- [Instructor] Color wheels
only really give you two adjustments.
But because they're often divided into three,
with each wheel applying adjustments
to only the shadow, midtone, or highlight pixels,
the results can be quite nuanced.
When I first learned about color wheels,
I struggled to understand what qualified
as a shadow pixel, midtone, or highlight,
until somebody pointed out it's actually arbitrary.
Software manufacturers aim for a reasonable threshold
between each of these three levels of brightness,
and some applications give you manual control
over where that threshold lies.
When speaking about shadows, midtones, and highlights,
we're literally speaking about darker or lighter pixels.
This is useful
because human vision treats color
in these three bands of lightness a little differently.
For example, the part of your eyes that see color
need more light than the part of your eyes
that see luminance.
That's why when it's dark, everything looks colorless.
Part of your eye can't see anything.
So if you have a color cast in your darker shadows,
it looks a little strange.
This might be the look you want.
But if you're aiming for the appearance
of natural light to the naked eye,
you'll probably want to resolve color casts in the shadows
while keeping colors in the midtones,
which is what we expect.
Having separate color wheels for this is a big help.
Here, I have a color wheel
with a regular puck control in the middle.
The closer to the edge of the color wheel,
the stronger the adjustment.
There's also an outer ring that allows me to remap the hues.
I'm just turning the dial on this control
so that everything on the wheel has a new hue.
This can be useful
for fixing some calibration issues in cameras,
or for subtly warming or cooling a shot.
This color wheel has an extra control next to it
which gives a luminance adjustment
for the shadows, midtones, or highlights.
This is just another way
to adjust the brightness of the image,
but it can be a helpful quick fix
if you don't want to go into the subtle adjustments
made in a curves adjustment.
More about these in the lesson on curves.
And maybe if you want a bit more control
than an overall image adjustment.
Adjusting color is both an art and a craft,
so you'll want to keep an eye on your output display,
waveform, and vector scope.