Hey everyone! 
I wanted to share a quick project case study from my recent trip to New England. Every autumn, I take my drone out to shoot forest foliage, hoping to get those vibrant crimson red and deep gold cinematic landscapes.
However, when I loaded the raw footage onto my laptop, I was pretty disappointed. The sky was gloomy, and the trees looked completely washed out and flat. My camera’s Auto White Balance had overcompensated for the warm leaves, making the whole scene look greenish-gray and lifeless.
Here is a quick breakdown of how I transformed these dull clips into rich autumn video clips without spending hours tweaking Lumetri wheels in Premiere Pro.
The Problem: Why Raw Autumn Footage Looks So Dull
When filming autumn landscapes, a few common issues ruin raw footage:
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Overactive Auto White Balance: The camera interprets warm golden leaves as a color cast and injects cool blue tones, making the video look cold.
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Leaf Surface Glare: Direct light bounces off wet or glossy leaves, washing out natural leaf saturation.
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Flat Profiles: Flat picture profiles protect highlights but leave raw clips looking completely gray without color grading.
My Workflow: AI Enhancement vs. Manual Grading
Usually, fixing flat fall foliage requires setting manual white balance, isolating leaf vectors with HSL curves, and adjusting luminance in Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve. It works, but manually tracking leaf masks across multiple dynamic drone shots takes forever.
This time, I decided to test HitPaw VikPea (formerly HitPaw Video Enhancer) to speed up post-production.
1. Quick One-Click Color Restoring
I imported my footage directly into the workspace and enabled the Color Enhancement Model from the sidebar. Instead of manually sampling yellow and red vectors with eyedroppers, VikPea’s AI algorithm automatically recognized the foliage, pulled out latent golden hues, and eliminated the green/blue tint across the midtones.
2. Denoising & SDR to HDR Output
Because the original clip was shot under cloudy conditions, lifting shadows usually introduced digital grain. VikPea’s built-in AI Denoising cleaned up shadow regions around tree trunks without blurring the fine leaf details. I also enabled SDR to HDR Conversion to boost contrast and make the foliage highlights pop off the screen.
3. Upscaling to Crisp 4K
Finally, under Export Settings, I selected 4K resolution to crisp up individual leaf textures before rendering.
Quick Before & After Results
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Before: Washy lime-greens, cold sky cast, flat midtones, and lost foliage detail.
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After: Deep burnt oranges, warm golden leaf tones, richer shadow contrast, and crisp 4K texture depth.
In-Camera Tips for Next Time
If you are planning an autumn shoot soon, here are three simple habits that save editing time later:
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Shoot during Golden Hour: Low-angle sunrise or sunset light naturally bathes foliage in warm tones.
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Use a Circular Polarizer (CPL) Filter: Cuts glare on wet leaves and instantly saturates natural colors before hitting the sensor.
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Lock White Balance Manually: Set your white balance to Daylight (5600K) or Shade (6500K) rather than Auto White Balance to preserve natural golden warmth.
FAQs & Community Discussion
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Q: Did the AI color boost turn skin tones orange?
- A: No, VikPea’s color model targets environmental hues specifically, keeping skin tones intact if you have subjects in your shot.
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Q: Is AI color enhancement better than manual grading?
- A: Manual color grading offers precise artistic control for complex node setups, but AI enhancement is significantly faster for batch processing multiple vacation clips.
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Q: Can this fix dull fall footage recorded on smartphones?
- A: Yes! iPhone or Android video clips recorded in standard color profiles respond really well to AI color restoration and upscaling.
What tools are you guys using to grade your seasonal footage this year? Let me know in the comments below! 