darken highlights in a dark scene

Hi David,

You could do it in Premiere, but After Effects is so much better at it.

The main advantage is you can add feathering to a mask, making you correction a lot less obvious.

It's also a lot easier to keyframe if there is motion in the shot.

As for the method, as you said, duplicate layer, mask area, and use the levels filter.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco - Bay Area

It'll be worth it.

You'll see the mask tool as a pen icon.

Draw over your duplicated layer of footage, and look for feathering under mask in your top layer.

Then drag the level filter in your top layer and you should get what you need.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco - Bay Area

You can actually mark in and out point just like Premiere before you bring the clips to your comp.

The easiest however is to do the edit in Premiere, right click on the clip and choose replace with After Effect Comp. That will create an After Effects Comp with the right settings and the length of the clip in your timeline.

The best part is that it becomes a dynamic clip, so you don't have to render in After Effect to see the changes in Premiere. (although you will probably have to render in Premere to see real time).

If you are doing a lot of these, I would actually advise rendering a file out of After Effects, since many dynamic links can really slow things down.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco - Bay Area