Premiere® Elements 8 For Dummies®

Chapter 10. Improving and Repairing Video Images

In This Chapter

• Understanding video color

• Correcting colors

• Adjusting brightness and contrast

• Stabilizing shaky video

Anyone who has used a camera — be it a still camera or a camcorder — has probably learned some hard lessons about light and color. A scene that looks brilliant to human eyes often turns out dull and imperfect when it's photographed. You've probably experienced this before; pictures you take are too dark, colors look weird, or brilliant colors get washed out by bright sunlight. Managing light and color is one of the trickiest aspects of photography and videography.

When you shoot video, you can take advantage of the available light and color by using tips and techniques that I suggest in Chapters 3 and 18. But no matter how hard you try to follow the rules of photography and videography, you're going to wind up with video clips that appear less than perfect when you view them on a TV screen or computer. Don't feel bad — it happens to the best of us. Even when I shoot professional video with broadcast-quality cameras under controlled studio lighting, I still spend a fair amount of time post-processing my videos. Post-processing is just a fancy way of saying that I use special tools in Adobe Premiere (Pro or Elements) to clean up the final appearance of colors and light in my movies. This chapter shows you how to use the color-correction tools in Premiere Elements to improve the quality of your video images. I also show you ...