Colour

The Colour panel remembers the selected scope and panel scroll position for each project in this browser. Switching panels or reopening the project returns to that view with playback paused.

A screen can make a picture look brighter, darker or warmer than it is. The Colour panel measures the frame instead, so you can see that a face is too dark, that the sky has turned to plain white, or that a shot is a little too blue, and you can match two shots by their numbers rather than by eye.

Open the scopes

1. Click Colour on the rail. The panel measures the frame the preview is showing, with every effect on it, exactly as it will look in your export. It keeps up while the timeline plays and updates when you move the playhead.

   

   

2. Choose a scope under Scope: Waveform, Parade, Vectorscope or Histogram. The panel remembers your choice while the editor stays open.

Automatic grading

1. Automatic grading is at the top of Colour. Select an image or video clip on an unlocked picture track, then choose a reference from Computer, Project Assets or the Generated Library. For a video reference, scrub to a frame and click Use this frame.

   For Computer, click the centered upload icon to choose a file.

   Hover, focus or press and hold Analyze to see its estimated cost. Clicking it uploads the reference and samples from the clip for paid AI analysis. Five frames cover the used interval of a video; an image needs one sample. The result is one stable grade for the clip.

   Review Show before / Show after, adjust Strength, then choose Apply to clip. Reviewing and changing Strength do not purchase another analysis. Applying replaces the clip's creative grade, Look LUT, vignette and colour animation. The Input LUT stays because it interprets the source footage. Timing, framing, audio and other effects remain intact. The new Basic, Curves and Wheels values are editable, and Undo restores the previous grade.

2. For the active timeline:

   • Copy settings to all clips copies the reviewed creative grade and strength without another AI charge.
   • Match each clip to reference analyses each eligible clip separately. Its cost hint covers the batch. Review each result, then choose Apply successful results to apply that batch in one undoable edit.

   Both actions include muted picture tracks and exclude locked tracks, audio, titles, adjustment clips and nested timeline contents. Every destination keeps its own Input LUT. A changed clip or a newly locked track prevents an old result from overwriting the current edit.

   Analysis receipts and results remain on this browser, separately from Undo. Reopen Colour and use Check result to recover a submitted request. Stop after current clip prevents further submissions; it does not undo a charge for work already submitted. An unusable result may still be charged. Retry analysis is a new paid attempt. If a submission response was lost, check History before trying again. Colour matching is an approximation: differences in subjects, illumination and source footage can limit how closely a reference can be reproduced.

When the playhead is over a gap, or over a clip on a hidden or muted track, there is no picture to measure and the scope stays black.

The four scopes

1. Waveform. Each column of the scope is the same column of the picture, and how high its dots sit is how bright that part of the picture is: 0 at the bottom is black, 100 at the top is white, and 50 is the middle. Brighter dots mean more of the picture at that level.

2. Parade. Three waveforms side by side, for the picture's red, green and blue. Where something should be grey or white, the three should sit at the same height.

3. Vectorscope. Every pixel's colour as a dot on a circle. Grey, white and black sit in the centre; the further a dot is from the centre, the stronger its colour, and the direction tells you which colour it is. The six small boxes mark where the red, magenta, blue, cyan, green and yellow of standard colour bars land, and the dashed line is where skin tones of every complexion fall.

4. Histogram. How many pixels sit at each brightness, from black on the left to white on the right, for red, green and blue, with the overall brightness as a line on top.

Reading the scopes

• Lost highlights or shadows. On the waveform, a flat line pressed against 100 means part of the picture has turned to plain white with no detail left; pressed against 0, plain black. On the histogram, the same shows as a tall pile against the right or the left edge.
• A colour cast. Find something that should be neutral, such as a white wall or a grey shirt. On the parade, the channel that sits higher than the other two is the colour the shot leans towards. On the vectorscope, the dots that should sit in the centre lean away from it towards that colour.
• Skin tones. Faces usually fall on or near the dashed line of the vectorscope, whatever the complexion. Faces far to one side of it often mean the whole shot has a cast.
• Matching two shots. Put the playhead on one shot, note where its waveform and vectorscope sit, then move to the other shot and compare. Shots that sit at the same heights and in the same places will look alike when they are cut together.

Grading a clip

Select a clip on the timeline and its grade appears in the Colour panel, under the scope, so you can watch the scope while you change the picture. The grade belongs to that clip, looks the same in the preview and in your export, and is applied before the clip's other effects. Nothing is added to the clip until you move a control.

1. Click a clip on the timeline. With no clip selected, the panel says Select a clip to grade it. A clip on a locked track can't be graded until you unlock its track; any grade it already has still shows.

2. Input LUT. At the top of Basic, choose a LUT to convert the footage before anything else changes it — usually the one your camera maker supplies for flat "log" footage. Choose Import .cube… at the bottom of the menu to add a LUT from your computer; it is added to the project and chosen at once.

3. Basic. Temperature makes the picture warmer or cooler and Tint greener or more magenta. Exposure brightens or darkens the whole picture in stops. Contrast spreads the tones apart or together; Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks move only the brightest, the darkest, the very brightest and the very darkest parts. Saturation sets how strong every colour is, and Vibrance strengthens the dull colours more than the vivid ones, which keeps faces natural.

4. Look. Choose a LUT under LUT to give the clip a ready-made look after the Basic correction, and lower Intensity to blend it with the picture underneath: at 100 the look is applied in full, at 0 not at all. Intensity can be keyframed; the LUT itself cannot.

   

   

5. Curves. Choose a curve under Curve. On the RGB curve, drag a point up to brighten that part of the tonal range or down to darken it; click the curve to add a point and double-click a point to remove it. The Red, Green and Blue curves change one colour the same way. Hue vs Saturation runs through every hue from left to right: drag a point up to make that colour stronger, or down to grey it out. Reset curve puts the curve you are looking at back to a straight line and leaves the others as they are.

6. Wheels. The Shadows, Midtones and Highlights wheels tint the dark, middle and bright parts of the picture. Drag the point toward a colour; the further from the centre, the stronger the tint. Double-click a wheel, or press Home on it, to centre it again. Under the wheels, each tone's brightness slider lightens or darkens just that part.

   

   

7. Vignette. Raise Amount to darken the edges of the frame, and use Angle of view, Center X, Center Y and Pin highlights to shape it. It is the same Vignette as in the Effects panel.

8. Every slider and every wheel can change over the clip. Once you have changed a section, a diamond appears beside each of its sliders and under each wheel: click it to add a keyframe at the playhead, move the playhead, and change the setting again. A wheel's diamond keys its colour. Curves cannot be keyframed. Untick On beside a section's name to see the picture without it, and click Reset to take the section back to neutral.

Using LUTs

A LUT (look-up table) is a file that turns every colour into another. cutipAI reads 3D LUTs in the .cube format, which most cameras and colour tools export. A LUT is kept in the project, so it travels with the project to another computer like the rest of the grade.

• Importing the same file twice uses the copy already there.
• A project keeps up to eight LUTs. Importing a ninth makes room by dropping the oldest one no clip uses; if all eight are on clips, set one of those clips back to None first.
• A file that can't be used says why under its menu — a 1D LUT, for example, or a file with the wrong number of rows.
• If a clip's LUT is no longer in the project, its menu shows Missing LUT and the clip is shown without it.

The clip inspector shows a graded clip's grade as one line, Colour grade (or Colour grade · off when its sections are switched off), with Open in Colour.