Professional Color Grading Techniques in DaVinci Resolve

Kevin P. McAuliffe

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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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MichaelTiemann

So far I have seen three major use cases:

1.  When channel information becomes so imbalanced that a simple gain function will not do, for example, in underwater photography where the red channel becomes so starved that it cannot be reconstructed by simply increasing gain.  In such a case, the red channel can become a mask to color as red the highly detailed luma information of the green and blue channels.

2.  When it is desired to shrink a wide color gamut (containing colors all the way around the color circle) to two complementary colors (teal/orange, red/cyan, green/magenta) or perhaps three primary-ish colors.

3.  Changing overall color balance without trying to adjust individual hues.  It works especially well at taking out red, green, or blue (by feeding the color you want to remove to the other two channels).

It really helps to have some color wheels and to just look at how a pushing the knobs in various directions change those color wheels.  In DaVinci Resolve you could have an image with two color wheels.  Put a power window around the second wheel.  Adjust the color matrix within the power window.  Annotate the transformation with a text window, and voila.  For extra credit, you can put an expression into Fusion and have the coefficient value printed as text so you can automate the movement of sliders and see how the values transform the wheel.

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Shylesh Kumar

Can I use colorspace transform instead of a conversation lut ? What are the differences here? 

I am hoping someone will shed some light on this for me.

Thanks

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Phil O'Dea

Color Space Transform will do a more accurate transform form one color space to another without any clipping that you might get with a LUT. It also has Tone & Gamut mapping options & uses the math as Resolve RCM. 

I use Color Space Transform when I have multiple camera formats to match. Say I have a project which used Sony, Arri & Canon cameras. I use Color Space Transform to convert to one common color space. For example convert Sony S-Gamut, S-Log2 to Arri Alexa, LogC and then Canon Cinema Gamut, Canon Log to  Arri Alexa, LogC or whatever way you want to convert your cameras. You can them apply grades that you did on one camera to another.

LUTS are more useful if you want to apply a look to your footage & it is quite east to break a LUT by grading in the wrong part of the color chain.

 

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Daniel Rheaume

Hi Lowepost!

 I've loved this course and learned an incredible amount!

I do have one question regarding the lesson on grit and texture -

The instructor seems to be using a logC timeline color space for his projects, which I've embraced.

When he goes into detail about using the LAB color space on a node for sharpening, when I try on  my own footage I get an extreme highlight shift (gray blotchy highlights) from performing the LAB conversion. If I have my timeline colorspace set to rec709, I don't get these issues. What is the instructor doing differently, and why is it working for him?

Thanks!

Here is an example of what I'm seeing ....This is the ungraded log clip.

p.jpeg?fv_content=true&size_mode=5

Here is the log footage with a single LAB conversion node, no adjustments. p.jpeg?fv_content=true&size_mode=5

 

Here is a version with an  r709 output display at end of node tree. No other nodes.p.jpeg?fv_content=true&size_mode=5

 

And here is the LAB conversion node with no adjustments and no other nodes, prior to the display output node.

p.jpeg?fv_content=true&size_mode=5

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Waqar Farooq

I couldnt understand the part of piping a key downstream 

 

How the offset changes makes a difference in selecting the key? is it because they were in opposite directions? 

Edited by Waqar Farooq
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Stuart Golubenko

Amazing course and so much to learn. I'm not sure if I missed it but it would be really helpful to see each of these methods put together into one large grade. So we can follow the journey from start to end, then see the cumulative effect and understand the best order of operation. In some of those examples, I understand the logic and technique but not sure where I should place them. 

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Stuart Golubenko

Amazing course and so much to learn. I'm not sure if I missed it but it would be really helpful to see each of these methods put together into one large grade. So we can follow the journey from start to end, then see the cumulative effect and understand the best order of operation. In some of those examples, I understand the logic and technique but not sure where I should place them. 

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