Color is as vital to a film as music, dialogue, or plot. The color of a scene can be used to evoke particular emotions in viewers, for example, blue can convey a sense of horror or calm while orange would be seen as enthusiasm and energy.

The colorful, vibrant scenes in the movie LA LA Land help to give the film a feeling of romance.

On the other hand colors in the war drama Hacksaw Ridge are much colder and grimmer. Today we will use these two examples and show you how to adjust color in your videos with PowerDirector and ColorDirector.

LA LA LAND Color Grading with PowerDirector

Step1: Adjust White Balance

There are several color adjustment tools in PowerDirector. In the Fix/Enhance dialogue, you can use White Balance to control color temperature. Color Adjustment allows you to control exposure, contrast, saturation and many other things.

After you have dragged your footage to the timeline, click on Fix/Enhance. There you will find White Balance and Color Enhancement on the left. To change Color Temperature, select White Balance and adjust the Color Temperature, making it about 65 so the footage feels warmer. Also change the Tint to 55.

Step2: Use Color Adjustment to add contrast and saturation

Continue to edit in Color Adjustment, setting Brightness to -5 to ensure the clip isn’t too bright, and then increase Contrast to 50. Vibrancy gives your video a much more natural looks especially if you also increase Saturation. Set Vibrancy to 20 and Shadow to 15.

Hacksaw Ridge Color Grading with ColorDirector

Step1: Import Video to ColorDirector

Import your video to ColorDirector and click on the “+” sign to add it to the storyboard.

You can also import your video from PowerDirector by selecting the video on your timeline and clicking Fix/Enhance, then you can select ColorDirector to edit.

Step2: Adjust the Color using Split Toning

Go to the Adjustment menu; and find “Split Toning” under “Global Adjustment Tools”. Split Toning is a technique that allows highlights and shadows to be separated and adjusted independently. For highlight we will add more blue and green color to the clip so set Hue to 182 and Saturation to 42.

For the shadow sections, in order to preserve skin tones we will add some orange/yellow color by setting Hue to 33 and Saturation to 15.

Step3: Add HDR and Vignette Effects

To enhance the video and make it more dramatic, apply a HDR Effect and set Strength to 55 and Radius to 5. Finally, apply a Vignette Effect and set Shade to 15.

When finished, you can click Back and continue editing in PowerDirector.