Color Correcting and Grading in Final Cut Studio

Course Description

This three-day hands-on course will familiarize students with Apple’s masterful new color grading and finishing software. Start with the basics of color balancing and correction, and move on to the fine points of secondary grading, including scene matching, using vignettes to isolate and track regions, creating advanced color effects and “looks,” skin tone adjustments, adjusting the composition and framing of a shot, and much more.

Who Should Attend?

This course is designed for existing Final Cut Pro users who want to learn more about the color correction and grading capabilities of Color. The course is designed for those who prefer hands-on and interactive instruction to best explore the functionality of Color.

How to Register

This course is available for registration at many of our Apple Authorized Training Centers worldwide. Please visit the course schedule for current classes, or view the Apple Authorized Training Centers page to find a center near you.

Certification

This course covers the requirements necessary to successfully become an Apple Certified Pro, Level One in Color. Level One certification attests to basic operational knowledge of the application.

To register for the exam, please consult with your Apple Authorized Training Center. You are required to have an Apple Tech ID number before registering for any Apple exam. You can apply for a Tech ID by following the instructions at certifications.apple.com.

Color Level One certification also counts towards the new Final Cut Studio Master Pro certification. Master certification recognizes a user’s skills with the entire Final Cut Studio product suite. Since workflow is such a significant component of Final Cut Studio, users need certification in at least four of the applications to earn Master Certification. For details, please visit training.apple.com/certification/proapps.

Prerequisites

Students should have the following prerequisite knowledge prior to attending the course:

• Basic knowledge of the Macintosh OS
• Level One Final Cut Pro End User certification is preferred. Ideally, students will have attended a Final Cut Pro 101, 200 or 250 course.

Course Outline - Day 1
Topic	Description
Lesson 1 Working with the Color Interface	Setting Up Your Computer, Setting Up a Project, Understanding the Eight Rooms: Color’s Task-Based Workflow, Navigating Your Sequence, Exploring the Setup Room, Applying Basic Grades, Viewing Your Images, Performing Secondary Grades, Employing Color FX, Applying Final Touches, Panning and Scanning, Utilizing Still Stores, Correcting the Sequence and Introducing the Render Queue Room
Lesson 2 Basic Grading	Exploring the Primary Room, Using the Auto Balance Control,Grading with the Color Balance Controls, Grading with Curves, and Understanding Additional Controls
Lesson 3 Basic Secondary Grading	Three Types of Secondaries, Performing Key-Based Secondaries, Keying with HSL Qualifiers, Performing Vignette-Based Secondaries, Creating a Look, and Secondary Curves
Course Outline - Day 2
Topic	Description
Lesson 4 Advanced Secondary Grading	Using Multiple Secondaries, Combining a Key and a Vignette,Using Multiple Keys, Creating Custom Mask Shapes, Combining Vignettes, and Incorporating Curve Effects
Lesson 5 Grade Management	Managing Grades on a Single Shot, Switching Between Grades, Adding and Deleting Grades, Duplicating a Grade, Setting the Beauty Grade, Saving Corrections and Grades, Deleting Saved Corrections, Organizing Corrections,Saving Secondary Corrections, Saving Grades, Moving Grades from Clip to Clip, Dragging Individual Corrections, Grouping Shots, Applying Grades to Groups, and Working with Multiple Grades
Lesson 6 Color Effects	Using the Color Effects Room, Applying Nodes, Building Color Effects, Controlling Node Order, Monitoring Inactive Nodes, Adding Nodes to Existing Trees, Saving and Reapplying Effects as Presets, Modifying an Applied Preset, and Working with Preset Color Effect
Course Outline - Day 3
Topic	Description
Lesson 7 Common Recipes	Black Hawk Down/Mogadishu Look, CSI Miami Look, Schindler’s List Look, Flashback Look, Saturated Sunrise Look, and Skin Diffusion and Beauty Tricks
Lesson 8 Keyframing Effects	Animating Effects in Color, Manipulating Keyframes, Navigating to Keyframes, Deleting Keyframes, Keyframing Other Rooms, Changing Interpolation Settings, Animating User Shapes, Adding Intermediary Keyframes, and Keyframing Color Effects
Lesson 9 Recomposing and Tracking	Using the Geometry Room, Recomposing Shots, Animating Pan and Scan Effects, Applying Tracking Data to Corrections, Offsetting the Vignette, and Manual Tracking
Lesson 10 Primary Out and Rendering	Global Changes and Final Tweaks, Modifying and Replacing Primary Out Room Settings, Creating a Stylized Look for a Finished Project, Applying Stylized Primary Out Corrections to Grouped Clips, Manually Controlling Broadcast-Safe Output, Adjusting Black Levels, Limiting the Range of Black Level Adjustments, Manually Adjusting White, Black and Chroma Levels , Rendering Color Projects, Adding Clips to the Render Queue, Rendering Shots and Sending to Final Cut Pro, and Using Color’s Archive Feature

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What you will learn

Events