Color Correction and Color Grading are essential processes in video editing that enhance the visual appeal of your clips. Premiere Elements offers powerful tools like the Color Correction and Grading panel and LUTs (Lookup Tables) to help you achieve professional-level color correction and grading.
See Color Correction and Grading Settings for more on how to adjust settings and preferences for Color Correction and Grading.
You can use a LUT (Look Up Table) as a starting point for grading your footage, and then use the other color controls for further grading.
Premiere Elements provides several preset LUTs that you can apply to your footage, or you can select a custom LUT that you saved.
White Balance
The white balance in a video reflects the lighting conditions under which the video was shot. Adjusting the white balance can effectively improve the ambient color of your video.
Adjust the white balance in your clip by changing the Temperature and Tint properties. You can use the eye-dropper to click an area in the footage that is white or neutral in color. The white balanace automatically gets adjusted. Alternatively, you can use the slider controls to fine-tune the temperature and tint values until you achieve the desired color balance.
Temperature
Fine-tunes the white balance using a color temperature scale. Move the slider to the left to make the video appear cooler, and to the right for warmer colors.
Tint
Fine-tunes the white balance to compensate for a green or magenta tint. To add green tint to the video, move the slider to the left (negative values), and to add magenta, move it to the right (positive values).
Saturation
Adjusts the saturation of all colors in the video equally. Drag the slider to the left to decrease the overall saturation. Drag to the right to increase the overall saturation.
Adjust the tonal scale of the video clip using the different tone controls.
Any changes made would be reflected in the Adjustments panel's Color Correction section.
Exposure
Sets the brightness of the video clip. Move the Exposure slider to the right to increase tonal values and expands highlights. Move the slider to the left to decrease tonal values and expands shadows. Adjust the slider until the video looks good with the desired brightness.
Contrast
Increases or decreases contrast. Adjusting the contrast mainly affects the light of color in your video. When you increase contrast, the middle-to-dark areas become darker. Similarly, decreasing the contrast makes the middle-to-light areas lighter.
Highlights
Adjusts bright areas. Drag the slider to the left to darken highlights. Drag to the right to brighten highlights while minimizing clipping.
Shadows
Adjusts dark areas. Drag the slider to the left to darken shadows while minimizing clipping. Drag to the right to brighten shadows and recover shadow details.
Whites
Adjusts white clipping. Drag the slider to the left to reduce clipping in highlights. Drag to the right to increase highlight clipping.
Blacks
Adjusts black clipping. Drag the slider to the left to increase black clipping, making more shadows pure black. Drag to the right to reduce shadow clipping.
Auto
To set the overall tonal scale, click Auto. When you select Auto, Premiere Elements sets the sliders to maximize the tonal scale and minimize highlight and shadow clipping.
Reset
Reverts all Tone controls to the original settings.
Auto Color applies the intelligent color corrections to video clips. Color corrections are basic adjustments, such as exposure, white balance, and contrast, that enhance the look of the footage. Typically, color corrections are applied before creative color grading.
Make sure the Color Correction and Grading panel is open (Tools > Color Correction and Grading).
To use Auto Color, position the playhead somewhere in the clip you want to enhance. Click the Auto button in the Basic Corrections section at the bottom of the Light section.
Adjustments are reflected in the re-organized Basic Correction sliders. You can easily fine-tune the results by further adjusting individual parameters. You can adjust the overall impact of these adjustments with the new Intensity slider underneath the Auto button.
Auto Color works on source footage, including LOG footage and footage with LUTs applied.
If you’re new to color correction, Auto Color is a great way to become familiar with adjustments available to improve color in their video. If you are an experienced editor, Auto Color can help to fast-track your color correction. For all users, it’s easy to refine the results or experiment with different ideas after applying Auto Color.
You can reset all color changes using the Reset Effect option in the Color Correction and Grading panel.
The Creative section of the Color Correction and Grading panel includes various looks (LUTs) that allow you to make quick color adjustments to your clips using presets already existing. Premiere Elements includes a number of creative looks that you can use. You can also create your own custom LUTs and save them to appear in this panel for easy use.
After applying a look, you can then adjust parameters such as vibrance and saturation.
The Color Correction and Grading panel provides a Looks Preset Thumbnail viewer. Click through the creative looks in the drop down list, or the arrows on the preview to different Looks, and click the image to apply a look to the clip.
Apply looks to make your video look like a professionally shot film. You can use a look by itself or apply a look before or after a custom grade.
Premiere Elements also provides preset film stock and camera looks under Color Correction and Grading Presets in the Effects panel.
Intensity
Adjusts the intensity of the applied look. Drag the slider to the right to increase the effect of the applied look, or drag to the right to decrease the effect.
Faded Film
Applies a faded film effect to your video. Drag the sliders to the right or left until you achieve the desired vintage look.
Sharpen
Adjusts edge definition to create a sharper-looking video. Drag the slider to the right to increase the edge definition, and drag to the left to decrease the edge definition. An increased edge definition makes the details in the video more pronounced. So, make sure that you don't sharpen the edges too much that it looks unnatural.
To turn off sharpening, set the slider to zero (0).
Vibrance
Adjusts the saturation so that clipping is minimized as colors approach full saturation. This setting changes the saturation of all lower-saturated colors with less effect on the higher-saturated colors. Vibrance also prevents skin tones from becoming oversaturated.
Saturation
Adjusts the saturation of all colors in the clip equally from 0 (monochrome) to 200 (double the saturation).
Tint wheels
Adjust the tint values in the shadows and highlights using the Shadow Tint and Highlight Tint wheels. Wheels with empty centers indicate that nothing has been applied. To apply the tint, click in the middle of the wheel and drag the cursor to fill in the wheels.
Color wheels allow you to make color adjustments to just the dark or light areas of a shot. The extra control can help you fix subtle problems in clips and add nuance to a look you are creating.
Premiere Elements offers two color wheels - to adjust shadows and highlights. With these, you can adjust the brightness, hue, and saturation for shadows and highlights independently.
You can adjust the shadow or highlight detail to brighten or darken areas in an otherwise well-lit clip. You can isolate the regions that need correction and apply these adjustments.
Click the wheel to add color.
Wheels with empty centers indicate that no adjustments have been made. Click in the middle of the wheel and drag the cursor to fill in the wheels and make adjustments as required.
Scrub the wheel to adjust color.
To use the slider control, scrub the wheel up to increase the value or down to decrease the value. For example, scrub on the Shadow wheel up to lighten shadows and scrub on the Highlights wheel down to darken highlights.
Tint Balance
Balances out any excess magenta or green in the clip by moving and adjusting the slider.
The Curves feature in Premiere Elements Color Correction and Grading panel allows you to make quick and precise color adjustments to achieve natural-looking results. The two types of curves you can use to edit color are: RGB Curves and Hue Saturation Curves.
You can edit curves using the RGB Curves in the Color Correction and Grading panel.
RGB Curves let you adjust luma and tonal ranges across the clip using curves. The master curve controls the Luma. Initially, the master curve is represented as a straight white diagonal line. Adjusting the master curve adjusts the values of all three RGB channels simultaneously.
To add highlights, drag a control point to the upper-right area of the line. To add shadows, drag a control point to the lower-left area.
Selectively adjust tonal values for RGB channels. To adjust different tonal areas, add control points directly to the curve.
To lighten or darken the tonal area, drag a control point up or down. To increase or decrease the contrast, drag a control point left or right.
To delete a control point, press Ctrl (Windows) or Cmd (macOS) and click the control point.
RGB Curves let you adjust luma and tonal ranges across the clip using curves. The master curve controls the Luma. Initially, the master curve is represented as a straight white diagonal line. Adjusting the master curve adjusts the values of all three RGB channels simultaneously.
