Color-correcting underwater video in iMovie and Premiere Pro

One of the fascinations about diving is to experience the typical under water atmosphere. The light dancing around us in discreet beams of illumination or crinkle patterns. The increasing darkness as we dive deeper. But the same physical properties of water that create this ambience also have an effect on how we see objects, or animals, in the water. Only a few meters below the surface colors fade away and everything appears in the same blueish, or greenish tint with little contrast.

Turtle at 10m. Not much color left. This fading of color and contrast is a gradual effect that depends on many factors: cloud cover, surface patterns, particles on the water, but most of all depth. If we want to show the turtle in it's true colors, we have to bring back those colors. Ideally we would bring our own lights and illuminate the turtle. Or we could use a red Decrease. But sometimes this is not possible or practical, and all we can work with is ambient light. The only option left to us then is to color-correct our clips in our video editing software. Unfortunately most simple video editing programs do not offer this functionality. Windows movie maker doesn't, and neither do most video editing programs that come with our cameras.

Color correction in iMovie One of the free programs that does offer basic color correction is iMovie, but only after we turn on "Show Advanced Tools" in the preference dialog:

iMovie Preferences. Turn on "Show Advanced Tools".

With this option turned on the clip inspector gets a few extra controls for color gain. This allows us to increase the reds and turn down the blues and greens.

Our turtle in iMovie without color correction We can see in the histogram that the red levels are very low, whereas the green and blue levels are very high. That is because water, with a density 800 times that of air, Decreases out the warm colors first. Most of the red is gone at 5m already, soon to be followed by orange and then yellow. But a little is left, and by adjusting the gain controls we can increase the reds and decrease the greens and blues to get a better distribution. And after further modifying the white point and increasing contrast we get to a more life-like image of our turtle:

Our turtle in iMovie with "Advanced Tools" and color correction The result is quite good for such a simple program. But because we only shifted the colors up and down the spectrum, they are now rather bunched up in the middle. A more even spread across the spectrum would be preferable. This is where we reach the limits of iMovie. More professional programs give us greater freedom when modifying the spectrum. The program I use is Adobe's Premiere Pro.

Color correction in Premiere Pro Where iMovie only has one way to modify the color, professional NLE programs like Premiere Pro have many. One of the most powerful ways for correcting color are the "Levels" and "Equalize" effects. But first we should change from the normal "Editing" to the "Color Correction" workspace. This adds another

monitor window for the color specturm, which lets us see where we are and what effect our modifications are having. I like to configure this to show "Vect/YC Wave/RGB Parade". Again we can see in the clip of our turtle that the red levels are very low, and the greens and blues rather high.

Our turtle in Premiere Pro without color correction Now we drag the "Levels" effect onto our clip and open it in the Effect Controls panel. With the "Levels" effect we manipulate the brightness and contrast of the reds, greens, and blues in a clip on an individual basis. The goal is to spread them out evenly across the shadows, mid-tones, and highlights (the "up" axis on the RGD parade). In order to get some reds into the highlights we dial the (R) White Input Level from 255 to 130. There's too much green in the footage, so dial down the (G) Black Input Level from 0 to 80. The blues also need to be reduced, so we dial the (G) Black Input Level from 0 to 100. Different depths and water clarity require different values, but it's easy to see in the "Vect/YC Wave/RGB Parade" monitor what effect the changes are having.

The levels effect applied After shifting the levels the colors end up distributed too tightly in the middle of the spectrum, and we're loosing detail in the shadows and highlights. By using the "Equalize" effect we can achieve a wider brightness and color component distribution and bring details back as well as increase the contrast.

The Equalize effect spreads out the colors further, increasing contrast. And that's it! Here's an overview of how the different Levels sliders work: (RGB) Black Input Level: Turn up to darken shadows (RGB) White Input Level: Turn down to lighten highlights (RGB) Black Output Level: Turn up to brighten shadows (RGB) White Output Level: Turn down to darken highlights (RGB) Gamma: Turn up to increase overall luminance (brighter) (R) Black Input Level: Turn up to remove red from shadows (R) White Input Level: Turn down to add red to the highlights (R) Black Output Level: Turn up to add red to the shadows (R) White Output Level: Turn down to remove red from highlights (R) Gamma: Turn up to enhance red luminance. Turn down to enhance greens and blues. (G) Black Input Level: Turn up to remove green from shadows (G) White Input Level: Turn down to add green to the highlights (G) Black Output Level: Turn up to add green to the shadows (G) White Output Level: Turn down to remove green from highlights (G) Gamma: Turn up to enhance green luminance. Turn down to enhance reds and blues. (B) Black Input Level: Turn up to remove blue from shadows (B) White Input Level: Turn down to add blue to highlights (B) Black Output Level: Turn up to add blue to shadows (B) White Output Level: Turn down to remove blue from highlights (B) Gamma: Turn up to increase blue luminance. Turn down to enhance reds and greens.

Or, from a different point of view: Increase red: increase "(R) Gamma" Increase red in shadows: increase "(R) Black Output Level" Increase red in highlights: decrease "(R) White Input Level" Increase green: increase "(G) Gamma" Increase green in shadows: increase "(G) Black Output Level" Increase green in highlights: decrease "(G) White Input Level" Increase blue: increase "(B) Gamma" Increase blue in shadows: increase "(B) Black Output Level" Increase blue in highlights: decrease "(B) White Input Level" Decrease red: decrease "(R) Gamma" Decrease red in shadows: increase "(R) Black Input Level" Decrease red in highlights: decrease "(R) White Output Level" Decrease green: decrease "(G) Gamma" Decrease green in shadows: increase "(G) Black Input Level" Decrease green in highlights: decrease "(G) White Output Level" Decrease blue: decrease "(B) Gamma" Decrease blue in shadows: increase "(B) Black Input Level"

 Decrease blue in highlights: decrease "(B) White Output Level" Finally, the color-corrected turtle: