How to Use the Adobe Premiere Pro Fast Color Corrector Effect

The Fast Color Corrector effect in Adobe Premiere Pro is a tool you can use to change a clip’s color by adjusting its hue and saturation. The effect also has levels controls for adjusting intensity levels of image shadows, midtones, and highlights. It is a great tool to use when making simple color corrections that you can preview quickly without a lot of render time. You can use its controls to do the following.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. The “Hue Balance and Angle” controls the hue and saturation adjustments with a color wheel. The center of the wheel controls the hue, a perpendicular handle on the center controls balance, and the outer ring of the wheel controls hue rotation. “Hue Angle” controls the hue rotation. A negative value will rotate the color wheel to the left while a positive value will rotate the color wheel to the right. “Balance Magnitude” controls the amount of color balance correction as determined by the “Balance Angle.”

2. The “Balance Gain” adjusts the brightness values by multiplication. Lighter pixels are affected more than darker pixels. “Balance Angle” controls the hue translation.

3. Saturation adjusts the clip’s color saturation. The default value is set to 100, which does not affect the colors. Values less than 100 decrease saturation, while values greater than 100 produce more saturated colors.

4. "Auto Black Level" will raise the black levels in a clip, so the shadows are clipped, resulting in lighter shadows. "Auto White Level" will lower the white levels in a clip, so the highlights are clipped, resulting in darker highlights. "Auto Contrast" will apply both the "Auto Black Level" and "Auto White Level" simultaneously, making both the highlights appear darker and the shadows appear lighter.

5. "Black Level," "Gray Level" and "White Level" will set the levels for the darkest shadow, the midtone gray, and the lightest highlight. You can use "Eyedropper" tools to sample a target color in the image or anywhere on your monitor’s desktop, or pick a color swatch.

6. The outer two “Input Levels” sliders map the black point and white point to the settings of the "Output" sliders. The middle "Input" slider adjusts the gamma in the image by moving the midtone and changing the intensity of values of the middle range of gray tones without dramatically altering the highlights and shadows.

7. The “Output Levels” will map the black point and white point input level sliders to specified values. The "Output" sliders are set by default to 0, where the shadows are completely black, and to level 255, where the highlights are completely white.