Here goes, Number Three.

In my first blog post about color correction I mentioned what a pain in the ass bright sunlight is, a problem with a shooting technique called "Deep Focus" that I was having, and how I don't know anything about color correction.  Oh, and that I didn't like Premier Elements' color fixing abilities.

Then, in my second post about color correction we see that I start to get the hang of it.  It's been about a week and I've read a lot and am learning a lot.  I've got some great JPGs to show you for examples and overall it ends up a pretty good time.  I'm learning color correction and happy.

Now for my third post, and maybe my final one on this subject, I'll show you a few details about the Shadow/Highlight function in Adobe Premier Elements 3.0.  I briefly spoke about it in my last blog post, but am expanding on it here.

No, this isn't how I edit video.  I dragged the Monitor window down a bunch and crunched the timeline so that you could see all of the parameters in the "Properties" window.

So this Shadow/Highlight function in Premier Elements is automatically an automatic corrector.  What I mean is, as soon as you drag it from the Effects pane and drop it onto your video it automatically "corrects" things.  This means that it automatically lightens shadows and darkens highlights, exactly the opposite of what I want it to do.

What I have to do first is unclick the "Auto Amounts" button.  Then, the effect is still working.  Even though I unclicked the Auto Amounts button, the "factory" settings are already set, so I have to zero out the "Shadow Amount" listing.  It says, "Shadow Amount," so you'd think that it controls how much shadow you have.  Nope.  It actually controls how much shadow you want removed.  A high number in this spot (50) would brighten all of the shadows in your clip. So if you are trying to Crush the blacks, please zero out this number and it will leave your shadows alone.  We'll deal with them shortly.

The next listing down is the "Highlight Amount."  This is automatically set to zero and I didn't change it.  Upping the number would darken highlights, not brighten them.

Now there is an expansion arrow that promises the dream of "more options" if you click it.  Go ahead and click it, I dare you.

Ok, here we're getting into the nitty-gritty of the Shadow/Highlight effect.

So below the More Options arrow we see the other options.  The first five listings (Shadow Tonal Width, Shadow Radius, Highlight Tonal Width, Highlight Radius, and Color Correction) all pertain to the above-mentioned Shadow Amount and Highlight Amount parameters.  So when telling Premier Elements to lighten your shadows, Shadow Tonal Width and Shadow Radius are options for how the software interprets what is and isn't a shadow.  The same for the Highlight functions, they set how the software interprets highlights.

Unfortunately, all of this stuff is for brightening shadows and darkening highlights.  I don't want anything to do with that stuff.  And since I have my Shadow Amount and Highlight Amount set to zero (0), these parameters do nothing anyways.  Moving on.

Next is Midtone Contrast.  This is actually a very nice little tool.  It brightens or darkens the midtones of your video, which can be cool.  Though that's not what I'm messing with today.

I am concerned with the next option, Black Clip.  This is the little parameter that will finally darken my Shadows.  And it doesn't take much.  To darken the above image I just used 4.00% for this setting.  The highest value, fifty (50), darkens most of the image, just leaving a few high spots visible.  I chose 4% because I'm just starting with this and don't want to go too far.  I went to 10% but it looked too dark.  I tried 6% but didn't even notice a difference between 4 and 6, so I kept 4.

The White Clip option brightens highlights.  I didn't mess with this and the factory setting of 0.01% really doesn't do much of anything to the image, so I left it.

And that's about it.  For "Crushing the blacks" in Premier elements you need to use the Black Clip option and kill the factory Shadow Amount setting.  Not too hard, but hard to figure out.