PDF (adobe.com)

Adjust color balance and saturation

Although the following procedure uses the color wheel adjustments. The same adjustments can be made by entering numeric values or using the slider controls in the Fast Color Corrector and Three‑Way Color Corrector effects.

  1. Set up your workspace for color correction.
  2. Select the clip in a Timeline panel and apply either the Fast Color Corrector or the Three‑Way Color Corrector effect. See also Apply effects to clips.
  3. In the Effect Controls panel, click the triangle to expand the Fast Color Corrector or the Three‑Way Color Corrector controls.
  4. (Optional) Select the Show Split View option if you want to view a before and after comparison of your adjustment in the Program Monitor. You can specify whether the split view is horizontal or vertical by choosing from the Layout pop‑up menu. You can also adjust the relative proportion of the before and after views.
  5. (Optional for the Three‑Way Color Corrector only) Do any of the following:

    • To restrict your color correction to a specific tonal range, choose Shadows, Midtones, or Highlights from the Tonal Range menu. Choosing Master applies color correction to the entire tonal range of the image. If necessary, use the Tonal Range Definition controls to define the different tonal ranges. You can choose Tonal Range from the Output menu to view a tri‑tone preview of the tonal ranges in the Program Monitor.

    • To restrict your adjustments to a color or range of colors, click the triangle to expand the Secondary Color Correction controls. Define the color or color range using the Eyedropper tool, slider controls or enter numeric values. See also Specify a color or range of colors to adjust.

  6. To adjust the color balance, do any of the following using the color wheel:

    • To change all the colors without affecting the gain or magnitude, rotate the outer ring. Rotating the ring to the left, rotates all colors toward green. Rotating the ring to the right, rotates all colors toward red.

      Rotating the outer ring of the color wheel (left) changes the hue angle (right).

    • To shift the colors toward a target color with gain and magnitude adjustment, drag the Balance Magnitude circle out from the center toward the color you want introduced into the image. The farther you drag the Balance Magnitude from the center, the introduced color is more intense. Drag the Balance Gain handle to fine‑tune the intensity of the Balance Magnitude adjustment. You can make the adjustment very subtle.

      Adjusting the Balance Gain to fine‑tune the Balance Magnitude setting.

    Note: The Three‑Way Color Corrector effect lets you make separate adjustments to the three tonal ranges using individual wheels for the shadows, midtones, and highlights.
  7. Use the Saturation control to adjust the color saturation in the image. Moving the slider to the left (lower value) desaturates the colors. Moving the slider to the right (higher values) increases the color saturation.