Add color tint effects

Excerpted from “Adobe Premiere Pro Complete Course” by Donna Baker.

Do you love the look of an old black-and-white movie that’s been colorized? You can easily achieve a simplified version of this look by using just a few effects in Adobe® Premiere® Pro.

Get started

You’ll need two clips to complete this tutorial. In the first clip, you’ll correct the clip’s levels, meaning that you numerically manipulate the brightness and contrast in the clip. Then you’ll color tint the clip and finish off with a transparency key. In the second clip, you’ll strip most of the color from the clip leaving a range of red colors. None of the effects added in this tutorial uses keyframes. The Tint effect alters color information using luminance, just as transparency keys use luminance. The luminance of each pixel is mapped to selected colors.

Note: In this tutorial, some effects have a Setup icon. The icon, a small box at the right of the effect listing in the ECW, displays whenever an effect has an additional dialog box. Click the Setup icon to open the dialog box to modify the effect’s settings. Setup dialog boxes are often used with effects that include a preview area so you can see the effect of modifying settings as you work. Changes you make in the Setup dialog boxes are listed in the effect’s settings in the ECW.

Correct the clip’s levels

1. Open Adobe Premiere Pro and create a new project file. Import two movie clips.

2. Choose File > Save As. Save the project file.

3. Select the clip in Video 2. Move the CTI to within the clip. You need to see a frame to apply the effects; the exact frame isn’t important.

   Note: When you are working with several effects, as you are in the first part of this tutorial, dragging the set of effects to the ECW and then starting the adjustments is much simpler.

4. Select these effects in the Video Effects window, and drag them to the ECW:

   • Adjust > Levels

   • Image Control > Tint

   • Keying > Luma Key

     

5. Click the Setup icon to open the Levels settings dialog box.

   You adjust the brightness and contrast in the clip using the graph in the Levels dialog box. The graph, called a histogram, is a graphical representation of the amount of bright and dark areas in your image.

6. In the Input Levels fields, type 12, 1.00, 219.

   The x-axis of the histogram represents brightness values from darkest (0) at the far left to brightest (255) at the far right; the y-axis represents the total number of pixels with that value. Adjusting the values increases the contrast between the pixels in your clip.

7. In the Output levels fields, adjust the first value by clicking 0 and typing 65, or drag the black slider to the right until the first Output Level reads 65. Click OK to close the dialog box.

   

   You remove some of the darker values from the clip by mapping the pixels to brighter values; you can see the clip overall is brighter. You don’t adjust the light values; the default is 255.

8. Open the Tint effect controls. Click the Map Black to color swatch to open a Color Picker. Change the Map Black color to RGB=202/5/0 and click OK to close the Color Picker.

   Map Black to and Map White to specify to which colors dark and bright pixels are mapped or blended.

9. Click the Map White to color swatch to open the Color Picker again. Choose RGB=68/0/40 and click OK to close the Color Picker.

10. Click the Amount to Tint, and type 35.

    You want the black and white in the clip to blend with your chosen colors. The higher the tint amount, the brighter the color.

11. Open the Luma Key effect. Set the Threshold to 75% and the Cutoff to 10%.

    

    Note: You can see how different effects work on the same clip as you are setting values. Click the f to the left of the effect’s name in the ECW to toggle the effect on and off.

12. Save the project.

    You adjusted the levels in the clip to increase the contrast by shifting the range of colors to brighter levels, tinted the clip using colors from other elements, and added transparency to blend the clip.

Strip the color from the clip

1. Select the clip in Video 1. Position the CTI within the clip, so you can see the effect as you are working.

2. In the Effects tab, choose Video Effects > Image Control > Color Pass. Drag the effect to the ECW.

3. In the ECW, click the Setup icon to open the Color Pass Settings dialog box.

   You can adjust settings on the ECW itself, but you can see the effects in the dialog box as you make adjustments.

4. Click the Color Swatch to open the Color Picker. Set the color to RGB=85/40/30 and click OK to close the Color Picker.

5. Drag the Similarity slider right to 15, or type 15 in the field. The Output Sample image shows that most of the clip is grayscale except for some areas, which are dark red.

   

6. Click OK to close the dialog box.

7. Save the project. You adjusted one more clip. You replaced the color in the clip with shades of gray, except for a range of dark red colors.

Excerpted from “Adobe Premiere Pro Complete Course” by Donna Baker. Copyright 2004 by Wiley Publishing, Inc. Used with permission of Wiley Publishing. To buy this book, visit www.amazon.com.

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