Step-by-step Boost colour and contrast

1 Open Waveform panel

Import flat Colours_start.mov and add to timeline. Choose View>show in Viewer> Videoscopes. Set Scope to ‘Waveform’. This undulating graph shows the spread of tones.

2 Read the waveform

The brightest highlights in a clip should have a value of 100. Our clip’s dull highlights only reach 80. The shadows at the bottom fail to drop down to 0 where the darkest pixels are.

3 Add preset effect

In the Effects browser go to Color Presets. Drag Contrast onto the clip. Now the waveform stretches vertically in both directions to indicate brighter highlights and darker shadows.

4 Access Color Inspector

In the Video Inspector click on the Color Board’s spectrum icon to jump to the Color Inspector. In the Exposure panel note that the shadows and highlights have been adjusted.

5 Boost saturation

Fine-tune the highlight/shadow controls to ensure that the highlights peak at 100 and the shadows dip to 0. Use the Saturation control handles to make the colours look more vibrant.

6 Sharpen it up

To create more punch, go to the Blur effects collection and drag Sharpen onto the clip. A default value of 2.5 will reveal detail without adding sharpening artefacts.