What each Color tab slider does, one by one

The Color tab adjusts the look of one clip at a time. It has six sliders, an Auto button and a histogram, and every change shows in the preview as you drag. This post walks through each control so you know what to reach for.

Open the tab

Select a video or photo clip on the timeline. In the right panel, click Color. The tab works on clips on any track, including stills.

At the top sits an Auto button with a wand icon. Below it is the histogram, a graph of the red, green and blue values in the frame now showing in the preview. Shadows sit on the left and highlights on the right, and where the three curves overlap the graph reads lighter. Below the graph are the six sliders.

Each slider runs from -50 to +50, with 0 as neutral. Hue is the exception and runs from -180 to +180 degrees. You can drag a slider, drag the number beside it to scrub (hold Shift for bigger steps), or click the number and type a positive value (negative values come from dragging or from the arrow keys). A small circular arrow appears next to any slider that has moved, and it resets only that slider. Reset all clears the whole grade for the clip.

The six sliders

• Brightness lifts or lowers the whole picture evenly. When brightening, it moves the picture by less than Exposure does at the same value.
• Contrast spreads tones away from mid-gray. Raising it deepens the darks and brightens the lights. Lowering it flattens the picture.
• Saturation sets how strong the colors are. At the far left all color is gone and the clip is black and white.
• Exposure works in stops of light, the way a camera does. Its full range is one stop either way, and when brightening it reaches further than Brightness at the same slider value.
• Temperature shifts the white balance. Positive values warm the picture toward orange, and negative values cool it toward blue.
• Hue rotates every color around the color wheel. A few degrees corrects a faint tint. Large moves turn skin and skies into colors they never were.

An order that works

DepCut applies the sliders in a fixed sequence: light and contrast first, then saturation and hue, then the warm or cool tint. Working in a similar order keeps each decision simple.

1. Set Exposure until the histogram fills the space between left and right without piling up at either edge.
2. Add Contrast if the picture looks flat, or lower it if the darks look crushed.
3. Fix color with Temperature until something that should be neutral, such as a white wall, looks neutral.
4. Set Saturation last among the main controls, since the earlier moves change how strong the color looks.
5. Reach for Hue only if a tint remains after Temperature.

What the grade touches

A grade belongs to the clip you selected. The next clip keeps its own settings, so a grade on one clip never shifts its neighbors. The filmstrip in the clip's box on the timeline updates to show the grade, and the exported video carries it.

Every drag is one undo step, so a single undo takes back a whole drag and you can experiment freely.

Because the histogram reads the composited preview, titles, other layers and effects on top of the clip show up in it too. If a reading looks off, check what else is in the frame.

Open the tab on one clip

Select a clip in DepCut, open Color, and move each slider once to see what it does before you settle on a grade.