Vegas Pro Color Correction Tutorial for Beginners

It is not possible to do color correction without professional knowledge but for beginners it is important to learn color correction terms first. Vegas Pro is one of the best software tools for applying color correction on images/videos and the article below contains complete information about how to use Vegas Pro for color correction applications. For those who want to know all about the how to correct color in Vegas Pro, following details can provide complete information with examples.

• Part 1: Terms Definition
• Part 2: How to correct color in Vegas Pro – Examples

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Vegas Pro is recommended for professionals due to its advanced user interface and higher price range. The sad part is that it can be used only on Windows devices, so if you are searching for something that can work on both Window as well as Mac devices then Wondershare Filmora is best answer for all your needs. This powerful tool is designed with easy to use software interface and it can be downloaded easily from official website of Wondershare Filmora.

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Related article:Color grading and color correction in post video creation

Part 1: Terms Definition

Some of you might have heard about the basic terms used in color signals that are brightness, hue and saturation. All of these play important role in every color image or video signal so it is necessary to be familiar with their basic definitions as well as their use in Vegas Pro.

The table below contains complete information about color correction terms:

Terms	Definition	How to adjust them in Vegas Pro	How to check them in Vegas Pro
Tonal Range	It defines the range from darkest to lightest level of brightness	Brightness and Contrast Plugin	Histogram: displays the Brightness and Contrast of your video
Full Tonal Range	Extends from RGB values of 0, 0, 0 (Pure Black) to 255, 255, 255 (Pure White)	Brightness and Contrast Plugin
Shadows	Refers to luminance values for anything that sits in the lower third of the tonal range.	Brightness and Contrast Plugin
Mid-tones	The luminance values that lie in middle third range of tonal angle are defined by Mid Tones	Brightness and Contrast Plugin
Highlights	The values contained in upper third portion of tonal angle are represented by Highlights	Brightness and Contrast Plugin
Gamma	This value refers to the mid tones; variation of gamma helps to drive signal between darker or brighter mid tones	Color Corrector Plugin and Levels Plugin
Contrast	The altercation between dark and light defined contrast	Brightness and Contrast Plugin
Hue	What color it is	Color Corrector Plugin	Vectorscope: It is used to display values of saturation and hue present in video signal
Saturation	Saturation defines intensity value of color signal	Color Corrector Plugin
Brightness	Refers to luminance value	Brightness and Contrast Plugin	Waveform: Helps to represent brightness levels in video
RGB	Red, Green and Blue	Color Curve Plugin	RGB Parade: Displays brightness value of individual R, G and B colors

Part 2: How to correct color in Vegas Pro – Examples

Following steps can help you to understand the implementation of color correction tool in Vegas Pro:

Step 1: Turn on Videoscope

On software screen, go to View present at top left corner and then from drop down menu select Windows layouts, further you need to choose Color Correction.

Actually Vegas Pro software possesses four different color/video scopes that can be used for different purpose as described in the table above. Vectorscope, Histogram, Waveform and RGB Parade provide complete analysis of video signal. With the help of these easy to manipulate tools users can adjust highlights, mid tones, shadows, gamma values, luminance values, hue and saturation, contrast and brightness as well as tonal range for the input signal.

Step 2: Vectorscope

As already discussed in previous section, Vectorscope is used to provide information related to basic components of video signals that are saturation and hue.

When a value lies at central position of this scope that means it have zero saturation and hue is also missing. As the values keep on moving far away from center point, the amount of hue and saturation into color signal gets added. The information one vectorscope scale are represented in terms of primary and secondary colors where red, green and blue belongs to first category and yellow, magenta and cyan are from second category.

Here I take the photo of my dog shot 5 years ago with my smartphone as an example:

You can see that all the dots are around the centre on the Vectorscope and that means there are many different hues on this image, but they are not very saturated.

Plugin used - Color corrector:

Open the Video Event FX Window by clicking on the Event FX icon available on screen; then go to Vegas Color Corrector, hit Ok, then go for custom settings and finally increase saturation as per need. The effect will be directly observed on image as dots on Vectorscope will get more distributed away from center point.

Step 3: Waveform

This tool denotes brightness related information.

Observing things on waveform monitor while moving from left to right is same as looking on video preview window in the same direction. If more number of dots are vertically aligned then it represents higher value of brightness.

From the screenshot above, we can tell that this image is lacking of brightness

Plugin used - Brightness and Contrast:

Increase the Brightness and Contrast by dragging the handle to right

Now we can see the photo already looks better and clearer than the original.

Step 4: Histogram

Histogram provides information about contrast and brightness.

On this scale, the vertical lines ranging from left side displays black (0) leading to luminance information and it extends towards right side up to 255 that is extreme white representation. Height of these lines display amount of pixels used to represent any particular image along with luminance values.

We can see from the Histogram that there too much Shadows and no Highlights of the original photo.

Plugin used - Brigthness and Contrast:

Increasing the Brightness and Contrast sliders, so now the image has exact Shadows, Mid-tones and Highlights

Step 5: RGB Parade

RGB Parade tool is used to display information related to brightness of RGB colors.

This scope can provide quick information about all brightness levels while showing effect of each main color individually.

From the screenshot above, you can see a band of dots in the Shadow area. That means there are too much blacks and lack of highlights.

Plugin used - Color Curves

The bottom handle slightly make the image closer to true white. The longer top handle I created at the top expands all the compressed dots that were locating in the lower mid-tone region and also at the same time increase the brightness of the whole video.

Conclusion

If you want to know more about Sony Vegas, check this video to know how to apply a film look by using color correction tools in Sony Vegas Pro.