to adjust white balance. Do I want It in general warmer or colder (eg evening or morning). This part is wide open because so many factors play into. But a good point to start is to actually look at what you need to adjust to get a neutral white and black. Where I still get caught sometimes is that you have to be careful with colour reflections that influence your perceived neutral white. Say you have White bonnet next to a red wall the red reflects in the bonnet and if you would balance the white to pure white your red would be off. Lots of thinking about what you see, what your scopes are telling you and what you want to achieve. The last steps are then secondary adjustments to specific areas like eg soft vignetting parts to emphasise the main object in your frame or targeting specific colours like giving the sky a richer blue. CF2 is far more versatile here.

On LUTs: If you use luts to compensate for Log footage you could apply them via the clip inspector. Nice thing this way that you apply them once and they stay with clips throughout the library and you don’t have to apply the LUT in every new project. BUT because they are based on the perfect exposed log image they sometimes push too far when you or your DP didn’t nail the exposure or had to make a compromise because they couldn’t use lights to compensate for super high contrast (eg. bright window inside room) In this case it’s actually better to apply the LUT after your Curves, Wheels etc. and the only way to do that is to apply them via the custom filter as the LUT in the inspector is always applied before any other filter. I generally start editing with the correct camera LUT in the clip inspector for the log footage I have knowing that I might need to switch the order for certain clips.
To use luts for a certain look remember that they only really work after you adjusted your image to a neutral colour balance.
If you want to get even more sophisticated you can use the ACES colour space inside CF2. Too much to explain here but worthwhile reading up about it.
And the last advice: practise,practise, practise grading is an art and I’m still an amateur so read about it as much as you can, look at tutorials, maybe even buy one.

Almost forgot. The order of controls in CF2 from top to bottom are a great way to develop a workflow. Exposure sets the right level of luminance for your most important part of your image. Contrast and pivot adjust the overall contrast and where the area is you need to increase (eg you have good contrast in the bright areas but very little in the lows where you main object is so in this case you use the pivot to shift the mid point of the contrast spread lower). Next is white balance and last overall sat. Layers you use either if you can’t get what you need with the base  controls or you need secondary adjustments/finessing. So there are diff controlls but the principle stays the same. 

Hope this gives you some pointers

FYI; Contrast is not chroma (between colors), it's a luma function, and how our eyes naturally judge depth, thus, do it first, you correct lots of other stuff, and give more depth to your image, more realism.

And I will have to respectfully disagree and state I have always found Color Finale unstable, a gimmick, and not worth it.

But use what works for you.

Hi All,

My goal is not turn this into Color Finale discussion but thought would lend my two cents as a noobie color grader.

I saw an episode of Curtis Judd on his color correction technique using the X-Rite Passport and Color Finale. In it he described a process of using the Passport Color Checker/FCPX along with Color Finale's automated color correction using the Passport Color Checker. Even after making sure there were no reflections or shadows on the Passport I could never get this to look right.

Also in this same video, Curtis described a manual process for color grading using the X-Rite Passport in conjunction with Davinci Resolve. I do not use Davinci Resolve but it appeared to me that Color Finale had similar controls. But again, Color Finale controls were not as good as could be found in Davinci Resolve so this also did not work for me.

Then I found Khalid's video (through a URL on fcp.co) and tried it conjunction with FCPX/XRite Passport. Works every time.

I do not debate what more experienced contributors are saying on this thread. They are correct about setting contrast first. But if you are new to color grading, using Khalid's method then touching up with FCPX Color Wheels/Color Curves will eliminate much of the frustration and get you on your way to more advanced color grading techniques--maybe even using Color Finale.

Don

Hi All:

I thought I would give Color Finale (in conjunction with the X-Rite passport and Khalid's method) another try using it exclusively for the color correction instead of FCPX color adjustments. I did not use CF's automated color adjustment feature with the X-Rite passport. As expected, I found the results to be the about the same as using FCPX controls.

CF might be a little faster to work with than FCPX. Mostly because of the Color Vector layer without having to select each color individually.  Still not sure it is worth the $99 USD as an upgrade to the controls in FCPX--though CF's pivot might be useful.

Don