 So this is the tutorial you have been waiting for. Have you ever wanted to color grade your iPhone footage to make it look cinematic? Well, this video will help you do so. Color grading is an important part of post-production that helps bring out the best in your footage. Using various color grading techniques and tools, you can take your iPhone videos to the next level and make them look as if it was shot on a big budget camera. By no means am I a professional colorist, but I do have experience color grading as it's something I do quite often and love to do. If you've seen some of my iPhone videos and like the colors, then make sure to stick around as I will show you how to do it. Now, remember you can do a lot with color grading, but if you don't shoot the video properly to begin with, no amount of color grading will save the footage. So make sure to learn the basics of shooting video on a smartphone first and then worry about the color. Make sure to check out some of my other tutorials to learn the basics of shooting videos with your iPhone. And if you need more help or want to speed up the learning process, I have an awesome online course called smartphone filmmaking where I help people just like you make amazing videos with their smartphone. So I'll be using Final Cut Pro to color grade my footage as this is my main editing software and has more advanced tools that allow me to color grade the way I want to. If you're using a different editing software, don't worry, most of the techniques I'll be showing you can still be applied. So with that said, let's get started. So we're gonna start off by color grading this first clip over here. As you can see, it's completely blown out and that is because it is recorded in HDR and I'm currently editing this project in an SDR timeline. So what we have to do is convert this HDR clip into SDR. Just type in the search HDR tool and then drag it on top of the clip. Then in the inspector, you can choose HLG to Rec 709 HDR. And this will convert it to a normal looking clip. Now, the next thing we're gonna do, which is step number two is to correct the exposure. So I'm gonna head up here to open up the color wheels and I'm actually gonna adjust the highlights, mid tones and shadows. And I'm gonna use the Luma waveform to see where the highlights and shadows and mid tones are. Important to remember is that you don't want to go above 100 or below zero, otherwise you will lose information. So I'm gonna drag the cursor to around here because this is the darkest part of the image and I'm gonna drag the shadows down just a little bit and also increase the highlights like so and bring down the mid tones a bit to make the image pop more. I really just make small adjustments and the next thing I'll be doing is correcting the white balance. And white balance is the process of adjusting the colors in your footage so they look natural. I feel like the image is a bit too warm so I'm actually gonna drag the highlights away from the warm tones, introducing a little bit of blue into the highlight and that is about it. Now as you can see, in most cases, the iPhone does a great job of finding the white balance for you but sometimes it does need a little bit of help so I do adjust the temperature a bit to make sure that it looks like how I shot it. Now I can see that there's a lot of red in this image. You can see that when I open the vector scope as you can see it's oversaturated. So what I wanna do is actually reduce the reds by selecting the hue saturation curves and I'm gonna head over to the hue versus saturation and use the eyedropper and select the red part over here and just drag this dot down to remove the red color until the colors look even around here. And I'm also gonna remove a little bit of yellow and this already looks much better. So let's look at the before and after. So this is a huge improvement. Now with iPhone footage, it's a good idea to remove some of the saturation as the iPhone tends to add a lot of color. So now that we did that, the next thing I'm gonna do is shape the light and what I mean by that is I'm gonna create another color wheel and then add a shape mask. And I want the viewers to focus their attention on this Chinese lantern. So I'm gonna create a mask around it, feather it and then I'm gonna affect the outside of the mask and reduce the highlight as well as the mid-tone. And then I'm gonna select the inside and increase the highlight. Make sure nothing is clipping. So I'm gonna select the waveform again. So we're still good over here. And if we look at the before and after, you can see that it makes it easier for the viewer to focus their attention on this lantern. So now that we did that, the next step is to add a look. And the way I'm gonna do that is I'm actually gonna add one of my premium mobile luts to the clip. So I'm gonna type in custom LUT and I'm gonna drag it onto the clip. And then I'm gonna select custom LUT. And over here you can see these are all the luts that you get inside of the premium mobile LUT pack and you can choose between different color presets. They all look really great. As you can see, we have a warm memory, heartstone, lovely prophecy, blockbuster look. So for now I'm gonna go with the lovely prophecy. This looks really nice. And I'm gonna reduce the intensity to around 50. Now we can look at the before and after. This looks really great. And I'm actually gonna head back and add more contrast to the scene by dragging this part down. All right. Now this clip was actually shot with the iPhone 14 Pro in cinematic mode. And when you import a cinematic mode video clip into Final Cut Pro, you have the ability to adjust the background blur. So in here you get this cinematic checkbox. I'm gonna click on it and I'm gonna reduce the depth of field number to around F2. So this is the before and after. You can see that we added even more separation and you can see this makes a huge difference in the clip. That's what I really like about the cinematic mode. If done right, it creates this natural looking shallow depth of field in your video like you see with DSLR cameras. Now to take this a step further, I'm gonna add some blur as well as some grain into our video. And for that, I'm gonna use a plugin called MFilmLook. And I'm gonna apply that and I'm gonna remove this part over here. So I'm gonna add a little bit of grain. I'm gonna reduce the intensity a little bit and the size. And this just helps blend all of the colors. And then I'm gonna add a blur as well. I'm gonna make sure the Chinese lantern stays in focus. And I'm gonna feather this, make this one smaller. This looks really nice. And I'm gonna reduce the intensity a little bit. So when we look at the before and after, you can see over here that it adds an additional blur to our clip which makes it even look more cinematic. Now the MFilmLook is something I highly recommend. Motion BFX is actually running a black sale until the 4th of December where you can get 30% off all their plugins using the promo code black30. I've been using many of their high quality plugins to help enhance my videos. If you want to know the plugins I use from them to make my iPhone videos stand out, make sure to check out the video up here. Now besides the MFilmLook, I highly recommend you'd also check out Mtitle Cinematic 2 which is my favorite title plugin that I use for all of my travel videos like the one you've probably seen from Paris. So I'm gonna head over to the titles and select Mtitle Cinematic 2. And for this clip, I'm gonna choose a number 31. I think this will look really great. I'm gonna place it on top. Then I'm gonna adjust the title to Bennett R Grazer. And then play it back. Just looks like a movie. So make sure to take advantage of this sale as it only comes once a year. And from my experience, it is definitely worth getting. If you have clips that were shot in the same environment with the same light and all, you can actually copy these attributes to the other clips as well, which will save you a lot of time. So let me show you how I would do it. So these two clips were also shot at the exact same spot. And then head over to Edit. I'm gonna select Copy. And I'm gonna select both of these clips. And then select Paste Attributes. I just want to apply the color grading effects. I'm gonna hit Paste. And there you have it. That is how it looks like. Looks really nice. So if we look at the before and after. So let's move on to this next clip of the Eiffel Tower that was shot during the night, obviously. This was just shot in SDR using Filmic Pro. And I'm gonna start off again by adjusting the exposure. So I'm gonna open up the Waveform, make sure nothing is clipping. So there's not much to be done. I can drag the shadows down just a little bit because I don't need the details in the shadows anyways. And I'm gonna pull down the mid tones as well. Then the next thing I'm gonna do is also correct the white balance. So I'm gonna add another color wheel. And I'm gonna drag the highlights towards the blue. Make it a little bit cooler as well as the mid tones. And the shadows. So just push everything more, make everything a little bit more cooler. And let's look at the before and after. This looks better. I'm gonna even drag the highlights more towards the blue as well as the mid tones and shadows. Okay, let's now look at the before and after. This looks way better. Now that we have adjusted our white balance, I'm now also gonna check the colors using the vector scope. So there's a lot of orange over here. So I'm gonna open up hue versus saturation. I'm gonna use the color picker and select this part and just reduce some of the orange just a little bit. So the next thing I'm gonna do is shape the color. So I'm gonna add another color wheel. And I want the audience to focus their attention on the Eiffel Tower. Gonna feather this a bit more. And then I'm gonna select the outside of the mask, drag the highlights down as well as the mid tones. And I'm gonna select the inside of the mask and just increase the highlights a little bit. Okay, let's look at the before and after. Looks way better, right? The next thing I'm gonna do is add the M film look. And what I'm gonna do is add a vignette to help focus the attention more towards the Eiffel Tower. And I'm gonna feather it just the intensity. Okay, I think this looks really great. All right, and then I'm also gonna add some grain. Not too much though. And I'm gonna add some blur around it. Make sure the Eiffel Tower is in focus. And I'm gonna just feather it a little bit more. This looks really good. And what I'm also gonna add is a lens flare since we also have a light source. And to do that, I'm gonna select this one over here. And I'm gonna drag it towards the street lamp and reduce the intensity. I can also use the inspector to do so. So I'm gonna reduce the intensity over here. Not make it too obvious. I'm gonna change the hue to a more of a white. And I'm gonna reduce the intensity a little bit more. So let's now look at the before and after. This is how it looked like before. And this is with everything applied. It looks really great. So now I'll also apply a title. Let's see, maybe we can go for this one. Let's make it all capital letters, Paris. Let's play it back, nice. And the last thing we're gonna do is add one of my mobile LUTs. I almost forgot that. So I'm gonna disable the title for now. And I'm gonna type in custom LUT. I'm gonna drag it on top of the clip. And then I'm gonna choose blockbuster look. I think this looks really nice. I'm gonna reduce the intensity to around 60. There you have it. This is the before and after. Huge difference, nice color separation. Now I'm gonna enable the title. Let's play it back. That looks really nice. Let's move on to our last clip, which is a clip I shot in Portugal of a boat sailing. And first of all, I'm gonna apply the HDR clip. And convert it to an SDR. And I'm also gonna bring up the Luma waveform so I can start adjusting my exposure. I'm gonna actually reduce the shadow. I don't mind if this is clipping. This is just this part over here. I don't mind if we're losing information, this part. And then I'm gonna increase the highlights as well. Add some contrast. This looks nice. And let's now look at the colors. Rectoscope, let's see. The colors look really good. What about the white balance? Let's see, I think this image looks a little bit too cool. So maybe we can add a little bit of warmth into the image as well as in the mid tones. I just wanna make sure our whites look white over here. I think this looks good. Let's look at the before and after. Yes, this is way better. So the next thing I'm gonna do is focus the light. So I'm gonna create another color wheel. Create a shape mask, place it around the boat. So feather it and then I'm gonna head over to the outside part, reduce the highlights as well as the mid tones. Let's now look at the before and after again. Now it's time to add our look. I'm gonna add a custom LUT, apply it on top. And this time I'm going for the blockbuster look. Let's reduce the mix of it to around, let's say 30, looks good. I think I can add a little bit more warmth into the highlights. I'm gonna do that right now, just add a little bit more warmth. Yes, that looks really nice. And then I'm gonna add the M film look to it. Again, I'm gonna add a vignette, just a slight vignette. Feather it, so I got the before and after. Looks nice. And then I'm also gonna add some grain and lens blur. Not too much though, just a little bit of lens blur. Okay, so this DP4 and after, huge difference, right? Nice. Let's now add a cinematic title to it as well. Let's see, which one should we go for? Let's go for, ah, this looks great. Okay, this looks great. Let's call this one the sailor. All right, guys, that was it for this tutorial. I know that learning how to make your iPhone footage pop can be tricky, but with practice and determination you will be able to achieve amazing results. And if you want to speed up the process of color grading make sure to also check out my premium mobile LUTs. These are designed for your mobile videos that you can quickly apply with just a few clicks to make your videos pop. Now this tutorial should have given you a good starting point in terms of the techniques and tools used for color grading your video. Now everyone has a different style and post-production process, but I hope I inspired you to continue learning. Now guys, if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below. Good luck with your next video project. Happy filming and I'll see you guys in the next video.