Is there some advice on color matching and correction that you can point me to?  I am especially having a hard time getting correct skin tones.  For still shots I use Photoshop Elements 6.0 which has color correction tools that work very well.  I can't find anything in Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 14 that I can get to work as well.  I am mainly using the white balance with a lot of trial and error.  I am working with older home videos shot inside under incandescent light. 

 I searched, but everything I found was about Liquid.

Thanks

Welcome to the forum.

There are two tools in the video effects section. Auto color correct is in Standard RTFX group and Color Correction is in Plus RTFX. Color correction gives you a lot of control over the color balance, brightness etc.

Reminder, expect rendering to be much slower with these effects applied since each frame of video has to be changed.

Don

Yes color correction is your best bet.

The color correction feature provides a palette that allows one to designate what color (or off shade of white) should be pure white in a clip.  However, unlike photo editing software, there does not seem to be a way to let one use the mouse or a pointer to select a point in the frame (perhaps a white object or surface) that should correspond to white, which the software then converts to white on the frame, with corresponding corrections to everything else.   In Studio it seems one is only able to roam manually about the color or hue chart until, by trial and error, one gets a balance that seems OK.  Am I missing something?

It appears that what you are describing is the "white balance" effect. The "color correction" effect allows you to change red, green and blue low levels, white levels and I think gama. It also allow you to set overall white and black levels. Just about everything is adjustable.

Don

Any updates?

I appreciate the replies so far, but I have explored all of the color correction, lighting and white balance tools.  I guess my problem is just the trial and error nature.  I find the tools in Photoshop much easier to use and the automatic help much better than in Pinnacle.  One approach I was trying is to grab a frame from the video, adjust it in Photoshop, and then try to match the adjusted colors in Pinnacle.  I can use a color picker tool to tell me exactly what RGB value I am trying to match, but I can't figure out the formula to calculate what I should enter for the white point in the white balance tool.  Similarly I am not exactly sure what the algorithm is behind the other adjustments possible.  I think if I knew what the algorithms were I might t least be able to add some intelligent guesses to trial and error.  I also upgraded to Ultimate v14 to try the Magic Bullet tools.  Plenty of adjustments possible there, but again all trial and error.

I've explorer this realm too, all trial and error. I have had some minor success adjusting indoor lighting to match scene to scene. I have had the best success with simple "brighten". 

I have had little success using the number values in the various plug-in to exactly match prior corrections. At some point (possibly "save"), the baseline numbers get changed. Suibsequently the same numerical values give different results.

Not saying I understand any of this, it's just my experience. I find it very unpleasant to be able to notice that a scene has been "corrected," so lately I just let the video alone.

 

oceanol:

Not saying I understand any of this, it's just my experience. I find it very unpleasant to be able to notice that a scene has been "corrected," so lately I just let the video alone.

Any gross adjustments may do more harm than good.  But some lighting conditions, if not corrected when shooting, bet some correction.  For instance, night shots taken under sodium-vapor outdoor lighting can look too red-orange.  Incandescent bulbs make everything look orange-yellow.  Neon tube lighting makes things appear green-gray.  There is perhaps no way to tease a "natural" balance out of any such shots.  The "auto white balance" works, sometimes.  The manual one produces a color selection table, but does not (so far as I am aware) allow one to pick a spot on the frame, designate that as "white," and then cause the plug-in do adjust the clip white-balance accordingly.  To play around with the hues on the palette is hardly more reliable than manual tweaking of the RBG gains and gammas in the "color balance" plug-in.  Right or wrong?