Light, color, and creative adjustments

The Color tab in the inspector holds Sequence's manual grading sliders, grouped into three collapsible sections: Light Adjustments for tone, Color Adjustments for white balance and saturation, and Creative Adjustments for vignette and grain. To open them, select a clip in the timeline and click the Color tab in the inspector. For how to read the inspector, see Inspector Panel.

These sliders adjust the entire clip — there are no shapes or masks to limit them to part of the frame. For the built-in Color Wheels (three-way shadows/midtones/highlights) and LUT controls that share this tab, see Color wheels and Apply LUTs.

Light Adjustments#

Expand Light Adjustments to shape the clip's brightness and tonal range. Every slider centers on 0 and runs from −100 to +100; positive values lift, negative values reduce. Controls appear top to bottom in this order:

Exposure: Sets the overall brightness of the clip by scaling all tones together. Default 0.

Brightness: Raises or lowers the midtone level, a gentler lift than Exposure. Default 0.

Contrast: Widens or narrows the gap between light and dark areas. Positive values deepen shadows and brighten highlights; negative values flatten the image. Default 0.

Highlights: Recovers or boosts the brightest parts of the image without moving the shadows. Pull it down to bring back detail in a blown-out sky. Default 0.

Shadows: Lifts or deepens the darkest parts of the image without moving the highlights. Push it up to open up crushed shadow detail. Default 0.

Whites: Sets the white point — the level at which tones clip to pure white. Default 0.

Blacks: Sets the black point — the level at which tones clip to pure black. Default 0.

Color Adjustments#

Expand Color Adjustments to set white balance and saturation. Temperature, Tint, Saturation, and Vibrance center on 0 and run from −100 to +100. Controls appear top to bottom:

Temperature: Shifts the image between cooler (blue) and warmer (orange). This is Sequence's manual white-balance control — the equivalent of a "Balance Color" step in other editors. Default 0.

Tint: Shifts the image between green and magenta, correcting the color cast Temperature can't. Use Temperature and Tint together to neutralize a color cast by eye. Default 0.

Saturation: Raises or lowers the intensity of all colors evenly. At −100 the image is fully desaturated (black and white). Default 0.

Vibrance: Raises the intensity of the less-saturated colors while protecting already-saturated ones and skin tones. Use it when Saturation is pushing skin or sky too far. Default 0.

Hue: Rotates every color around the color wheel, in degrees from 0 to 360. This is a numeric field rather than a slider. Default 0 (no rotation).

Creative Adjustments#

Expand Creative Adjustments to add a vignette or film-style grain. Each of the two controls reveals its own sub-settings when active.

Vignette: Darkens (negative values) or brightens (positive values) the edges of the frame to draw the eye toward the center. Runs from −100 to +100; default 0 (off). Expand it for:

• Radius: How far the vignette reaches in from the edges toward the center. Range 0–100; default 50.
• Roundness: The shape of the vignette, from a tighter oval toward a wider rectangle. Range 0–200; default 100.
• Softness: How gradually the vignette fades into the image. Higher values give a softer edge. Range 0–100; default 50.

Noise Type: Adds synthetic grain to the clip. Choose one of three options; the default is Off.

• Off: No grain. This is the default.
• Luma: Monochrome grain applied to brightness only.
• RGB: Colored grain applied across the red, green, and blue channels.

When Luma or RGB is selected, two more sliders appear:

• Amount: How much grain is added. Range 0–100; default 20.
• Strength: How coarse or intense each grain particle is. Range 0–100; default 10.