Add color correction effects in Final Cut Pro for Mac
The first step in adjusting a clip’s color manually is adding a color correction effect to the clip. You can apply multiple color corrections to a clip to target specific issues. For example, you could apply one color correction that mutes a bright orange shirt and a second one that enhances the green in the lawn.
In Final Cut Pro, select a clip in the timeline that you want to correct.
Position the playhead in the timeline so that your clip appears in the viewer.
If the Color inspector isn’t already shown, do one of the following:
Choose Window > Go To > Color Inspector (or press Command-6).
Click the Enhancements pop-up menu below the viewer and choose Show Color Inspector.
Click the Color button at the top of the inspector.
In the Video inspector, click the Color button to the right of a color correction to open it in the Color inspector.
Do one of the following:
Click the pop-up menu at the top of the Color inspector and choose a color correction from the Add Correction section of the menu.
Tip: If you frequently add a particular color correction effect, you can speed up your workflow by setting it as the default color correction. Then just select a timeline clip and press Command-6 to start adjusting the effect in the Color inspector.
The color correction effect is applied to the clip and appears in the Effects section of the Video inspector.
To proceed with the color correction, follow the instructions for the color correction effect you added:
In the Final Cut Pro timeline, select a clip that has a color correction.
To add an additional color correction, do one of the following:
Choose Window > Go To > Color Inspector (or press Command-6), then click the pop-up menu at the top of the Color inspector and choose one of the color correction effects in the Add Correction section.
The Color inspector opens, showing the controls for the additional correction.
Additional color correction effects are named incrementally (for example, Color Wheels 2, Color Wheels 3, and so on) and appear in the pop-up menu at the top of the Color inspector.
The additional color correction effect also appears in the Effects section of the Video inspector, beneath the original color correction effect. You can click the Color Inspector button to the right of a correction to open the Color inspector with that correction’s settings.
To make the additional color correction adjustments, see the topic for the color correction effect you added:
If you add multiple instances of the same color correction effect to a clip, you can rename the effects to help you keep track of them.
If you have applied multiple corrections to a clip, you can change their order by dragging them in the Video inspector. Rearranging the processing order can provide different results. To ensure the highest-quality results, the Balance Color and Match Color effects appear at the top of the Effects list by default.
Note: Applying multiple color corrections to a clip has no effect on the color masks in the additional color corrections. For example, if the first color correction removes all chroma from the clip, the second color correction can still create a color mask based on the original chroma. See Add a color mask in Final Cut Pro for Mac.
In the Final Cut Pro timeline, select a clip that has multiple color corrections.
Click the pop-up menu at the top of the Color inspector, then choose a different color correction.
to the right of a color correction to open it in the Color inspector.
