Color Controls panel overview

What is the Color Controls panel for?

The Color Controls panel is the heart of Color mode. It’s where you organize and use all the color tools to modify the selected clip in the Clip Grid.

The Color Controls panel displays all operations and controls for the currently selected clip. It’s a stand-alone panel, so you can move it around to customize your layout. However, in the default layout, it’s positioned to minimize mouse travel between the clip grid and the color adjustment controls, so you can quickly select clips and adjust them one after the other.

The width of the Color Controls panel and the compact nature of the color adjustment controls were specifically designed to give you the most image adjustment functionality in the least amount of space, to keep the monitor as large as possible, even on small displays. Image evaluation is job one, and the adjustment controls shouldn’t distract from that.

The operations area of the Color Controls panel

The Color Controls panel displays all operations applied to the currently selected clip in the Clip Grid. By default, these appear in a row at the top of the Color Controls panel.

In vertical layouts, these appear in a column instead.

Each operation is equivalent to a “layer” or “node” of color tool modifications.

Levels of operations

It’s possible to have multiple operations applied to different sets of clips. Operations appear within labeled boxes that correspond to the different sets of clips being affected at that level of the grade:

• Clip operations allow for specific changes made to a particular clip in a sequence. These are most useful for tweaks to individual clips, for matching a clip to the rest of the scene better, or for a color effect you only want on that clip.
• Custom Group operations allow changes to be made to multiple clips at once, regardless of which are assigned to that group. These are most useful for any circumstance where you want to apply the same operation to a range of clips at once, for example, tweaking a bunch of talking head interview clips of the same person from the same interview.
• Sequence operations affect every single clip in the sequence (not available yet) except for clips on excluded tracks. This is useful for applying a show look that affects all clips at once. Excluded tracks can be defined so that clips you don’t want affected, like titles or graphics, can be left alone.

Order of operations

The order in which operations appear from left to right is the order in which they’re rendered in the image processing pipeline. Clip operations always come first, while Sequence operations always come last. Custom group operations appear in between, in the order in which they appear.

Types of operations

There are also multiple types of operations, each with its own tools and controls optimized for specific purposes.

• Adjust: By default, you see a node labeled Adjust 1 applied at the Clip level. These are intended for making specific corrective changes to a clip, for improving quality, or making surgical modifications of different kinds. However, you can apply as many of these as you like, and you can use them to create all kinds of effects.
• Style: These provide access to a set of modules enabling a wide range of creative operations. You can freely mix and match modules within a single Style operation to create nearly any look you can imagine, or use the available Style Presets to choose a ready-made style and customize it to your needs.

Adding operations

Operations can be added using the “+” menu to the right of the last operation.

Simple operation management

Operations can be selected individually or in multiples. Once selected, you can use the Toggle or Reset buttons at the upper right of the Color Controls panel to Toggle or Reset all selected operations.

You can right-click on the title or icon of any operation level to access commands to manage all the operations at that level all at once. In this way, you can choose to Copy, Paste, Toggle, or Select all operations at that level at once.

You can also right-click one or more specifically selected operations to access commands to manage just the selection. In this way, you can choose to Copy, Paste, Rename, Duplicate, Delete, or Move selected operations. This is covered in more detail in subsequent sections.

Customizing the Color Controls panel

The wrench menu at the upper-right of the Color Controls panel lets you customize the appearance of the Color Controls panel in a few different ways

• Show Labels: Turning off show labels saves space by hiding the labels and icons above each level of operations, in favor of a more compact inline icon that identifies the different levels of operation.
• Automatically Choose Layout: Automatically chooses the correct layout (Wrapping vs. Centered) based on the aspect ratio of the Color Controls panel.
• Wrapping panel (For Vertical Layouts): Forces a stacked vertical layout for people who want a tall and thin vertically oriented Color Controls panel for different workspace layouts.
• Centered panel (For Wide Layouts): Forces the panel’s contents to center to improve appearance on wide layouts.
• Color Control Options: Opens a variety of preferences that govern the “feel” of the various color controls in this panel. Explained in detail in the next section.
• Color Heads-Up Display (HUD) Options: Opens a variety of preferences that govern how the HUD appears. Explained in detail in a subsequent section.
• Color Management: Opens the Color Management panel for fast access to clip and sequence color management controls.

Color Control options

Since the color controls are so tactile, you are given a variety of ways to customize how these controls feel and how fast they work.

• Sensitivity: Lets you set the overall speed with which controls alter the picture. Left slows controls down, right speeds them up.
• Link: Ties Vertical and Horizontal sensitivity together. Disable to have separate speeds for Vertical adjustments (which are usually the primary operation) and Horizontal operations (which are usually a customization).
• Horizontal sensitivity: If you disable the link button, lets you set the overall speed with which horizontal controls alter the picture.
• Lock to angle or axis: The modifier to press if you want to lock the adjustment of 2D controls to either the vertical or horizontal axis. Defaults to Shift. Hold the modifier and move in the direction you wish to adjust. You’ll remain locked in that direction until you release the modifier key.
• Directional stability: When making adjustments in a particular direction (vertical or horizontal), a “dead zone” prevents small wiggles in the wrong direction from accidentally making unwanted adjustments. Moving this slider to the left reduces the dead zone and enables freer motion in all directions. Moving this slider to the right increases the dead zone and makes it harder to change directions accidentally.
• Sensitivity modifier: Defaults to Option. Pressing this modifier alters the speed of Vertical and Horizontal adjustments.
• Sensitivity multiplier: This slider lets you choose whether or not pressing the sensitivity multiplier slows down or speeds up control adjustments.
• Nudge: This slider lets you choose how much or how little the arrow keys nudge a parameter up and down vertically or horizontally while you’re latched into a control.
• Shift Nudge: This slider lets you choose whether or not pressing shift slows down or speeds up control adjustments.

Color adjustment controls and Heads-Up Displays (HUDs)

Selecting an operation exposes its color controls underneath. Selecting the default Adjust 1 operation exposes its Color & Contrast controls, Color Shift controls, and Texture controls. These controls are intended to be a scalpel for making specific adjustments to address issues and make creative improvements.

In general, each group of controls is arranged from left to right according to how useful they are in most situations. If you’re not sure where to start, beginning at the left with Contrast, and working your way to the right until the image looks improved is a great strategy, and you may not even need to use the Shift or Texture controls when all you need is a simple tweak to color and contrast.

The controls in each operation enable fast, precise adjustment to specific characteristics of the image. All these operations together affect the entire image within the frame.

To adjust a clip:

Heads-Up Display

Each control has an accompanying HUD that provides an analysis of the clip specific to the control it adjusts, along with indicators that show exactly how your adjustment affects the clip. These HUDs come and go as needed, as you make different adjustments. More information on HUDs appears in a later section.

Two-Dimensional Controls

2D controls are common across the tools that Color mode provides. Each of these usually combines two related controls, so it makes sense to be able to adjust them together. This also enables more fluid and artistic adjustments through a greater range of possibilities as you can experiment with two settings at once as you view the effect in the monitor.

Each 2D control has a dead zone (much like video game controls) that allows a constrained vertical adjustment without accidentally introducing minute changes to the horizontal control (or vice versa). These dead zones don’t prevent you from making horizontal and vertical adjustments together; pushing through them is easy. However, they’re there to prevent the unsteadiness of your hand from adding unwanted changes when you’re making a specific adjustment.

If you need to completely constrain a control to vertical or horizontal movement:

• Press and hold Shift and move in the direction you want to lock to constrain a 2D control you’re dragging to that angle of motion. The key shortcut for this function is customizable in the Color Control options in the wrench menu of the Color Controls panel.

Making Precision Adjustments

If you want to make much more precise or faster operations with any control:

• Press and hold Option to alter (either slow down or speed up) the rate of operation for any control you’re dragging.