Creative Color Grading: How to Find a Look for Your Video

If you're of the more technically-minded type of video maker, you may not have considered just how important color is. What do you think of visually when you think of terms like "warm", "cool", and "neutral?" Color is one of the strongest ways to set the overall tone in a video—in each frame and in the production as a whole.
Color corrections are the first step: the neutral adjustments you make to create "good enough" looking video. It's adjusting color in a creative way, however, will set your work apart. Before you open the adjustment tools, you want to find a vision for your video. Using tools like mood boards, you can create a composite image or set of images that help you guide the color grading of your video.
Make sure to watch the video above to learn more about developing a creative vision for your color settings.
Keep Learning
Now that you've seen why color grading matters, you can learn it in the hands-on course How to Color Grade Video, a course that will help you learn the technical and creative skills to become a master of color adjustment.
This course is included as a part of a subscription to Envato Elements. The flat-rate monthly fee will unlock access to over 1,000 creative courses, as well as over 500,000 digital assets and files you can use in your next project. Elements even includes templates and tools for Adobe After Effects and Premiere.
Check out these other lessons to learn more about working with color:
- How to Create the VHS Look and VHS-Style Transitions in After EffectsCharles Yeager01 Jun 2018
- What Is Color Grading? The Special Touch Your Video Needs to Look GreatDavid Bode31 May 2018
- Shoot for the Edit: How to Capture the Best Video Footage for Color GradingDavid Bode22 May 2018