Read the tutorial below, or click below to watch the video tutorial.

Open up the Color Correction Editor and select the clip you want to modify in the Liquid timeline. The selected clip now appears in the Master Viewer. Note in what was the source monitor, you can choose from a number of different diagnostic displays that can help determine how to adjust the selected clip.

Click on the arrow at the bottom of the Color Correction Editor and extend dialog. Now you have access to the detailed primary color correction tools as well as the secondary color correction tools: six vector color or selective color.

Select the Add Selective Color icon. As you mouse over the image, you’ll see a magnified view of the image with cross hairs and a pipette. Left click and select the color you want to adjust, in this case the red of the car. Adjust the hue below the selective color wheel and you can see the range of color selected. It’s most likely that you’ve got some of the image but not all. You can now add to your color selection, up to 15 times. Hold down the Control key and select your other shades of red that you’d like to add to the color range. You can watch the color change build.

When you’ve modified the selection to your liking, adjust the color of the selection to suit your needs. Once you’re satisfied with your new color, click in the gray box outside of the selective color correction color wheel; this will deactivate the selection so you can affect the rest of your image. To achieve the infamous "Pleasantville" effect, slide the saturation to -255 and admire the results.

In addition to the simple steps described here, you can have different views of your color correction in the diagnostic displays, use the color isolation tools to further fine-tune the selected area while displaying the "garbage" in the image and also set a split screen display to compare your new colors to either the original clip or any other clip in your timeline that’s been defined as a reference clip.

This is a similar technique to the one used in Sin City that made a character’s red dress and lipstick pop while setting everything else to black and white. You can change the color of a rose, or change the color of your talent’s tie to hot pink. Avid Liquid’s Color Correction Editor gives you a rich, deep toolset for fixing or improving your footage while also giving you a set of secondary color correction tools that let you affect color creatively, dramatically or mechanically.

James Thil
Senior Product Manager
Avid Technology, Inc.

James has been the product manager for Liquid since it was Pinnacle Systems Liquid Edition v. 5.5. Prior to joining Pinnacle Systems, James started Toolfarm.com, a company that sold software, hardware and training for professional video editors, motion graphics artists and animators. Before that, he was also in sales and product marketing at Puffin Designs, creators of Commotion.

One of the most under-appreciated and under-utilized features in Avid Liquid is the Color Correction editor. Avid Liquid’s Color Correction editor has an amazing array of features for adjusting, correcting and balancing color.

For simpler selective color corrections, check out Liquid’s Six Vector Color Corrector. If you had a well-lit shot of someone wearing a yellow shirt and you wanted to change that to green, you simply select Yellow in the Six Vector Color Corrector and adjust the colors to your needs.

For more common color-correction tasks, Liquid’s primary color corrector offers 1-, 2- and 3-point gray balancing to help you white balance in post. Each level of gray balance provides an additional level of granularity depending on the difficulty of the shot.

The Avid Liquid Color Corrector also offers up to 3-point color balance, an automatic color legalizer and six diagnostic displays: vector, waveform, histogram, lightning, cube and vectorlight. To experiment with these tools and learn more about Liquid, download the free Avid Liquid trial DVD at www.avid.com/products/liquidpro/.

Avid Technology, Inc.
www.avid.com
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Tewksbury, MA 01876
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