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Advanced Color Grading in Adobe SpeedGrade CC and Premiere Pro CC

by Jon Acosta

Color grading fuels emotion into your visual productions. This course is designed to build on to your Adobe Premiere Pro CC knowledge by furthering your color grading capabilities inside of SpeedGrade CC. Software required: Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 or later, Adobe SpeedGrade CC 2015 or later.

What you'll learn

Have you ever wondered how to inject more emotion into your video productions as an editor? If so, Advanced Color Grading in Adobe SpeedGrade CC and Premiere Pro CC is the perfect course for you. In this advanced course you will go beyond the fundamentals of video editing by learning how to isolate color into primary and secondary layers for pixel-perfect tone correction. This will allow you to create powerfully effective imagery that cannot be done inside of Premiere Pro alone. First, you will learn how to properly analyze, monitor, and easily manipulate color inside of your Premiere Pro video edits to successfully produce broadcast friendly content that can be aired on television. Next, you will leverage the power of LUT (look up table) files inside of Premiere Pro CC (2015) and carry that information over to Adobe SpeedGrade by using the power of Adobe's Direct Link inside of the Creative Cloud platform. This will allow you to perform complex color corrections in seconds. Finally, you will understand how to process R3D (REDCAM) and RAW video footage inside of SpeedGrade by using EDL files, IRCP files, and Direct Link from Premiere Pro for optimal pixel perfect color flexibility. When you're finished with this color correction and grading course, you'll not only know how to create the popular "Pleasantville effect" with objects in your video content, but also how to manipulate the color of moving objects by performing auto-tracking with masks around your subjects. Software required: Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 or later, Adobe SpeedGrade CC 2015 or later.

Table of contents

Course Overview
1min

Course FAQ

What is Adobe SpeedGrade?

Adobe SpeedGrade is a color grading application that allows you to perform advanced color correction, mastering, and design for digital video projects.

What are the benefits of using Adobe SpeedGrade?

Some of the major advantages of using SpeedGrade include:

  • More visual consistency in your projects
  • More aesthetically compelling projects
  • Advanced set of tools for full control of color grading
What is color grading?

Color grading is the process of manipulating various attributes of an image or video such as color, contrast, saturation, hue, etc. to improve the overall appearance and/or achieve a specific look and feel.

What will I learn in this course?

This course will teach you advanced color grading capabilities in SpeedGrade and Premiere Pro. Topics covered include:

  • Color grading vs color correction
  • Levaraging LUT (look up tables)
  • Using RGB Waveforms to validate color
  • Direct linking to SpeedGrade
  • Handling RAW R3D footage workflows
  • Color grading with primary layer stacks in SpeedGrade
  • Effective secondary layer grading
  • Auto shot match and applying look layers in SpeedGrade
  • Render settings and name automation
  • Much more
Who is this course for?

This course is for anyone who wants to learn color grading skills through Adobe SpeedGrade and Premiere Pro! Editors, filmmakers, colorists, and VFX artists will find this course especially useful.

Are there prerequisites to this course?

This is an advanced level course, and as such it assumes you have a solid understanding of Adobe Premiere Pro beforehand. Some experience with SpeedGrade will also be helpful, but is not as critical.

What software do I need for this course?

These tutorials are based on Adobe Premiere Pro 2015 and Adobe SpeedGrade 2015, so it would be best to have those versions or newer. But the principles taught should apply well to most available versions.

About the author

Over the last decade, Jon Acosta has been capturing and orchestrating visual stories on camera in just about every spectrum of the production industry (including industrial, creative, television, etc). Acosta’s passion for evoking emotion into a room full of strangers began at the age of 12. He spent his earlier years interning for a successful post-production studio in Atlanta, GA, teaching Final Cut Pro at Apple Inc as a certified software trainer, and managing his own production company betwe... more

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