Hello, and welcome to the Russell Brown Show. In this episode, I'm going to be talking about
editing video inside of Adobe Photoshop CC, and in this case, it's some video from a DJI Mavic Pro
taken here at the California coast. Now, it looks pretty good, but if you were to color correct
this using Adobe Camera Raw features here inside of Adobe Photoshop, it would then look like this.
Wait a minute. Do that again. Before, and then after. Wow. I'm going to show you how to make these
corrections here inside of Photoshop. Let's get started. Right over here is my original 4K video
captured with my DJI Mavic. I've placed it here inside of Photoshop, and you can see the
single layer of video here. Now, of course, you can do color correction in Premiere and After Effects,
but if you think like a Photoshop user, you may want to try color correcting your video
here inside of Photoshop. And of course, you could then export the high resolution files
and place those into Premiere or After Effects. Let's get started. It starts, of course, with
converting this video layer into a smart object. That's critical. Right clicking here on the layer
itself, I can select to convert to smart object right there. Then go to the Filter menu and down
here to Camera Raw Filter. If you're familiar with the Camera Raw features that you normally use
with a still image, the same thing applies here to this moving image. In this case, I'm going to start
with a classic way of correcting the color balance to the image and get rid of the color cast.
Right over here, I'm selecting Tone Curve. Then I'm going to select and target each individual
channel. It's a classic way of adjusting the color balance and getting rid of a color cast.
And especially in this case, when there's no direct sun and it's cloudy, I can really improve the
overall quality of this image. Here are the basics. Simply drag the shadow slider over to the edge of
the mountain range. Wait a minute. Let me translate what Mr. Brown just said. He meant to say to select
the black point and move it over to the right until it touches the first pixels that are visible
here on the histogram. Aha! Now you know. This is a classic technique that I learned many,
many years ago from the creator of Photoshop, of course, Thomas Noll. Then go to the green channel
and do the same thing. Move it over to the edge of the mountain range here, just like this.
Am I looking at the screen yet? Not really. I'm just moving the default settings across all of
these, moving it to the edge of the mountain range. And then I'm going to go back through them again
and visually adjust them. In this case, I want a little bit warmer shadows here, sliding here to
the left and maybe a little bit more neutral color to the waves and the highlights over here on the
right. Go through each one of these yet again and readjust them. A little bit warmer here with the
green. As you can see, you can put a green cast to your image by moving too far to the left and a
little bit warmer as I move to the right. And the same is true for the highlights here on the right.
I'm simply sliding this over and adjusting it like this. Let's finish off with the blue values
here. Once again, don't be afraid to move it way to the right and to the left until you find the
exact position for it, getting rid of that color cast your image. And you're really going to be
surprised how much color cast there might be in these shots that you may not have seen before.
And of course, do I have a color calibrated monitor? Yes, I do. So it helps me in adjusting these.
Looks great. That's a great start to this whole process. Then I'm going to quickly here go over
to the basic settings and go right into my exposure, my highlights in this case, holding down the
option or alt key, of course, to see the areas that are burning out. So I don't blow out my highlights
and my shadows. It looks like I could drop that down a bit. And scrolling down, I always add a
little bit of clarity. Look the way it brings out the highlights in the cliff right here in the center
of the image. And of course, vibrance, not too much, but just a little bit to bring up the colors
within the image. It's looking really great. Down here, this icon right here will show me
before and after tapping it once is before and then after. So our corrections are looking really
great. But wait, there's more over here under the effects tab. I always add a little bit of de-haze.
Look how it takes those mid tones and makes them more clear as you slide that. This is looking
pretty good, but I'm going to take it to the next level and make your brains explode. Because I'm
going to use this tool right here, the adjustment brush. Given the fact that the camera is not
moving and just hovering in the sky, I have the ability to paint over my image and highlight
areas with this brush. The first thing I'm going to do is clean up the color of this grass.
That's right, you may find this to be criminal, but I'm going to adjust the color of the grass
because of the drought in California. It's a little bit too brown and I want it to be a really nice
green grass. Notice over here to the right that I've selected a color here within this color
picker right here for the green I want to work with. And then I can start to paint in the grass.
I have my density set here. That looks pretty good. Feathering the edge and the flow is set here.
Looks great. I think I'm going to bring up my density a bit more like this. Let's watch what
happens. As I paint over here to the right, notice I'm changing the color of the grass. Yes, you're
saying to yourself, he's a criminal. I am a criminal, but am I altering the grass in any way in terms
of adjusting the pixels? No, I'm merely recolorizing the grass. I'm trying to justify the fact that
I'm going in here and doing this criminal thing to this grass. Look how much better that looks
as I paint this in. And I'm going over a couple of times because I can then add more and more
density for this grass just like that. Doesn't that look so much better? That grass really looks nice.
Okay, this looks pretty good. We made some adjustments to our basic settings. We made some
adjustments to our tone curve. We've gone in and adjusted the haze. All of the same types of things
you would do to an image are now applied here to this video. Let's click okay. There you have it.
You have just seen a way to color correct video. In this case, from a DJI Mavic here inside of
Adobe Photoshop CC, it may seem illegal, but it's really cool. Give it a try.
