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Even if you follow all the best advice for shooting great digital video, you probably wind up with some video that has ugly coloration or poor lighting. Fortunately, modern editing programs give you some tools to correct some image-quality issues.
Pinnacle Studio provides a pretty good selection of image controls. You can use these controls to improve brightness and contrast, adjust colors, or add a stylized appearance to a video image. To access the color controls, double-click a clip that you want to improve or modify. When the Clip Properties window appears, click the Adjust Color or Add Visual Effects tab on the left side of the window. The Color Properties window appears.
At the top of the Color Properties window, you can find the Color Type menu. From this menu, you can choose a basic color mode for the clip. The normal mode is All Colors, but you can also choose Black and White, Single Hue, or Sepia. Below that menu, you can see eight controls that you manipulate using sliders. These controls, listed in the order that they appear, are as follows:
- Hue: Adjusts the color bias for the clip. Use this control if skin tones or other colors in the image don't look right.
- Saturation: Adjusts the intensity of the color in the image.
- Brightness: Makes the image brighter or darker.
- Contrast: Adjusts the contrast between the light and dark parts of the image. If the image appears too dark, use Brightness and Contrast together to improve the way it looks.
- Blur: Adds a blurry effect to the image.
- Emboss: Simulates a carving or embossed effect. It looks cool, but you can't really use it for much.
- Mosaic: Makes the image look like a bunch of large colored blocks. You probably don't use this control, like Emboss, very much.
- Posterize: Reduces the number of different colors in an image. Play with it; you may like it.
Most of your clips probably look fine just the way they are, but it's good to know that you have these controls available if you need them. And if, after making a bunch of changes, you decide that you liked the clip better the way it was, just click the Default button to return the clip to its original settings.
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