HOWTO | Adjust the lighting and colour

1 The adjust tools

You can access all image-editing tools, whether you’re in Quick or Expert mode, from the Adjust button (top right). Quick reveals seven tools while Expert has 12, but they all work in similar ways, so we’ll be focusing on those available in Quick mode for this tutorial.

2 Check out lighting

Click on Lighting to reveal its parameters. To the right of its name is an Auto Fix tickbox; click this for Premiere Elements to apply an effect automatically. The eye icon to the right of the tickbox lets you disable/enable the effect making it easy to compare the change.

3 Thumbnail matrix

If you’d rather have more control, untick Auto Fix. Like many of the adjustment tools, Lighting is divided into categories. Each has a matrix of nine thumbnails you can instantly click on to apply a specific change. Only one of the thumbnails can be selected at any one time.

4 Hands on

Not satisfied with the matrix? Then click More, lower right of that tool’s parameters, to reveal sliders. They represent the parameters available in that tool’s tabs, and you can alter them at will by dragging the sliders along. You cannot alter these values over time, though.

5 Auto Smart Tone

Close Lighting (clicking its name again) and open Auto Smart Tone. You can use this to automatically check your clips and improve the look with just one click, or you can click Custom to access a different kind of manual control over how you can alter a clip’s visual style.

6 Custom Smart Tone

The interface is taken over by the selected clip, along with thumbnails in each corner, each representing a different alteration. Move the white circle (centre) along a square matrix to apply more or less of each extreme, and hence create the look you’re after.

7 Individual vs global

Such changes are best done on a clip-by-clip basis since not every clip was necessarily shot at the same time or in the same location, so individual attention is necessary. However, you can if you wish to, apply a change to your entire film, affecting every clip at the same time.

8 Entire movie

Click Entire Movie (top right of the Adjust parameters). Choose Color to make a discernible change and select a hue from the thumbnails. Move the play head to another clip to see its hue has also been altered. This type of global change only works for visuals, not the sound.