Let's take a quick look at the new Color Atlas tool in the 2.11 update for Color Finale 2 Pro. It’s available now to all users who are within their support period, and it’s free to try for 7 days with the Color Finale 2 Pro trial.

The Color Atlas tool makes it possible to assign colors to tonal values of a video image easily and conveniently. By building up a color palette, you can get some really great results.

You can use it to color grade your footage or get creative with it. It’s very expressive.

To begin using Color Atlas, find it in the layers panel. Add at least two points and start changing the color of one of them. You’ll start to see a split tone effect forming.

At this point if you select a blend mode such as soft light and start to play around with the opacity slider, you can effectively colour grade your footage like this.

Use the HSL controls underneath the color gradient editor to change color. Add more points to develop your palette. If you’ve gone too far, simply right click to delete.

Color Atlas is the perfect tool to create duotone style images and other creative effects.

The left side of the color gradient editor represents the shadows, the right side represents the highlights, with mid-tones in the middle. So when you add a point and select a color, this color is then mapped to the corresponding tonal value in the image. Control the softness of the transition by moving points either closer or further away from each other.

For finer control you can turn on the image preview and use the picker to select the exact value you want to add to the color gradient editor. This preview is also useful because it lets you reference the original image in grayscale at all times.

The tone menu lets you pick what part of the image drives the color mapping. By default, Color Atlas uses a mix of all three RGB channels to figure out brightness, based on how we naturally see light and dark. But if you want a different look, you can choose to base it just on the red, green, or blue channel instead. It’s a simple way to get creative and control how tones are turned into color.

At the bottom, click on the plus icon to save your color palette to use again later.

That’s it for this quick intro to Color Atlas, we hope you have fun using it in your next project.

Try yourself

Interested in trying these features out for yourself? Try a free 7-day trial of Color Finale 2 Pro to see how it can improve your Final Cut Pro workflow!

Color Finale first launched on February 25, 2015. From the start, it introduced a powerful toolset that brought professional color grading to Final Cut Pro—without leaving its familiar interface.

Over the years, we’ve expanded creative possibilities with additional tools for working with raw footage and LUTs, continually refining the Color Finale experience.

Now, a decade later, Color Finale 2 remains an essential plugin for color grading in Final Cut Pro. It redefined the workflow by introducing an intuitive floating panel, allowing users to build an almost limitless number of organized layers.

Both Final Cut Pro and Color Finale have evolved. While Final Cut Pro now offers more native grading tools than ever, our users continue to choose Color Finale 2 Pro for its flexibility, intuitive workflow, and powerful layer-based approach.

We are truly grateful for your unwavering support over the years. Your feedback, enthusiasm, and passion have been instrumental in shaping Color Finale into what it is today. We couldn’t have done it without you, and we’re honored to have you on this journey with us.

Would you like to enter our 10th anniversary giveaway? Watch our YouTube video to learn how to take part.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. What’s a good skin tone?
3. Tools of the trade
4. Scopes
5. Image analysis
6. Primary corrections
7. Six vectors
8. HSL curves
9. Camera matrix
10. Subtractive grading
11. Advanced: using masks

Why does the person above look healthy, and the one below, doesn’t?

Our vision is highly attuned to recognise healthiness in individuals, we've had hundreds of thousands of years of practise. We're really good at it. So seeing even small deviations from that can have a big impact on our enjoyment of a film or video.

We’re going to show you how to colour correct your footage to create natural-looking skin tones using the powerful tools in Color Finale 2 Pro, a colour grading plugin for Final Cut Pro.

Download the free 7 day trial to follow along.

What's a good skin tone?

We can all agree that there probably isn't such a thing as a 'perfect’ skin tone in videography, but we can consider a job well done once skin tones read well within the context of a scene.

The best thing anyone can do to promote this is to get as much as possible done well in-camera, at the time of shooting. That along with primary colour correction where you set appropriate exposure and white balance might just in itself fix the appearance of skin—but of course in practise, in your colour grading role you will inevitably be faced with footage that needs a lot of work.

Tools of the trade

Color Finale 2 Pro has everything you need to help you create high quality results.

So when down in the trenches you’ll be using various tools to inspect, then change the luma, hue, and saturation values of an image. We'll go through several of these shortly.

To evaluate the result, you'll use your eyes as well as the built-in video scopes.

Scopes

Scopes give an additional way to analyse a video image and can be invaluable to getting quality and repeatable results across multiple clips.

The waveform monitor (top left) shows luminosity levels, or tones. It's great for checking black levels and highlights. In RGB parade mode (top right), it's also useful for white balancing since each colour channel is displayed separately. Then it's easy to see what the effects of a parameter change are on a single channel, for example on red.

Now the vectorscope (bottom) is basically a colour wheel that displays the hue and saturation (or chroma). Glancing at it you can easily see if there is any overall colour cast, and how saturated the colours are. The closer to the edge, the more saturated.

Image analysis tools

Pair these scopes with Color Finale's image analysis tools to discretely analyse any part of the image. This is where it gets good for skin tone work. For example, if we isolate the face you can see that the vectorscope only shows those colours that are within the image analysis mask. And same for the luma waveform, but for tone instead of colour.

Select the plugin in the inspector to see on-screen controls

Quick side note. You must always have the plugin selected in the inspector to see Color Finale's on-screen controls and graphics, like these image analysis tools. This is how modern Final Cut Pro interacts with all plugins.

Examples

To keep focus on skin tones the following example material has already been brought into the Rec.709 video colour space. This gives us a working tonal range, or contrast.

Setting the exposure and white balance: primary corrections

So let's set the exposure and white balance first. Under soft sunlight, ideal skin tone falls between 40 and 70 IRE.

Turn on image analysis. Use the exposure parameter to adjust to somewhere within this range.

Next, white balance. Keep the waveform scope open, but change it to RGB parade. Use the temperature and tint parameters, or pick a neutral grey (if there is one) for auto white balance.

Now, the image might look balanced, and if the skin tone looks correct then fantastic!

But chances are the overall image exposure and white balance may look good, but something is off about the skin. It's not as full of life as we'd want it to be. So we'll need to target the skin and work from there. Here's what we can do about that. Time for secondary corrections.

Six Vectors

Six Vectors exposes hue, saturation, and luminosity parameters for six colours - red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, and yellow. That's the primary and secondary colours—and they are actually marked as targets on the vectorscope. There is a one-to-one connection.

Human skin is predominantly in the reds and yellow no matter the talent's complexion, so let’s adjust these two colours. Because this task is generally hugely important, there's a predefined 'skin tone' line that you can show on the vectorscope. So while we have the image analysis mask turned on it's just a matter of intuitively matching what's displayed on the vectorscope with the line.

Quick and effective!

HSL Curves

You can also use the HSL curves tool to target and modify skin tones. Keep the vectorscope open.

• Use the Hue vs Hue tab to shift skin tone towards red or magenta.

Command click on the line to add points along the curve. However, you might find this more useful: sample the middle-tone with the colour picker. You’ll get an automatic set of modifiable control points to work with.

• Use Hue vs Sat to adjust saturation.

But this is a very precise tool, watch out for artefacts as a result of big adjustments. For example, banding between close colours.

For convenience, you might find that Six Vectors works best for 90% of the tasks, and you can supplement that with an HSL curves layer for the fine-tuning at the end.

Camera Matrix

Camera Matrix is designed for fine independent adjustments to the hue and saturation of the red, green, and blue channels. This functionality enables precise control over primary colour components, making it useful for a wide range of colour correction tasks, such as skin tone adjustments. It lets you modify primary colours without affecting the overall white balance, which is essential for fine-tuning colours without disrupting the entire image. Simply adjust the red channel's hue and saturation sliders until the colour aligns with the skin tone line.

Subtractive grading

In one of the latest updates to Color Finale 2 Pro we introduced exciting new film emulation tools, including halation and bloom. But for now, let’s focus on the Subtractive Grading tool.

You don’t have to be doing film emulation to use subtractive grading. It’s just one of the features available to you and happens to be based on a traditional analogue method.

It can be incredibly helpful for adjusting skin tones. By working on Magenta and Yellow, you can achieve a clean, accurate skin tone with minimal effort.

Masking: advanced skin tone isolation

The examples we’ve covered so far were relatively straightforward, but what if the corrections for the skin tone affect the background as well? For example, if on the rare occasion your character and the set share a similar tint, all adjustments to the skin will clearly affect the colours of the set in the same way.

In such cases, masks such as the AI Person Mask are likely to be your best friend. They let you isolate the talent, so you can adjust the skin tones without impacting the rest of the image.

Simply apply the person mask to a layer group, then move or add your corrections inside. Combine Person Mask with an HSL mask to also exclude clothing and accessories.

Artistic vs. Technical Accuracy: Pushing Skin Tones to the Limit

The Matrix is a good example of pushing colours into the greens

Sometimes, skin tones don’t need to be technically perfect. Skin tone correction is part of color correction, ensuring consistency and realism. But color grading is an artistic choice that sets the mood and style of a project. The skin tone line is a suggestion not a rule. Not everyone is standing under soft sunlight all the time. Color grading isn’t just about correction — it’s about storytelling.

Final Thoughts

We hope this helped you better understand how to achieve great-looking skin tones. This article is the text version of our video on skin tones. Consider subscribing to our YouTube channel for more tutorials about Color Finale 2 Pro and our other products. Thanks for reading!

Reference

Apple — Displaying Final Cut Pro Scopes

In this final part of our three-part series on the new film emulation tools in Color Finale 2 Pro, we’ll be discussing Film Bloom—a soft, glowing effect that adds a cinematic quality to your footage. If you haven’t read or watched the earlier parts on subtractive grading and halation, be sure to check them out.

Get the Color Finale 2 Pro trial to follow along.

What is Film bloom?

Film bloom is a visual effect that occurs when light scatters beyond its natural boundaries, creating a soft glow around bright areas. It’s a common feature in older film stocks and is often used to give digital footage a dreamy, vintage feel. Unlike halation, which creates a sharp, red halo around highlights, bloom spreads light across the entire image, softening the contrast and giving it an ethereal quality.

Why Use It?

Bloom helps reduce the harshness of digital video, especially in high-contrast scenes. It creates a gentle diffusion of light, reminiscent of older films shot with soft lenses or on vintage film stocks. By adding bloom, you can evoke a romantic, nostalgic mood or give your footage that classic Hollywood glow.

Example 1

Let’s start with a classic example: a sunset scene where light is streaming through trees. With bloom, you’ll see how the sun’s glow expands, softening the edges and making the light look diffused and atmospheric, rather than harsh and direct.

Bloom tool breakdown

The Film Bloom Tool in Color Finale 2 Pro gives you three key controls to shape the bloom effect and create the soft, glowing highlights that define a cinematic look:

• Sensitivity: This controls how sensitive the bloom effect is to the brightness of your image. Lowering the sensitivity will restrict bloom to only the brightest areas, while increasing it allows the bloom to affect more of the image, including midtones and softer highlights.

• Diffusion: Diffusion controls how far the bloom spreads from its source. A higher diffusion value will create a larger, more ethereal glow, softening the overall look of your footage. Lower diffusion keeps the bloom more contained and subtle.

• Intensity: Intensity adjusts the strength of the bloom effect. A higher intensity amplifies the bloom, making it more pronounced, while a lower intensity keeps the glow soft and understated. This control is useful for balancing the bloom to match the tone and mood of your scene.

Example 2

Let’s take a look at another example—a city street at night, illuminated by neon lights. By increasing the bloom radius and applying a soft pink tint, you can make the neon signs glow more warmly, giving the entire scene a filmic, nostalgic feel.

Conclusion

Film bloom is perfect for adding that final touch of cinematic glow to your footage, giving it a soft, natural diffusion that feels true to analogue film. Combine it with subtractive grading and halation, and you’ll have all the tools needed to create an authentic film look in Color Finale 2 Pro!

When it was first released, Color Finale filled a critical element missing in Final Cut Pro — that of professional color grading features.

We want to thank our users for choosing Color Finale 2 Pro and our other products like LUT Manager and Transcoder 2 for their video projects in 2024.

Over the past year, we’ve been thrilled to see the positive response as we’ve switched to annual updates for our software products. This change means we can work on more frequent, powerful improvements—giving you the tools you need to stay ahead in your post-production and colour grading workflow.

Color Finale 2 Pro continues to stand apart from the built-in color grading tools in Final Cut Pro. Recent updates, including the AI Person Mask for quick and precise masks, and expanded Film Emulation tools further cement it as a one-stop shop for colour grading in Final Cut Pro. Now that Apple have fully transitioned to FxPlug 4, plugins have reliable performance again, including Color Finale 2.

Transcoder 2, our app for preparing raw media for editing, also saw major improvements. With direct N-RAW and BRAW support on the Final Cut Pro timeline, a standalone mode, and the ability to save to anywhere on disk, transcoding is now faster and more flexible than ever. No more back-and-forth between apps—the logistics of shooting in raw have been simplified.

With the recently debuted 2-in-1 LUTs, you can now apply a LUT to manufacturer-specific log footage, converting it to Rec.709, while in the same step adding a color grade. It's a huge time-saver for any editor or creator.

We’re proud of the progress we’ve made, and 2025 is already looking exciting. Keep your feedback coming—we’re listening. From all of us at Color Finale, happy new year!

Introduction

Welcome back! In this second part of our series on the new film emulation tools in Color Finale 2 Pro, we’ll focus on Film Halation. This is another exciting feature that came as part of the 2.10 update, designed to give your digital footage the warmth of organic and subtle imperfections of film. If you missed our first video on subtractive grading, be sure to check that out. Try everything for yourself with a free 7-day trial. All links in the description.

What is Film Halation?

Halation is an optical phenomenon found in traditional film stock. It occurs when light scatters inside the film emulsion and creates a glowing halo effect around bright highlights, particularly in high-contrast scenes. In real film, halation often appears as a reddish glow around overexposed areas, caused by the light reflecting off of the film base. This natural imperfection is something that many filmmakers seek to replicate digitally to evoke the look and feel of real film.

Why Use It?

Film halation adds a subtle, yet critical, layer of realism to digital video by mimicking how light interacts with film stock. Without it, digital footage can sometimes feel too clean or clinical. Halation softens hard edges and adds warmth, often giving your footage that authentic, nostalgic film look.

Example 1

Let’s look at a scene with strong bright lights, such as a car’s headlights at night. By applying film halation, you’ll see a slight red halo appear around the most intense highlights, just as it would look if shot on film.

Halation Tool Breakdown

Scatter: Controls how much light spreads beyond the brightest areas of the image. Increasing scatter will create a more pronounced halo effect, making the light diffuse more naturally across surrounding areas. (On screen: Scatter increases the spread of halation.)

In traditional film, light passes through multiple layers of emulsion, each containing different colored dyes. When a bright highlight hits the film, some of the light scatters and reflects off the film base, creating a halo effect known as halation. This effect starts with a red glow because red light scatters the most. However, as the light penetrates deeper into the film, it can also reach the green dye layer, which shifts the halation glow from red to yellow, depending on the intensity of the light.

The Dye Transmission allows you to simulate this process. By increasing dye transmission, you’re essentially letting more light reach the green dye layer, causing the halation to transition from a red hue into a warmer, yellow glow. This creates a more complex and natural halation effect, mimicking how real film stock behaves under intense lighting conditions.

In simpler terms, the Dye Transmission control paints the halation with additional colors, moving it from the initial red into warmer tones, just like how light spreads across different dye layers in traditional film. This gives you greater flexibility in how the halation appears, allowing you to achieve a richer, more film-like aesthetic.

Boost: Boost increases the overall intensity of the halation effect, making it more prominent. This is useful if the highlights in your scene aren’t creating enough halation on their own, and you want to amplify the effect. (On screen: Boost controls the intensity of the halation.)

By adjusting these settings, you can achieve anything from a subtle halation effect to a more exaggerated, stylistic look, depending on the mood and tone you want to create.

Example 2

Here’s another example, where we have a backlit subject in direct sunlight. Increasing the halation strength and spread softens the harsh contrast and gives the image a more dreamy, filmic quality.

Halation vs Digital Bloom

You might be wondering: how is halation different from digital bloom? While both effects deal with highlights, they work very differently. Bloom creates a soft, diffused glow that affects the entire image, whereas halation is much more subtle and specific to film stock, affecting only the highlights and producing that characteristic red fringe.

Conclusion

Film halation brings an authentic and organic touch to your footage, letting you emulate the natural imperfections of traditional film. Combine it with subtractive grading for a full cinematic experience. Be sure to subscribe to catch our next video, where we’ll take a closer look at film bloom, another essential tool for adding a soft, vintage feel to your images.

Introduction

Subtractive Grading is just one of the new film emulation tools in the 2.10 update for Color Finale 2 Pro. It’s a colour grading technique that's about controlling colours in an image by removing or reducing colour components. The basic idea is that by taking away one or more of the primary colour components (red, green, or blue), you can bring out complementary colours.

For example, reducing red makes the image look more cyan because cyan is the opposite of red on the colour wheel.

Complementary Colours:

• Red <-> cyan
• Green <-> magenta
• Blue <-> yellow

So when you subtract a primary colour, its opposite colour shows up more strongly.

Why use it? Subtractive colour grading gives you precise control over the mood, style, and feel of a video. You can create cooler or warmer looks, balance skin tones, or highlight specific visual elements by subtly reducing certain colour channels.

Example 1

Here's a practical example. Suppose you're working on a scene with a lot of green foliage, but you want to make it as warm and natural as possible. By reducing the green channel slightly, the reds and yellows become more prominent, giving the scene this warmer look.

By explaining it this way, you can start experimenting with subtractive colour grading using simple tools and begin to understand how removing colours affects the image.

Subtractive Grading Tool

In the Subtractive Grading tool, we use subtractive primaries: cyan, magenta, and yellow. So when you increase or decrease these colours, you’re effectively ‘subtracting’ their corresponding additive primaries. Have a look at the 2:20 mark in the video embedded above for a clear visualisation of these parameters.

• Cyan slider: Increasing cyan reduces the red in the image, making it have a cooler colour temperature and emphasising blues and greens. And vice versa, increasing the red tones if we remove cyan, adding warmth.

• Magenta slider: Increasing magenta reduces green, shifting the image towards purple and red hues. Decreasing magenta increases green, which can add vibrancy to foliage or natural scenes.

• Yellow slider: Increasing yellow reduces blue, adding warmth and making the image more yellow and red. Decreasing yellow will create a cooler effect.

Example 2

In this example we feel that the scene is too warm (too much red and yellow), so we increase the cyan and magenta slightly to reduce the red and green components, giving the image a more neutral look.

Subtractive Grading vs Colour Wheels

How can subtractive grading help you?

Traditional telecine colour correction is based on additive RGB controls. You increase or decrease the red, green, and blue channels directly to alter the colour balance. This method is often linear and intuitive but may lack the subtlety needed in complex scenes.

Subtractive grading on the other hand provides more nuanced control over colour shifts, especially in skin tones and highlights where balancing between warm and cool tones is crucial. You don't have to work all three RGB channels to get the right balance, which can often result in an over-corrected, artificial look.

1. It's an easier way to fine-tune skin tones without introducing unwanted colour shifts. For example, slightly reducing magenta will bring out more natural greens without affecting the blues and reds as strongly.

2. Remove a dominant colour like cyan to enhance the warmth and depth of an image, without skewing the overall balance too heavily in any one direction. This makes it more suited for achieving subtle, film-like colour tones, particularly in highlights and shadows.

3. In scenes with mixed lighting (for example tungsten and daylight), it can be difficult to manage the competing colour temperatures using additive controls, as adding or removing blue, red, or green will affect the entire image uniformly. Subtractive grading allows for more selective adjustments. For example, you can reduce yellow to handle warm tungsten lights without significantly impacting the daylight regions. This is also useful for night scenes, or in general anywhere you want to preserve certain lighting elements while neutralising others.

Conclusion

Subtractive grading offers a level of precision and control that’s ideal for achieving natural, film-like results. It’s especially good for handling skin tones, mixed lighting environments, and complex colour grading scenarios where subtlety is key. Combined with the other film emulation tools such as grain, bloom, halation, and vignette, you can create some truly analogue looks. Try for yourself with a free 7-day trial. Thanks for reading!

Introduction

A lot of editors love Final Cut Pro for things like the magnetic timeline, but wouldn’t it be great if it came with more options for working with the latest and greatest video formats? That's what we thought when developing Color Finale Transcoder 2. Shoot B-RAW, N-RAW, and other raw video formats while continuing to edit in a familiar interface.

And as you’ll find out, in some crucial cases you won’t even need to transcode.

Workflow

Transcoder 2 is a macOS app that once installed lives in the Applications folder as you'd expect. You can open it from there to use standalone, but inside Final Cut Pro you'll see that it also shows up as a workflow extension. Whichever way you open it, you’ll have the same window and user interface.

Let's say you've filmed some N-RAW footage. You've already mounted the card on your Mac, and want to start cutting it as quickly as possible. You’ll see all your internal and mounted drives in the left panel, and once selected the relevant files pop up in the media browser underneath the viewer.

Once you've found the clips you want to use, you can trim them using the I and O keys, or by dragging the in and out points.

Sometimes the raw clip might need some exposure and colour temperature adjustments. On the right hand side panel you’ll find raw parameter controls, and scopes to help you evaluate any changes you make. Metadata of clips is preserved too. You can access it by changing the tab from adjustments to the metadata view above the scopes. Adjustments made in this panel define the final look of the transcoded clip.

You will also see controls and options at the top of the viewer. These include a LUT picker that lets you put a LUT over a clip and an option to de-squeeze anamorphic footage. Note that these are the viewer’s settings, and they're not saved with the exported video.

Once you’ve selected, trimmed, and prepared your raw clips, it’s time to save them to a location. At the bottom, below the file browser, you can select which FCP library you want to put them into.

If you would like to save them outside of FCP, right click on the file and select 'Queue for Transcoding to...' to save to any destination, such as an external drive. The transcoding process is added to the queue on the left of the window, and once finished you can also import these files into Final Cut Pro just by dragging and dropping from the queue into the Library or directly onto the open timeline.

Using Original Media

Alongside the Library import options at the bottom of the Transcoder 2 window there is an option to import original media. Turn this on and you don't even need to transcode N-RAW and B-RAW clips! Transcoder 2 comes with two plugins for the respective formats that are added automatically during import. They include controls over several parameters like color temperature and exposure.

With this original media option is turned on, it's the original raw files that are being used, so they have to be available at all times while you’re editing — that means if you have the files stored on an external drive, make sure to keep it mounted.

That's it. The next step is to edit and colour grade!

If you’re not a Final Cut Pro user or just want to quickly get a big raw file into a state that you can share or use in other editors, 'Queue for Transcoding to...' is what you want.

Image Sequences

Color Finale Transcoder 2 can also combine raw stills sequences into a video. For example, you can shoot a time-lapse and then save it as a .mov file.

Simply browse to the folder where the images are located, and if they are in sequence, they will automatically show up under one file name, just the same as with a raw video file. You can then select the framerate, adjust raw parameters such as exposure, white balance and contrast, and even set the start and end points as before. Finally, export using 'Queue for Transcoding to...'

Here are some examples of common file name patterns that will be picked up by Transcoder 2 and collapsed into one file in the browser:

• example.####.jpg
• example.1.jpg
• example.0001.jpg
• @.jpg
• name####.jpg
• name0001.jpg

Conclusion

Now you know how easy it is to work with N-RAW, B-RAW, and other raw video formats in Final Cut Pro using Color Finale Transcoder 2. You can try free for 7 days or buy Transcoder 2 at our web store.

There is always a strong interest in recreating the analogue film look with digital camera footage. In version 2.10 of Color Finale 2 Pro, we're introducing our approach to tools and workflows to achieve the film look, the Color Finale way—enabling you to create a professional result with minimal effort. Our intuitive controls make it simple to create stunning, film-like images.

Color Finale 2 Pro already comes with a film grain tool known for its quality. With the latest update we’re significantly expanding the range of film emulation tools in Color Finale 2 Pro, allowing you to achieve looks like this:

From the inspector, mix and match or use the full complement of tools to get the most out of the film emulation workflow.

Save all these parameters as presets, and now you can use your own film look across a variety of projects.

We believe this update will appeal to many videographers and creators. To get these new features, make sure you’re updated to version 2.10 or newer of the plugin by Checking for Updates in the Color Finale app, or if you don't have Color Finale 2 Pro, you can try it for free with a 7-day trial. Renew your update and support period. We hope you enjoy these new features!

Introduction

With the latest string of updates (2.8 and 2.9), you can now apply Color Finale 2 Pro’s powerful and flexible shape masks, complete with area tracking, to tasks beyond colour grading—such as building complex image compositions directly within the Final Cut timeline.

Let's take a closer look at what’s possible.

Example 1

In our first example, we're going to remove the red and blue glow from the skin.

To do this, we're going with the inside/outside mask technique. The first step is to create a group and add a mask to it. Creating a group from the get-go keeps things conveniently organised and means we only have to add a mask once instead of repeatedly applying it to every layer.

Both the face and the background have blue in them. At this point our new AI Person Mask comes in handy to separate a subject from the background. Apply it and change its display mode to “Mask input + mask” to see the result.

Notice the options that help refine the mask, for instance to capture all the hair and to blur the edges.

Once we’re satisfied with the interim result, we can start to work inside the mask to correct the skin tone. Color Finale 2 Pro offers a lot of tools to work with skin tones.

We use the Shuffle Tool’s channel mixer with the new normaliser mode enabled to dial in a more natural skin tone, and apply an HSL mask to the group. This HSL mask is set so that only the skin tones are affected by the previous step, but at the moment it spans the entire image and captures more than the skin. By setting it to “intersect”, we make sure that it’s only applied to the areas covered by the Person Mask.

With the two masks added to the group, the Person Mask and the HSL Mask set to intersect with the Person Mask, we can add as many layers as we need (for example a Color Wheels layer) and changes made with them will only affect the skin.

Now placing a layer such as Six Vectors above our group affects the image globally, as you would expect.

We can make the talent pop out even more by adding another Six Vectors tool inside the group and selecting “Invert Parent Mask” before making the necessary changes. Now everything outside of the mask is targeted. Handy!

The final result:

Example 2

Let's explore another new option for masks, which is the ability to cut them out and publish them to the timeline. Added in version 2.9 of Color Finale 2 Pro. It lets you publish any mask that's included in the masks menu.

For example, let's add a square mask to the following clip:

“Publish Mask” in the layers panel. Then, go to the inspector, find Mask Output, and select “Cutout.” Now the square mask is separated from the footage.

But one of the most interesting results you can achieve are by cutting out a Person mask since you avoid manually rotoscoping and tracking your subject.

Here is a practical example of mask publishing. Besides just cutting out a character from the scene, a great use of this feature is to place text such as movie titles or a graphic behind a character. First, duplicate the clip on the timeline and place it above by holding “Option” and dragging to create a copy.

Then, apply Color Finale 2 Pro to the top clip and follow the same steps: create a group, add and refine a Person Mask, select “Publish” and then “Cut Out” in the inspector panel. Now place your text in-between the two clips. Easy!

Here is another tip on how you can use this feature. For example, let’s apply the “Bad TV” effect, which comes with Final Cut Pro natively. You can apply it to the character or the background. Apply any other effects to achieve interesting results.

You can also duplicate the layer with a cut out mask multiple times to clone the character. For example, you can offset these layers by keyframing in the inspector panel.

Try yourself

Interested in trying these features out for yourself? Try a free 7-day trial of Color Finale 2 Pro to see how it can improve your Final Cut Pro workflow!