YouTube Color Grading Tutorials: Are They Reliable?

So, you’d like to know whether the color correction and color grading tutorials that you find on YouTube are a good way to learn new things and train to be a professional digital colorist?

Well, you’re in the right place!

In this article, I’ll talk you through whether or not it’s a good idea to learn your craft by means of online color grading tutorials.

Shall we start with the good news? OK, great.

PROS:

1. There’s so much information!

   Up until a few years ago, it was extremely difficult to find information about color correction and color grading. 

   To get really useful information, it used to be that you had to get yourself an internship in a video post-production company and hope that you would find a mentor who was willing to share his knowledge with you.

2. They give you a direction

   Tutorials are a great way of figuring out whether being a colorist is your true calling.

3. They’re free!

   And you don’t even have to read a thousand page textbook or go on a course. You can access hundreds of videos whenever you want from your sofa at home, without making any effort.

   Here’s what I think about color grading courses.

CONS:

1. Wrong information!!!

   Even if information’s easier to find now than it was before, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s accurate information. 90% of the color correction/color grading tutorials that I’ve come across unfortunately contain incorrect information.

   DaVinci Resolve is practically free.

   
   This means that, as absurd as it may seem, these days pretty much anyone can download DaVinci Resolve, play about with the software, convince themselves that they’ve learned something and then be arrogant enough to make a tutorial about it a few days later.

   P.S. Have you noticed how many people have added “/Colorist” to their bio just because they’ve downloaded the free version of DaVinci Resolve and they’re convinced that they’ve learned something from YouTube tutorials?

   In reality, becoming a professional colorist requires years and years of hard work, study and sacrifice.

2. They’re not realistic

   Color grading tutorials with DaVinci Resolve consist of taking a single shot and spending literally half an hour making it as beautiful as possible.

   A brand new student watching color correction/color grading tutorials might think that spending half an hour on a single shot is normal practice.

   Let me clear this one up for you: this would NEVER happen.

   Why not?

   When the client is sitting there behind you and is paying for your time, you work so fast that your brain, your hands and your eyes are literally burning.

   Now, do you understand why watching a tutorial in which you might learn how to isolate an object using a 40 point mask is not only inaccurate, but actually ridiculous?

   In reality, unless you are working on a rotoscoping project, if your mask has more than 6-8 points, you’re doing something wrong.

   There’s definitely a simpler way to achieve the same result with far less effort.

   Professional colorists know this only too well…

Conclusion

I hope that this article has helped to give you a better idea of what you can really expect from most of the tutorials that you can find on Youtube about color grading with DaVinci Resolve.

Remember these 3 points:

• Take online color tutorials for what they are: an excellent way of figuring out whether being a colorist is really your true calling.

• Try to get a few useful points out of them.

• Be patient, becoming a professional requires years of study, sacrifice and hard work. Ain’t nothing in this world for free.

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