Vectorscope & RGB Parade for Stills

Knowledge Base

How to Read a Vectorscope

A vectorscope plots every pixel's color as a point: the angle around the circle is hue, and the distance from the center is saturation. A black-and-white image collapses to a single dot at the center. The six labeled boxes mark where fully saturated red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, and yellow land, real footage should mostly stay well inside those boxes, since hitting them means a color channel is fully saturated.

The Skin-Tone Line

Human skin tones, across a wide range of actual skin colors and lighting, cluster tightly along one specific angle on the vectorscope, regardless of how dark or light the skin is. The dashed reference line marks that angle: if your subject's skin doesn't fall close to it, that's a strong signal of an off white balance or a color cast worth correcting.

How to Read an RGB Parade

The parade shows the same three color channels side by side, each plotted so its horizontal position matches the original frame's left-to-right position and its vertical position shows the 0 to 255 level at that point. It's the fastest way to compare relative channel levels, if the blue strip sits noticeably higher than red and green across the whole frame, for example, that's a blue color cast.

FAQ

Q: Why does my scope look different from the one in my NLE?
A: The underlying math (hue angle, saturation, per-channel level) is the same real signal analysis a professional scope uses, but graticule styling and exact colorimetry conventions vary between vendors. Read this as the same information, not a pixel-identical clone of any one editor's scope.

Q: Can I use this to white balance a shot?
A: Yes. Check where a known-neutral or skin-tone area lands on the vectorscope. A neutral grey card should sit at dead center. If it doesn't, that offset tells you the direction and strength of your color cast.