How can I revert my Final Cut Pro project back to its original color?

LOL…that’s a very good question, Tom. I thought we could export in B&W, but I see that we can’t.

So…here’s how I would do it.

Finish the project in color, as you usually would. When it’s all finished, duplicate the project as a new name, and maybe add the letters ”bw” to the project name.

• Open the re-named “bw” project.
• Apply the Black & White filter to the first clip.
• Copy the clip. ( CMD-C )
• Click and drag to select all the other video clips in the project.
• Use Shift-Command-C to past the b&w effect into all the other clips.
• If there are additional graphics or titles above the main story line, you may have to paste the effect into them, too.

That process worked for me on a test project.

Is it possible to set up a custom compression setting in Compressor that would remove the color? I did not check this, but if it is possible, the color project could just be exported using that custom Compressor setting.

RPM46 wrote:

• LOL…that’s a very good question, Tom. I thought we could export in B&W, but I see that we can’t.

So…here’s how I would do it.

Finish the project in color, as you usually would. When it’s all finished, duplicate the project as a new name, and maybe add the letters ”bw” to the project name.

Open the re-named “bw” project.

• Apply the Black & White filter to the first clip.

• Copy the clip. ( CMD-C )

• Click and drag to select all the other video clips in the project.

• Use Shift-Command-C to past the b&w effect into all the other clips.

• If there are additional graphics or titles above the main story line, you may have to paste the effect into them, too.

A slightly easier way to do the same: connect an adjustment clip (*), extend it for the duration of the project, and apply the B&W effect to it.

(*) adjustment clips were introduced in 11.1, in older versions you can use any of a plethora of available adjustment layers (titles)

B/W is natural. Not all animals see the same, not all see the same bands in the radiation spectrum, some see B/W, some see ultraviolet, we don't, so maybe we're the unnatural ones? Plus, the darker it gets, the more you actually do see in B/W as a human being.

Black and white is greatly affected by the original colors. Desaturate a clip, play with its color balance, you'll see shades change.

I'd simply place an Adjustment Clip above the whole timeline, the whole duration, and apply a color filter to that to make it B/W. Then you can disable/enable that Adjustment clip as needed.

I don't know which method you used but they should all work the same.

In the below example I used the B&W effect and as such when you select the clip in the timeline the effect is shown in the Inspector.

To remove it simply deselect the tick box or drag the slider to zero or click your Delete/Backspace key.

When you create a snapshot it doesn’t change which project is open in the timeline. It often happens to people to continue editing the wrong project. I can easily imagine the wrong project being in black and white. But I fail to see how they’d BOTH become black and white…

Reverting the original to color may be extremely easy or require more work, depending on HOW you turned it into black and white in the first place. If you just added an adjustment layer (or adjustment clip in the latest version) and turned saturation down, just change that and it’s done. If you did manually to multiple clips it can be trickier. Tell us more and maybe post some screenshots

FCP automatically creates backups of all libraries. If you do File>Open Library>From Backup, it will show you the available versions. You might be able to open one that was just before the problem.

RPM46 wrote:

Is it possible to set up a custom compression setting in Compressor that would remove the color? I did not check this, but if it is possible, the color project could just be exported using that custom Compressor setting.

That is very good suggestion.

I went to see if there was a B&W filter in Compressor. Apparently there isn't.

A roundabout way to achieve this would be to use the Custom LUT filter, using a custom LUT that makes everything black and white. That does work :-)

An even easier method I have used on Duplicate projects is to open the Colour Adjustment pane in the browser and drag the Saturation slider all the way down.

The results have always satisfied me but I don't know what disadvantages that may have for experts.

I suppose there is no such thing as right or wrong B/W as by its very nature it is completely unnatural even though it was accepted as "normal" for over a century.

As Luis said, snapshots do not affect the original project at all. It's likely that you have a different project open. If not, please provide a screenshot to prove it.

Edit the project in color, then just export a black & white version of it. There really is no need for all this complication within FCP.

How would you export a black and white version?

That's the method I used for this video. Takes about 10 seconds!

Core 'ngrato

I had forgotten there is now an adjustment clip as I have never used it. Will certainly simplify things like putting filters over multiple clips.