Shotcut tutorial · companion page
A flat grey sky turns blue with one filter, two colour stops and one dropdown. There is no mask on the horizon, no sky photograph, and nothing tracked — the Gradient filter paints a blue-to-white ramp over the frame and Multiply lets the bright sky soak up the colour while the dark trees and water shrug it off.
Reading in another language? Use the translate picker in the header, or your browser’s own translate command — the Shotcut filter, control and value names are marked to stay in English so they still match what is on your screen.
Nothing here is cut out, keyed or tracked. The Gradient filter draws a two-stop linear ramp across the frame; the blend mode decides how that ramp meets the footage. Understanding those two sentences is what lets you adapt this to any colour swap, not just skies.
The filter generates its own image: a straight ramp from Color #1 to Color #2. There is no external sky file, no stock plate, nothing to source. The only assets in the whole project are the footage clip and, in the second method, a plain white Color clip.
On Over the ramp is painted on top and the footage vanishes. On Multiply each ramp pixel is multiplied into the pixel underneath: white leaves it exactly as it was, blue darkens and tints it. A blown-out sky is nearly white, so it takes almost all the colour; dark trees and water are already near zero and barely move. That is the horizon “mask” — it is the footage’s own luminance doing the work, which is why no mask is needed.
Left alone, the ramp runs the full frame height and the blue bleeds down into the river. Dragging the on-screen handle shortens the Size height — from 1080 to 493 in the first method — so the ramp finishes at the treeline and the water is left alone.
Method one puts the filter straight on the footage. Method two puts it on a white Color clip on its own track and sets that track’s blend mode to Multiply instead. Same result, but the second route adds an Opacity dial and leaves the footage clip with an empty filter list.
[ Typically, it would be best for a sky replacement or some sort of way to switch one color to another ]
Ben Espanto · 1:14
The video carries five chapter marks — Intro, Overview, Version, Tutorial and Alternative Method — and the last of them runs for eight and a half minutes. Those five are labelled as chapters below; every other card is marked derived, meaning its start was read off the frames rather than taken from Ben’s own marks. Click any screencap or timestamp to play that section from its exact second, right here in the card.
“Luckily, I stumbled on Shotcut, a free open source video editing program that can do many of the tricks you can do on more enterprise video editors like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve, but with a much simpler and leaner interface.”
No editing interface on screen at all here — this is the shotcut.org download page, part of the standing series intro that opens every one of Ben’s tutorials. Nothing in this chapter is a step.
“I’m going to show you two different methods. First, I’m going to show you what I believe is the standard method. The second method is kind of a hack that I’ve played around with.”
The starting footage: a river at dawn under a flat, blown-out grey sky. This is the whole problem the tutorial solves, and it is the frame every later screencap should be compared against.
“Before I get started, I want to make sure that you are using the same version as I am, and that is Shotcut version 20.07.11.”
The About Shotcut dialog, opened at 2:10, reads Shotcut version 20.07.11 — copyright 2011-2020 Meltytech, LLC. Every field name and every default on this page belongs to that build.
“I’m going to isolate, say, a five second section of this so that we can see a change between a gray sky and a blue sky. So I’m going to cut a five second snippet, and this area here is what we’re going to be focusing on.”
The clip is dragged onto V1 and cut into three segments so that one stretch of 00:00:05:00 can carry the filter on its own — the red-outlined one, ringed here by Ben’s own on-screen highlight. That is why the sky changes part-way through playback and then changes back: the before and the after sit in a single shot.
“And so now that that’s been cut, let’s launch the filter interface, and we’re going to search for gradient.”
Typing gradient into the filter search returns exactly one result, Gradient. The moment it is added the preview fills with a white-to-black ramp: Type Linear, Offset 0.0 %, Position 960, 0, Size 19 x 1080, Blend mode Over.
“So this area here that is currently assigned white in this section right here, I want to turn that to, let’s say, this color blue right there.”
Clicking a handle on the Colors bar opens a dialog titled Color #1 or Color #2. Color #1 (the top of the ramp) goes to #0000ff at 4:24; Color #2 (the bottom) goes from #000000 to #ffffff at 4:38. Alpha channel stays at 255 on both.
“When you first launch the filter, it defaults to the blend mode overlay or over. All you have to do is move it down to multiply, and all of a sudden it becomes transparent, and you can see the blue overlaid on top of the original video.”
This one dropdown is the whole trick. On Over the ramp is painted on top and the footage is gone. On Multiply every pixel of the ramp is multiplied into the pixel beneath it: white leaves the footage untouched, blue tints it. The bright sky takes almost all of the colour; the dark trees and water barely move.
“There are actually little handles here at the end of this. And so I’m just going to click and I’m just going to drag it. And so I’m going to say I want it to start the blend from right there.”
Dragging the on-screen handle rewrites Size. The height drops from 1080 — the full frame — to 493 at 5:47, so the ramp finishes at the treeline instead of bleeding into the river. The width moves from 19 to 26 at the same time and does nothing visible.
“Now, if this sky here looks a little too saturated and look a little too artificial, all you have to do is go back into this color picker.”
The same Color #1 dialog, reopened at 6:42. Pure #0000ff reads as poster paint; the value committed at 7:16 is #3cb4ff — Hue 203, Sat 195, Val 255, Alpha channel 255. That is the finished first-method colour.
“Now, as I mentioned, I have a second method, which I believe is actually a better method. Because right now, really the only way you can control the color is to go over here to this color area here.”
What the first method delivers. It works, and for a one-off shot it is the shorter road. Its limit is that the only dial you have is the colour itself — there is no strength control, and the footage clip now carries a filter you have to remember about later.
“What I want to do is I want to create a track here by right clicking the V1 track. I want to insert another track. And so what I’m going to do is I’m going to apply all the filters on this separate track so that I can leave this clip alone.”
Right-clicking the V1 track head opens the track menu: Add Audio Track Ctrl+U, Add Video Track Ctrl+I, Insert Track Ctrl+Alt+I, Remove Track Ctrl+Alt+U. Insert Track is the one highlighted. This is the Adobe Premiere adjustment-layer idea, done with a track.
“I’m going to go to this section called open other right there. When you click it, I’m going to choose color. And in this one, I’m going to choose the color white and click OK.”
The Select Color dialog for a generated Color clip, set to #ffffff with Alpha channel 255. Its Properties panel then shows the value in Shotcut’s alpha-first notation, #FFFFFFFF. The clip is dragged onto the new V2 track and trimmed to cover the section being changed.
“So in this area here, what I’m going to do is now I’m going to click filter and I’m going to load gradient. And now I just applied the gradient to this top area right there.”
Same filter, same defaults — Type Linear, Offset 0.0 %, Position 960, 0, Size 19 x 1080, Blend mode Over — but the panel is now headed #FFFFFFFF rather than production ID_4288026.mp4. The footage clip has nothing on it.
“Now this area right here is represented by this area here. So I’m going to click that and I want that to be blue. Like let’s pick like a super, super dark blue like that.”
Hovering a handle pops a tooltip reading Color: #000000 / Click to change, which is how you tell the two stops apart. Color #1 goes to #0000ff at 11:13 and Color #2 to #ffffff. The ramp still covers the frame edge to edge and still hides the footage.
“So that didn’t really do anything. Now, why did it not do anything? Because it applied the multiply really to this layer, but it’s still covering up this layer right here.”
This is the trap, and it is the one thing that genuinely differs between the two methods. The filter’s own Blend mode blends the gradient into the clip it sits on — and that clip is plain white, so multiplying against it changes nothing. V2 still covers V1 completely.
“This section here, I want to choose properties and I want to set the blend mode for the entire track to multiply. So now it’s doing exactly what it did in this section here.”
Selecting the V2 track head and opening Properties gives a panel headed Track: V2 with a single control, Blend mode. The dropdown offers None, Over, Add, Saturate, Multiply and more; Multiply is chosen. That is the blend that marries the whole track onto the footage below.
“I’m going to grab this little handle here and move it a little bit up just to make the blend a little bit more realistic.”
Exactly the same move as the first method, on the other clip. Size settles at 27 x 502 — near enough identical to the 26 x 493 of the first pass, which is a useful sanity check that both routes are aiming at the same picture.
“Now that I actually have this as a separate layer, I can, while it’s selected, I can go to filter. I can go into opacity. And right now, it has 100% opacity. So the more I drag it to the left, the more transparent it becomes.”
A second filter, Opacity, stacked under Gradient on the colour clip. Its single control is Level, at 100 % by default; it is swept down to 53 % at 13:50 to show the effect and returned to 100 % at 14:00. This is the strength dial the first method never gets, because there nothing on the clip can be faded without fading the footage too.
“Aside from that, I can still go over to gradient and I can choose a more natural color. Like I did before, let’s say like sky blue like that.”
Color #1 is walked from #0000be through #0e5bbe, #050ebe and #2266be and committed at #3774be at 13:42 — Hue 213, Sat 181, Val 190, Alpha channel 255. Slightly deeper than the first method’s #3cb4ff, because the Opacity dial is now there to take it back down.
“Say I hide that track, no modification. If you look at the filter here in the filter section, I did not modify the original image.”
This is the argument for the second method in one frame. V2 is hidden, the grey sky returns, and the filter list for production ID_4288026.mp4 is empty. Colour grading, sharpening or contrast can still be added to the footage later without unpicking the sky work.
“I’ve shown you two different versions of how to apply the gradient filter. If you have any other suggestions on how you would utilize the gradient filter, I’d love to hear from you as well.”
The finished second-method result, with V2 visible again. Ben notes that the tutorial itself was a request from someone on the Shotcut forum, which is why the video is exploratory rather than prescriptive about which method to use.
Every number below was read off the screen, field by field. Nothing is a recommended-sounding guess: where a value was never shown, this page says so instead of inventing one. Steps 1–6 are the first method; steps 7–11 are the alternative.
The effect works because the sky is the brightest region in frame. A blown-out overcast sky is the ideal case; a sky that is already darker than the landscape will barely change, and a sky with detail you want to keep will lose it.
Drop it on V1 and split out the stretch you want to change — the video isolates 00:00:05:00 in the middle, so the grey and the blue can be seen changing in one playback.
Select the clip, open Filters, press + and type gradient. In this build the search returns exactly one result, Gradient. The moment it lands, the preview fills with a white-to-black ramp and the footage disappears — that is correct at this stage.
The whole panel is six controls: Preset, Type, Offset, Colors, Position, Size and Blend mode. There is no angle field and no midpoint field in this release — direction comes from the Position and Size rectangle, and the ramp has exactly two stops with nothing between them.
The Colors control is a small gradient bar with a handle at each end. Click a handle and a colour dialog opens, titled Color #1 for the top of the ramp and Color #2 for the bottom. Hovering a handle first shows a tooltip reading Color: #000000 / Click to change, which is how you tell which is which.
The dialog carries Alpha channel as a separate spin box, not as part of the HTML value. It reads 255 — fully opaque — on every stop set anywhere in this tutorial. In Shotcut’s alpha-first notation those two stops would be written #FF0000FF and #FFFFFFFF.
This is the effect. On Over the gradient is opaque paint. On Multiply it becomes a tint: the white end leaves the footage alone, the blue end colours whatever is bright underneath it. The sky turns blue and the landscape stays where it was.
Nothing was masked to get here. The horizon separates itself because the sky is bright and the trees are dark — the same reason this technique fails on a shot where the sky is not the brightest thing in frame.
Left at its default the ramp covers the full frame height and the blue bleeds down into the river. There is a draggable handle on the preview; pulling it up rewrites the Size field. Height goes from 1080 to 493, and width incidentally from 19 to 26.
To see what the handle actually did, flip Blend mode back to Over for a moment: the ramp is now blue at the top fading to solid white by the treeline, and everything below that line is pure white — which under Multiply means “change nothing”.
Pure #0000ff gives a poster-blue sky. Reopen Color #1 and pull the picker toward a lighter, less saturated blue. The value the video settles on is #3cb4ff.
That is the first method complete. One filter, one clip, one track. Its limit is that colour is the only control you have — there is no strength dial, because anything you fade on that clip fades the footage with it.
Right-click the V1 track head and choose Insert Track (Ctrl+Alt+I). The idea is Adobe Premiere’s adjustment layer, built out of a track: all the sky work lives up there and the footage clip is never touched.
The same menu also offers Add Video Track (Ctrl+I), which appends at the top rather than inserting. Either gets you a V2 above the footage.
Toolbar → Open Other → Color, then set the swatch to white in the Select Color dialog and click OK. Drag it from the preview onto V2 and trim it to cover the stretch you want changed.
White specifically, because Multiply against white is a no-op — the colour clip contributes nothing of its own, it is purely a surface for the gradient to live on.
Select the white clip and add the same filter with the same defaults. Set the stops the same way — the video goes to a deep #0000ff on Color #1 and #ffffff on Color #2 — then drag the handle so Size reads 27 × 502.
Setting the filter’s own Blend mode to Multiply here appears to do nothing, and that is the single most confusing moment in the tutorial. The filter blend applies the gradient to its own clip — and that clip is white, so multiplying against it changes nothing. V2 still covers V1 completely.
Click the V2 track head and open the Properties tab. The panel is headed Track: V2 and carries a single control, Blend mode. Set it to Multiply. Now the whole track multiplies onto the footage below and the sky turns blue.
This is the real difference between the two methods, and it is easy to state: in method one the filter blends, in method two the track blends. Everything else about the two is the same.
With the colour clip still selected, add a second filter, Opacity. Its single control is Level, at 100 % by default. Pulling it left fades the whole sky treatment without touching the footage — the control the first method cannot offer. Then reopen Color #1 and pick a natural blue; the video lands on #3774be.
Hide V2 at the end and check the footage clip: its filter list is empty. Colour grading, contrast or sharpening can still be added to the original later without unpicking any of the sky work — which is the entire argument for the longer route.
Read directly off the frames of the video, field by field. Nothing in these tables came from the narration.
| Setting | Value | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Shotcut version | 20.07.11 | Help → About Shotcut |
| Source clip | production ID_4288026.mp4 | Properties |
| Codec | H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC | Properties → Video |
| Resolution | 3840 × 2160 | Properties → Video |
| Frame rate | 24.000000 | Properties → Video |
| Pixel format | yuv420p | Properties → Video |
| Aspect ratio | 16 : 9 | Properties → Video |
| Scan mode | Progressive | Properties → Video |
| Colour range | Broadcast Limited (MPEG) | Properties → Video |
| Source duration | 00:00:22:23 | Properties |
| Section worked on | 00:00:05:00 | Properties → Timeline |
| Project frame size | 1920 × 1080 (inferred) | Not shown — see note below |
The video-mode dialog is never opened on screen, so the project frame size is not stated anywhere. It is inferred from the Gradient fields: the filter’s default Position of 960, 0 and default Size height of 1080 are the horizontal centre and the full height of the project frame, which puts the project at 1920 × 1080 even though the source clip is 3840 × 2160. Every Position and Size number on this page is in project pixels, not source pixels.
| Field | Method 1 — filter on the footage | Method 2 — filter on a white Color clip |
|---|---|---|
| Clip it sits on | production ID_4288026.mp4 on V1 | #FFFFFFFF Color clip on V2 |
| Track stack | V1 only | V2 colour clip / V1 footage |
| Preset | empty — never opened | empty — never opened |
| Type | Linear | Linear |
| Offset | 0.0 % | 0.0 % |
| Color #1 (top of the ramp) | #ffffff → #0000ff → #3cb4ff | #ffffff → #0000ff → #3774be |
| Color #2 (bottom of the ramp) | #000000 → #ffffff | #000000 → #ffffff |
| Alpha channel, every stop | 255 | 255 |
| Position | 960, 0 | 960, 0 |
| Size, final | 26 × 493 | 27 × 502 |
| Filter Blend mode, final | Multiply | Multiply — no visible effect on its own |
| Track Blend mode | not used — single track | Properties → Track: V2 → Multiply |
| Second filter | none | Opacity — Level 100 % |
| Footage clip modified | yes — it carries the filter | no — its filter list is empty |
Fields this release does not have. The Gradient panel in 20.07.11 is Preset, Type, Offset, Colors, Position, Size and Blend mode — and nothing else. There is no angle control: direction is implied by the Position and Size rectangle, which here is a tall narrow box anchored at the top of the frame, so the ramp runs top to bottom. There is no midpoint control either, and the Colors bar carries exactly two handles — no stop is ever added or removed on screen. Type is left on Linear throughout; Radial is visible but never clicked. Offset stays at 0.0 % from the first frame to the last and its purpose is never demonstrated.
| Time | Change | Value after |
|---|---|---|
| 2:10 | About Shotcut opened | 20.07.11 |
| 3:34 | Gradient added to the footage clip | Linear, 0.0 %, 960, 0, 19 × 1080, Over |
| 4:24 | Color #1 set | #0000ff |
| 4:38 | Color #2 set | #ffffff |
| 4:58 | Filter Blend mode changed | Over → Multiply |
| 5:47 | Handle dragged to the treeline | Size 26 × 493 |
| 7:16 | Color #1 softened — method 1 finished | #3cb4ff |
| 8:31 | Insert Track from the V1 track head | V2 created |
| 9:05 | Open Other → Color clip made | #FFFFFFFF |
| 10:00 | Gradient added to the colour clip | Linear, 0.0 %, 960, 0, 19 × 1080, Over |
| 11:13 | Stops set on the colour clip | #0000ff → #ffffff |
| 11:21 | Filter Blend mode changed — nothing visibly happens | Over → Multiply |
| 11:56 | Properties → Track: V2 → Blend mode | Over → Multiply |
| 12:40 | Handle dragged on the colour clip | Size 27 × 502 |
| 13:00 | Opacity filter added | Level 100 % |
| 13:42 | Color #1 softened on the colour clip | #3774be |
| 13:50 | Level swept down to demonstrate | 53 % |
| 14:00 | Level returned — method 2 finished | 100 % |
The Color #1 pick in the second method is walked through the picker on screen: #0000be, #0e5bbe, #050ebe, #2266be and finally #3774be. Only the last of those is committed. Alpha channel reads 255 at every step.
Machine transcribed from the video audio. Spoken phrasing is left as-is; only the product name Whisper split into two words has been corrected. Every timestamp plays the video in the hero from that second. Note that no number on this page came from here — the transcript is the narration, the values were read off the pixels.
I’m just a normal person with no video editing background, who wanted to start making YouTube
videos and maybe cool transitions and effects.
I don’t really plan on being a professional video editor, so I was looking for a free,
easy to learn video editing software.
Luckily, I stumbled on Shotcut, a free open source video editing program that can do
many of the tricks you can do on more enterprise video editors like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci
Resolve, but with a much simpler and leaner interface, thus dramatically short
the learning curve.
It just takes using your imagination, so let’s learn together.
Hey guys, welcome back to my channel.
In this tutorial, I’m going to teach you how to use the Gradient filter, and this was a
request from someone at the Shotcut forum, so I wanted to play around with it.
I’m not too familiar with the Gradient filter as well, so I wanted to play around with
it and see what the best use case is for that Gradient filter.
In order to do that, what I’m going to do is I’m going to try to change this gray sky
into a blue sky, and from all the testing that I’ve done, I think that’s the best use
case.
Typically, it would be best for a sky replacement or some sort of way to switch one color
to another.
So that’s going to be the project that we’re going to be doing in this tutorial.
I’m going to show you two different methods.
First, I’m going to show you what I believe is the standard method.
The second method is kind of a hack that I’ve played around with and how I like to execute
things, and the reason why I have a second method is because I believe the second method
makes it a lot easier to control how the color blends and how it’s positioned within the video.
So first and foremost, I’m going to show you the simple method.
Before I get started, I want to make sure that you are using the same version as I
am, and that is Shotcut version 20.07.11.
So that we’re both using the same version and we can make sure that the same functionalities
apply.
So as I said, in this tutorial, I’m going to try to replace the gray sky of this image
or this video that I downloaded online.
So first and foremost, let’s go ahead and drag the file into the timeline.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to isolate, say, a five second section of this so that we can see
a change between a gray sky and a blue sky.
So I’m going to cut a five second snippet, and this area here is what we’re going to be focusing on.
And so now that that’s been cut, let’s launch the filter interface, and we’re going to search for gradient.
Like so.
And right when you choose it, all of a sudden, that area is going to be grayed out, or you’re going to see a gradation.
So when I click out of it, you see the video, and you see the video on the other side,
but when I click into the area where the filter is applied, all of a sudden the video disappears.
But don’t worry about that.
So first and foremost, what we’re going to do is I want this sky area here to be blue.
And so let me toggle back.
So this area here that is currently assigned white in this section right here,
I want to turn that to, let’s say, this color blue right there.
And then this area here that is assigned black right here, I’m going to make that white
by clicking, all I’m doing is I’m clicking it, and it launches this new color palette section.
So I’m going to choose white.
So now we have that.
How do you then apply it to the video?
Well, when you first launch the filter, it defaults to the blend mode overlay or over.
All you have to do is move it down to multiply, and all of a sudden it becomes transparent,
and you can see the blue overlaid on top of the original video.
But what has happened here is the blue has bled all the way down to the bottom
of where this river is, and I don’t necessarily need that area to be blue.
So all I need to do is, so there are actually little handles here at the end of this.
And so I’m just going to click and I’m just going to drag it.
And as you click and drag, you’re going to notice the blend changes.
And so I’m going to say I want it to start the blend from right there.
I’m going to show you what it did by deactivating multiply and putting it back to overlay.
And basically what I told it is that I want it to blend from white to blue starting from
right here at the end of this handle.
So I’m now going to move it back to multiply again.
And so this is what it looks like without the filter.
And you’re going to notice that as it transitions to this part here, which is red,
it’s going to start turning the sky blue.
And then as it exits that red area, it’s going to go back to the gray sky again.
So let’s play it.
Actually, you know what?
I’m going to deselect that area.
I’m going to select it here so that that little handle is not showing up.
So let’s play it again.
So that’s basically the best use case, I believe, for the gradient filter.
Now, if this sky here looks a little too saturated and look a little too artificial,
all you have to do is go back into this color picker.
You can either choose one of the basic colors here in the existing color palette,
or you can just click and drag this section here until you find kind of the perfect sky blue.
Maybe that’s good right there.
If I click it, all of a sudden, look at that.
So now it’s a little bit more natural blue.
Wait, unclick.
I don’t want that little handle showing up.
Okay, so let’s...
So I think that’s a little bit more natural.
And so really, that’s it.
That’s how I would use the gradient filter.
Now, as I mentioned, I have a second method, which I believe is actually a better method.
Because right now, really the only way you can control the color is to
go over here to this color area here.
Click it and then choose the color that you want, overlays it,
and then you get the exact blue of whatever the hell you picked over here.
But the way I would do it is kind of similar to how Adobe Premiere uses an adjustment layer.
I don’t want to apply the filter right on the video itself.
What I want to do is I want to create a track here by right clicking the V1 track.
I want to insert another track.
And so what I’m going to do is I’m going to apply all the filters on this separate track
so that I can leave this clip alone.
I don’t want to make any modifications to the clip itself.
And so I’m going to go to the second track here.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to go to this section called open other right there.
When you click it, I’m going to choose color.
And in this one, I’m going to choose the color white and click OK.
And then while this white is on your preview screen,
all I’m going to do is drag it right into that track that I just created.
So now we have a white.
Actually, you know what? I’m going to move it over here
so that
I can isolate this other section here between here and here.
And so in this area here, let’s actually move it a little bit more so that there’s a difference.
So in this area here, what I’m going to do is now I’m going to click filter
and I’m going to load gradient.
And now I just applied the gradient to this top area right there.
Let’s make it a little bigger.
So that that white section right there.
Again, the only reason why we’re seeing this black and white gradient is because
it’s defaulted to over instead of multiply.
But before I do anything, what I’m going to do is once again,
I’m going to select this what represents this handle right here,
which is actually this thing here.
So I’m going to click that.
I want that to be white.
And then the representative of this handle right here, which is
this area here, I believe.
Nope, did I just mess that up?
Actually, this area right now is actually this thing right here.
So I’m going to click that.
I’m going to make that white.
Okay, so that changed.
Now this area right here is represented by this area here.
So I’m going to click that and I want that to be blue.
Like let’s pick like a super, super dark blue like that.
And now the same as what we did in the original version,
I’m just going to select multiply.
So that didn’t really do anything.
Now, why did it not do anything?
Because it applied the multiply really to this layer,
but it’s still covering up this layer right here.
So actually what I want to do is I want to go here.
This section here, I want to choose properties
and I want to set the blend mode for the entire track to multiply.
So now it’s doing exactly what it did in this section here.
But we’re going to add an additional step.
So first, again, I’m going to do what I did before.
I’m going to grab this little handle here and move it a little bit up
just to make the blend a little bit more realistic.
And so again, we ended up with what the other one looked like,
which is it’s a blend from white to really, really dark blue.
Now, why go through this extra step when I did the exact same thing
in this other layer?
This is why.
Now that I actually have this as a separate layer,
I can, while it’s selected, I can go to filter.
I can go into opacity.
And right now, it has 100% opacity,
which means the color, it’s at 100% color or 100%.
So it’s opaque, 100% opacity.
So the more I drag it to the left, the more transparent it becomes.
And look what happens.
So as I drag it, I can control the color.
Aside from that, I can still go over to gradient
and I can choose a more natural color.
Like I did before, let’s say like sky blue like that.
So it’s still a more natural color, but on top of that,
it added this additional control in the opacity right here.
I can drag it and I can then change it.
I can go, okay, I want the sky to be a little lighter.
I want the sky to be a little darker, whatever.
And so this is why I would apply the gradient filter to
replace the sky on a separate track, just so I can control that.
And then, say I hide that track, no modification.
If you look at the filter here in the filter section,
I did not modify the original image.
And so later on, I can come back if I need to do any kind of
color grading or any kind of changes to sharpness or contrast.
I could still go back to this original video and apply that.
And so that’s my technique.
Again, use it, don’t use it.
I’ve shown you two different versions of how to apply the gradient filter
If this has been useful to you, I definitely would appreciate a subscribe.
Like this video, comment on this video.
If you have any other suggestions on how you would utilize the gradient filter,
I’d love to hear from you as well.
If you have any other suggestions on what other tutorials you’d like me to do,
I’d love to hear that as well because this one right here,
this particular tutorial was actually a suggestion from someone in the Shotcut Forum.
So once again, thank you guys for visiting.
Thank you for watching this tutorial.
Don’t forget to subscribe and I will see you later.
Bye-bye.
