The teal and orange look has been one of the most popular looks used in Hollywood. This is because teal and orange are complementary colors, which means they lie at the opposite end of the color wheel. The teal can be created by mixing blue into a green base. Blue evokes feelings of tranquility and calm while green evokes feelings of balance and peace. Teal can also elicit feelings of trustworthiness and reliability. Orange on the other hand is considered an energetic color. Orange calls to mind feelings of excitement, enthusiasm, and warmth.
The teal and orange look in a premiere pro is achieved by pushing blues or teals into the shadows and orange or yellow into the highlights, creating an overall visual contrast. In this blog we are going to take a look at how to achieve the teal and orange look in premiere pro – WITHOUT LUTS!
Teal and Orange tone in Scary Stories to tell in Dark, 2019
Why is “Teal and Orange” popular?
The first and foremost reason that makes this precise color combination so appealing to both the audience and the filmmakers is that the orange and teal look creates a color contrast and emphasizes the skin tones. Skin tones fall somewhere in the orange color spectrum. By making them stand out against teal shadows, you can achieve a vibrant scene and a pretty darn complementary palette in a frame. It makes the subject ‘pop out’ and the audience finds it easier to focus on it.
Another reason for the popularity of the teal and orange look is because it creates visual depth in a film. Instead of using sharp foregrounds and blurry backgrounds for creating depth in footage, the complementary combination of teal and orange can be used to achieve the same. Be it action movies (as explosions are mostly orange) or replication of the golden hour (warm, golden sunlight against a blue sky), the teal and orange look is best suited for all.
Orange skin-tones in contrast with the teal background, help bring the subject in focus. Still from “Late August, Early September”, 1998
How did Teal and orange become a trend?
With the Coen Brothers’ heavy use of sepia tones in their 2000 film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, digital color-grading became trendy and the practice of tweaking the palette of films in post production has exploded. Ever since, the teal and orange look has been adopted by many blockbuster films like Transformers, Wolfman, Iron Man 2, Total Recall and Blade Runner.
Other such films include Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), The Imitation Game (2014), Into The Woods (2014), Mad Max (2015) and The Avengers. In fact, almost every single Michael Bay film used teal and orange color palette. Chloe (2010) directed by Atom Egoyan starring Julliane Moore was all about teal and orange look.
Orange-teal Palette in Sam Kolder’s “A Reminder To Myself” Video
Even Youtubers like Sam Kolder like to use this color scheme in their videos. TV Trope’s entry on teal and orange color schemes quotes that “Unlike other pairs of complementary colors, fiery orange and cool blue are strongly associated with opposing concepts – fire and ice, earth and sky, land and sea, day and night, invested humanism vs. elegant indifference, good old fashioned explosions vs. futuristic science stuff.” It seems plausible that teal and orange has now reached the level of “convention”. For better or for worse, coloring your film this way makes it really look like a movie.
Having talked about the significance of the teal and orange look and its influence in the film industry, let’s now contemplate the steps by means of which we can achieve this color palette in a premiere pro without using any LUT.
Going without a LUT & How to save grading time?
Before moving ahead we would like to throw some light at one of the most common issues that filmmakers run into while creating cinema looks. Creating something from scratch needs a ton of time and effort. To save you from a ton of time we came up with the Idea of Power Curves. Power Curves are a set of 12 Academy-inspired Color Grades, masterfully recreated using native tools of popular editing platforms: Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Davinci Resolve. Bear in mind that Power Curves – ARE NOT LUTS! You can check them out here.
Image Graded using Orion Power Curve
Moving ahead with our tutorial, We will use the following image and try to shift its colors gradually into the teal and orange look by using the subsequent steps.
Still from our subject footage
Step 1
Go to the color wheel and shift the midtones to teal blue. Find out the right spot and push the highlights towards a yellow tone (we can push it towards orange or green as well). Also, if you want the highlights to look more saturated, push them more than mid tones.
Step 2
In the shadows wheel, increase the reds, just a slight touch, so you can cancel out to the access blue in the shadows. To fix the areas in the midtones region that are looking blue rather than teal, what you are gonna do is- head to the curves, the blue curve, and pull down the midtones from here. You have your teal color now.
Still from our footage after above steps
Step 3
For orange tint, focus on the warm curtain area of the footage. Drop in another lumetri panel. Rename it to orange. Place it above the grade lumetri panel and turn off the grade panel so that you can pick the actual color with the color picker.
Step 4
In the curves, Hue vs. Saturation, pick the warm color in the curtain. To have more range of colors, we would suggest that you prefer to reset these points manually. Punch up the orange. You can see the effect on the curtains. Turn on the grade Lumetri panel.
Step 5
Do the same with Hue vs. Hue. Select the corresponding points. Punch up the orange in the hue. Push the hue on the curve to Red a little
Final result
Video Tutorial
That’s how you achieve a teal and orange look inside Premiere Pro – Without using LUTs. In case you want to check out our video tutorial on the same, here it is:
Video Tutorial – Teal and Orange, without LUTs
Verdict
We’re glad we were able to help you reach a teal and orange look inside Premiere Pro, without any hassle. While a similar grade could be created using LUTs, a lot of LUTs out there offer cheap color conversion, which is mostly not upto mark to recreate this look. That’s why we recommend investing in Premium LUTs that offer you a comprehensive variety, without compromising on quality and sophistication needed when working with colors. You can check out our LUT bundle, which lives up to this motto.
If you want to take your Color Grades a step further, you can gladly check out our set of 12 Academy Inspired Power Curves. The ultimate utility lies in our Masterfully Crafted Grades. Multiple minor adjustments, added sequentially to render an overall Powerful and Intelligent Color Grade. Giving ultimate flexibility to the end-user and saving hours of post-production time, no matter if it’s a commercial film or a feature-length film!
Power Curves – Trailer
Features
- 12 X High Color Fidelity Color Grades
- Cross Platform Compatibility
- Academy Inspired Color Palettes
- Fully Customizable
- Drag and Drop
- License Included
- Instant Download
$74
Usual Price: $99
