Use the Color Wheels filter in Motion
The Color Wheels filter contains four color wheel controls (Global, Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights) to adjust color, brightness, and saturation in clips and images.
When you apply the Color Wheels filter, its settings appear in the Filters Inspector:
Note: Because you can apply multiple color filters to an image, you’re not required to follow all of the steps below, nor the order of those steps. For example, you might adjust the overall contrast with the Color Curves filter and adjust a color tint with the Color Wheels filter. Or you could achieve the same results with multiple instances of the same effect.
Tip: You can simultaneously animate all parameters of the Color Wheels filter. See Globally animate all parameters of a Color Curves, Color Wheels, or Hue/Saturation Curves filter.
In Motion, open the Library, click the Filters category, then click the Color category to reveal the color-correction filters.
Drag the Color Wheels filter to the layer in the Layers list you want to adjust.
The Color Wheels controls appear in the Filters Inspector.
In the Filters Inspector, click the View pop-up menu at the top of the filter controls and choose a display option:
All Wheels: Displays all four color wheels at once.
Single Wheels: Displays one large color wheel at a time. In Single Wheels view, click a button above the curve to display a specific wheel.
The Global color wheel adjusts the entire tonal range of the image; the other color wheels adjust only the shadows, midtones, or highlights.
To change an image’s brightness, color, or saturation, adjust the controls for a color wheel in any of the tonal ranges:
Adjust the color value: Drag the color control in the center of a wheel.
You can also move the color control by selecting it, then pressing the Up Arrow, Down Arrow, Left Arrow, or Right Arrow key.
Adjust the saturation: Drag the Saturation slider on the left side of a wheel.
Adjust the brightness: Drag the Brightness slider on the right side of a wheel.
Note: You can also adjust color, saturation, and brightness values using the Global, Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights value sliders below the color wheels. Click the disclosure triangles to reveal these controls.
To make fine adjustments, press and hold the Option key as you drag a control in a color wheel.
Use the controls under the color wheels to adjust any of the following:
Temperature: Adjust the color temperature, in degrees kelvin, so that the image looks as natural as possible. Color temperature describes the color value of light when the image was shot (not the light’s heat value). Drag the slider to the left to increase blue tones, or to the right to increase yellow-red tones. For example, if the image was shot under tungsten lights but the camera was set to daylight white balance, set the value between 2500 and 2900 degrees kelvin to white-balance the image.
Tint: Fine-tune the white-balance adjustment by neutralizing a remaining green or magenta tint. Drag the Tint slider to the left to add a green tint to the image, or to the right to add a magenta tint.
Hue: Use the Hue dial or value slider to set a value from 0° to 360°, effectively rotating all hues in the image around the perimeter of the color wheel. A value of 0° represents the original image.
Mix: Adjust this slider to set the amount of the original image that’s blended with the color-corrected image.
To reset the values for a color wheel, click its Reset button. To reset the values for all color wheels and value sliders, click the down arrow (in the upper-right corner of the filter controls) to open the Animation pop-up menu, then choose Reset Parameter.
Note: You cannot publish the Color Wheels filter as a Final Cut Pro custom effects template.
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