Color balance, angle, and saturation controls

The Fast Color Corrector and the Three‑Way Color Corrector effects offer Hue Balance and Angle color wheels and a Saturation control for balancing color in your video. Color balance is just what its name implies, balancing the red, green, and blue components to produce the desired color of white and neutral grays in the image. Depending on the desired effect, you may not want the color balance in a clip to be completely neutral. Perhaps you want an intimate family scene to have a warm (reddish) color cast or maybe the scene in your crime documentary requires a cool (bluish) color cast.

When making adjustments with the color wheel and Saturation control, it’s useful to open a Reference Monitor to view the Vectorscope ganged to the composite video in the Program Monitor.

The color wheel adjustments offer the following adjustments:

Hue Angle

Rotates the color toward a target color. Moving the outer ring to the left rotates the colors toward green. Moving the outer ring to the right rotates the colors toward red.

Balance Magnitude

Controls the intensity of the color introduced into the video. Moving the circle out from the center increases the magnitude (intensity). The intensity can be fine-tuned by moving the Balance Gain handle.

Balance Gain

Affects the relative coarseness or fineness of the Balance Magnitude and Balance Angle adjustment. Keeping the perpendicular handle of this control close to the center of the wheel makes the adjustment very subtle (fine). Moving the handle toward the outer ring makes the adjustment very obvious (coarse).

Balance Angle

Shifts the video color toward a target color. Moving the Balance Magnitude circle toward a specific hue shifts the color accordingly. The intensity of the shift is controlled by the combined adjustment of the Balance Magnitude and Balance Gain.

Color correction adjustments using the color wheel

A.

Hue Angle

B.

Balance Magnitude

C.

Balance Gain

D.

Balance Angle

The Saturation slider controls the color saturation in the video. Moving the slider to 0 desaturates the image so only the luminance values show (an image made up of white, grays, and black). Moving the slider to the right increases the saturation.

Desaturated image (left); Saturated image (right)