Hey guys! Today I'm going to be sharing some editing tips on how to make colorings.
When I first started editing, I relied heavily on other's pre-made Magic Bullet Looks colorings. MBL is a great tool to use for colorings, but for the longest time I thought it was the only way to make/use colorings. It turns out, that's not the case.
Here's probably my most basic coloring. As you can see, I used MBL in making this, but I also used Trapcode Starglow.
You can see this coloring used in this edit on my Instagram page:
Trapcode Starglow
This is a third-party plugin that unfortunately I don't have a download link for, but it's super easy to find a download link on YouTube! Starglow is one of my most used effects when making colorings. It's very similar to the 'haze' or 'anamorphic flare' effects in MBL, just more customizable. It comes with tons of stunning presets and is user friendly. I like to experiment with the presets and tailor them to my liking, but many of them don't even need adjusting.
So, Starglow is great, but my real favorite plugin for colorings is NewBlue FX.
Sadly, I don't have a download link to this either, but like I said for Starglow: there are tons of videos on YouTube that provide download links and installation tutorials for the plugins I'm mentioning. If I can, I'll hunt down the files for these plugins and upload them to MEGA (of course, providing a link for you guys).
Anyways, NewBlue FX.
Here's one of my most basic colorings using 'Film Color' and 'Spotlight', two effects in the NBFX plugin. 'Film Color' is without a doubt my most used NB effect.
You can see this coloring used in this edit on my Instagram page:
NewBlue FX Film Color
NB 'Film Color' truly highlights the beauty of third party plugins. There are 7 adjustable values, making this very user friendly. This effect comes equipped with over 20+ unique presets. I truly don't know what I'd do without this specific effect. I know most of you aren't strangers to "Brightness" and "Contrast", but trust me when I say this effect works wonders on scenes. I usually use this with other effects, but I'm more than positive you can use solely this for a coloring. I like to think of 'Film Color' as MBL but incredibly condensed. Sure, it's missing some classic MBL features like 'Vignette' and 'Edge Softness', but NBFX luckily has stylizing effects that do both and much more.
The last two colorings didn't use many effects. This isn't what I usually do with colorings, so I thought I might as well include this coloring. This is a more accurate representation of the amount and type of effects I use with my colorings.
You can see this coloring used in this edit on my Instagram page:
Honorable Mention: BCC Colorize Glow
While it's not used in the coloring above, I feel
BCC Colorize Glow is a powerful effect worthy of a mention. Boris Continuum Complete (BCC) is another third-party plugin I use frequently for colorings and effects. This effect comes with a couple of presets, each a different color, and is similar to S_Glow (Sapphire FX) or the 'haze' effect in MBL.
Here's an example of what it looks like. These are four of the presets. I haven't tampered with any of the settings:
They may appear a little intense to some of you, but like I said: customizable. You can adjust the intensity to your liking and a plethora of other settings.
I hope this was helpful to you guys! Let me know if you need help with anything or have any questions :)