Blackmagic Forum

Hi everyone, I'm new here and I'm starting with color correction just recently.
I saw a bunch of tutorials and even had some classes about color correction and I understand all the concepts and all the stages. But I have a looot of trouble with a simple thing: white balancing.

When I use the parade scope, I don't understand which part of the lift and gain I'm supposed to "align" in the RGB to "neutralize" the shot. There are so many different curves and I can't seem to get the simple concept to white balance this.

Here's an example:
https://imgur.com/a/9ciQ7sv
- On the first red circle, everything is aligned
- On the second circle, it's like there's a little bit more of red
- On the third circle, there's more blue
When I try to do something about the gain, everything changes and I don't understand which part I'm supposed to look at and what's the best way to deal with it.

Also, I don't understand if all my shots (except for creative stuff) are supposed to be between 896 and 0. I've seen that in a lot of videos but I don't know if that's like a "rule".

Another example is this one:

- I don't get why there's more gain in the reds and still the image looks blue-ish.

I must be really missing some keyword or concept because I don't get this part at all

I am not yet a professional colorist, but I'm going to tell you what I do. Then a pro can come in and tell me why I'm wrong and we can both learn.

If there is something in your scene that you know is neutral in color, like a grey card:

• Create a power window that covers just the neutral color of the grey card. In a pinch this can also be a business shirt or sheet of paper.
• Select the magic ward icon in the viewer window. Notice the scopes have narrowed to cover just the power window area.
• Change the scope to Vectorscope.
• If you're lucky, there is going to be a fuzzy ball of light right smack in the center of the Vectorscope. Congrats, its balanced and your done.
• Otherwise, in the Color Wheels > Primaries Wheels tab, roll the offset until the fuzzy white ball in the Vectorscope is directly in the middle. That's it.

If there is no neutral source in the shot, but you do have a human:

• Do just like you did above, but place the power window over just the person's skin
• In the vectorscope settings, turn on the "Show Skin Tone Indicator"
• In the Primaries Wheels tab, select the '2' at the bottom of the tab
• Left-click and drag your mouse over the Tint number until the fuzzy white line in the vectorscope sits on top of the Skin Tone Indicator. This is a bit subjective,you might want to have it right above the line if it doesn't look just right.

In both cases, remove the power window, create a new node and continue your grade.

Here is what I ended up with:
https://www.lancebraud.com/videos/wb-me.tif