Professional Color Grading Techniques in DaVinci Resolve

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This course provides colorists with an in-depth overview of professional color grading techniques and look creation in DaVinci Resolve.

The main concepts discussed in the course are advanced contrast management, balancing techniques and look development. The focus is primarily on higher end color grading, color theory and teaching techniques that took professional colorists years of experience to master.

The course is presented by Kevin P. McAuliffe but is created together with professional colorists that have contributed with insight about their work methods. Kevin uses DaVinci Resolve, but it is taught with the goal of showing techniques that can be used in any color corrector.

The footage used in this course is available for download so that you can easily follow along. In addition, we have included power grades so that you can deeply study the node structures and color grading techniques demonstrated in the course, and a free sample of 35mm film grain from our friends over at Cinegrain.

 

COURSE OVERVIEW

 

LESSON 01: S-CURVE MANIPULATION

The curve is the key component of contrast creation, and in the first lesson we look at the basics of the curve and curve shaping.

LESSON 02: CORRECTIONS IN LOG SPACE AND GAMMA SPACE

We continue to explore how brightness affects the curve in log- and gamma space, and how to manipulate the curve in a log workflow.

LESSON 03: COMPRESSION TECHNIQUES

In this lesson we look at how to disturb the luma vs. distance ratio of the curve with compression techniques to challenge the contrast and create a printed look. This technique is often used as a base to create a painterly feeling with limited dynamic range.

LESSON 04: LOW LUMA COMPRESSION TECHNIQUES 

We dive deeper into compression techniques and how to compress low luminance levels, add speculars and  details with gamma stretching and the log controls.

LESSON 05: PRINTER LIGHTS FUNDAMENTALS

Now that we have a better understanding of contrast management, we look at the fundamentals of printer lights that we will use to balance and create looks later in the course.

LESSON 06: PRINTER LIGHTS WORKFLOW

In this lesson we look at using printer lights in a log workflow and watching the results through our curves.

LESSON 07: BALANCING TECHNIQUES

Now it's time to analyze and match shots with the help of what we have learned about printer lights. We also take a closer look into using the RGB-parade and the vectorscope. We will also discuss some thesis questions related to balancing in general.

LESSON 08: BOUNCING TO CREATE LOOKS

We are ready to create our first desaturated and moody look by bouncing in colors though a defined node structure.

LESSON 09: UNDERSTANDING COLOR HARMONY

Colorists need to understand what makes an image look pleasant to the eye and in this lesson we discuss the important of color harmony. We are building on the look from the previous lesson to create color separation and tweek the colors into an analogous color scheme.

LESSON 10: COLOR CHANNEL MIXING TO CREATE UNIQUE LOOKS

In this lesson we look at how to create a modern and cold look with the help of channel mixing and opacity control.

LESSON 11: GRIT AND TEXTURE

We will go though techniques to bouncing luma controls agains each other to bring out texture, create silver tints to add rawness, clip the blacks and advanced sharpen techniques to bring out grit.

LESSON 12: NODE COLOR MIXING

Node color mixing is a very important skill to master for every colorist, and by combining colors and strengths we will get access to unlimited color combinations that can be used in look development. We will see how our color combinations blends onto the tonal range we have established.

LESSON 13: PIPING A KEY DOWNSTREAM

In this lesson we work with separate streams and color transforms to pipe super clean keys.

LESSON 14: LOCAL EDGE SOFTENING

This lesson is about isolating the local edges in the images and working with them to create a softer image without loosing the overall sharpness.

LESSON 15: CREATING VOLUME IN THE WHITES

We will look at another important compression method for creating volume in the highlights and reduce the sharp thin feeling of digital images. 

LESSON 16: EVENING OUT SKIN TONES

Going through a very popular technique to even out skin tones and take care of imperfections.

LESSON 17: SOFT SATURATED LOOKS

In this lesson we will dial in a soft contrast and create color contrast with varying hue strenghts.

LESSON 18: FILM EMULATIONS AND GRAIN TECHNIQUES

In our final lesson we will create a new look with a Film Emulation LUT, the log controls and add texture with a 35mm fine grain sample (that you will get for free sponsored by Cinegrain). We will look at different techniques to enhance the structure of the grain.

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Emily Haine said:

Sure about that? Have you shot log and watched log on your monitor without any log to linear transform?

Well...I mean I’ve never applied a LUT in camera for monitoring purposes. I do have one in there—a blackmagic pocket cinema camera 4K-rec.709 LUT that some dude from the internet made. But I pretty much never enable it. 

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10 minutes ago, Emily Haine said:

So you watched what you shot in log?

Yes. Untouched. 
Now this is Blackmagic RAW we’re talking here. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on under the sheets. 

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6 minutes ago, Justin Oakley said:

Now this is Blackmagic RAW we’re talking here. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on under the sheets. 

Normal procedure is to watch through a log to linear transform on set in form of a look up table. Skipping this step means you have no clue how your footage looks until you're in post, and you might be surprised. I'm sure you will find a list of LUTs for your Black Magic Camera in Resolve, and that will be the closest representation of how MBD think your footage should look. Technically, that should be your starting point as it's designed for your camera, but if you prefer throwing on a different LUT - that will be entirely up to you.

 

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26 minutes ago, Emily Haine said:

Normal procedure is to watch through a log to linear transform on set in form of a look up table. Skipping this step means you have no clue how your footage looks until you're in post, and you might be surprised. I'm sure you will find a list of LUTs for your Black Magic Camera in Resolve, and that will be the closest representation of how MBD think your footage should look. Technically, that should be your starting point as it's designed for your camera, but if you prefer throwing on a different LUT - that will be entirely up to you.

 

Right on. I know it’s typically done, I just never do it. I’m a one-man band/self taught Filmmaker. I’ve been just kind of learning as I go. Only been doing it for a few years now. 
 

The one monitoring LUT I have loaded in my camera (The one I mentioned) I don’t think is a “proper” technical LUT. 
 

since you’re here and you obviously know way more than I do, do you happen to know of any resources where I could get correct technical LUTs for my camera? (Blackmagic 4k film). 
 

I know every YouTube guy and their mother likes to create and sell LUTs.  But I do realize that not all of them are created equal

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On the low luma compression technique, on the third node, for some reason when I pull the lower black point on the curve right, it doesn't stretch the waveform like the example, it sort of compresses it. Any ideas? Thanks!

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The tips on adding volume and richness are great. I'd previously used a combo of HSL and HSV mixing the gain to get a similar effect. Awesome set of lessons, keep them coming!

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Greetings,

Awesome course we have here! Learned a lot!

One thing that is bugging me is the RGB mixer. I thought I understood it, and used it for some color casts corrections. My understanding was that we are piping different channel data into other channels. For a severe tungsten pollution, we took the red or green channel data, and fed it into the blue channel to get a balanced image. But, this lesson tells me that it is much more than that. 

So, would anyone be so kind as to explain what goes on in the RGB mixer, and why adjusting the green levels in the Red output rather than simply using the red slider would be considered when both of them would give the same results (i.e more red or teal)?

 

Sorry if my explanations are a but confusing.

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