How to Color Grade Video in PowerDirector

Color grading is two jobs that people tend to run together and then wonder why the result looks wrong. The first is correction: getting the exposure and contrast to a sensible place. The second is styling: deciding whether the shot feels warm, cool, rich or muted. Doing them in that order matters, because every color decision is judged against the brightness underneath it.

Light adjustment balances the brightness of the footage and lays the foundation. Color adjustment changes the mood on top of it. Correct, then style.

Select the clip on the timeline and click Edit in the toolbar under the library. Then open the Video tab and choose the Color section. The editing panel replaces the library at the upper left.

The panel lists Color Enhancement, Light Adjustment, Color, Light, HDR Effect, Color Match, HSL and Split Toning, with Edit in ColorDirector at the bottom. Each one has its own checkbox and its own reset arrow, so you can switch a single section off, or undo just that section, without disturbing the rest.

Light Adjustment is the quick one. A single Lighting slider moves overall brightness, contrast and saturation together, which is enough when a shot is simply too bright or too dark.

For real control, open Light instead. The first two sliders are the ones people confuse. Exposure changes the brightness of the entire image, so it is the one to reach for when the whole shot is off. Brightness works on the midtones, which means your subject and the background, and leaves the very brightest and very darkest areas more or less alone.

Contrast is the gap between the bright and dark areas. Push it up and the image gains depth; pull it down and the shot goes softer and flatter.

Highlight and Shadow are the repair pair. They pull detail back out of areas that are blown out or crushed, which is the usual fix for a bright sky or a face in shade.

White and Black set where the brightest and darkest points of the image actually sit. They are the finishing touch on the light, not the starting point.

With the light settled, Color Enhancement is the fastest way to lift the color. One slider raises the vibrancy of the image, and it deliberately leaves skin tones alone. That is the reason to try it before touching Saturation, which does not make that distinction and turns faces orange for a living.

For manual work, open Color. Temperature is the warm-to-cool control: right for warmer and more yellow, left for cooler and more blue.

Tint is the other half of white balance, running green to magenta. Use it to correct a color cast that Temperature alone cannot reach, which is usually the fingerprint of indoor lighting.

Saturation controls how intense the colors are: right for richer, left towards grayscale. Vibrance sits beside it and does the same job more gently, lifting the duller colors while leaving the already strong ones where they are.

Everything above moves the whole image. When you only want the reds to change, open HSL: hue, saturation and luminance. Hue is which shade the color is, saturation is how intense, luminance is how bright.

The panel splits each of the three into a row of sliders, one per color. To make the reds in a shot stronger without touching anything else, move the red slider under Saturation.

If you cannot tell which slider owns the thing you want to change, use the Targeted Adjustment Tool at the top of the panel. Click the color in the preview window and drag up or down with the left button held, and PowerDirector works out which sliders to move.

A grade built for one clip usually suits the rest of the same shoot. Apply to All at the bottom of the panel pushes the current settings onto every clip of the same type on that track.