What is the best color grading software?

[Bledar Cili]

Hi everyone. I want to ask you which soft is the best in film industry for color grading. Baselight or Davinci? I have been using Davinci for 5 years and now I'm interested to work with Baselight as well.

Thank you in advance.

[Abby Bader]

Hi Bledar,

Nice to see you here!

I would say that DaVinci is a great tool to start learning if you aren't familar with color correctors or schooled in color theory. Part of the reason is that it's very intuitive, but it's also a lot of great documentation out there as well as tutorials from other users.

The large studios are equipped with both of them, and colorists are drawn between them. Wouldn't say any of them are better than the other, it's like Avid vs. FCP vs. Premiere. You will get the job done. Personally I like the unique control and the way the color management tools work in Baselight, but some tools I find more user friendly in Davinci. Download the trial and try for yourself. 

Abby

[Bruno Mansi]

One of the big differences is that Baselight is a layer based system, so if you're used to working with nodes, you may need time to get accustomed to the this way of working. I personally prefer Davinci nodes and general screen layout, but Baselight has very good renderless workflows with Avid software as well as with their range of on-set applications, like Flip and Daylight.

I also have heard from other colourists that Baselight support is much better than what Blackmagic offer.

[Alex Prohorushkin]

If you choices are Resolve vs Baselight, then:

1st - Baselight.

It's a very cool, clever and precise system. It's flexible when working with color but more expensive.

[Margus Voll]

It really in the end will boil dow what workflow you have and how fast you can make your grade and with what results.

Coolness is not important property of a tool very long time now imo as any color app or nle is used on blockbusters around the globe. Mostly they are selected by studio job is done or by artist.

 

Some go with Nucoda, some still use Scratch. I bet being confident on number of apps is good idea.

[Rainer Bueltert]

My experience with Baselight is you get better results faster. When Resolve lets you think of keying or Log-grading something (to correct it), you'll get nice results instantly with Baselights Video-Grade (or Film-Grade). This was already there before the full implementation of the Color Management into Baselight. It is the same with Sratch and Lustre. Both have very nice behavior of the "plain" Video-Grade tool.
In other words I find Resolve is often somehow rough. One gets quickly an impressing result, yes. But you have to work further (with additional tools / nodes) to refine it. 

Node-Tree vs. Layer:
With Resolve the node-tree is great because I have visible clarity. But due to strict order of the tools in which there are processed, I need more nodes than I would like to have. In Baselight you can change the order of the tools in the cascade for every layer. So you can first desaturate with video-grade, then tint with Film-Grade, then log-ish grade with curve crade, put a color-mixer into the row and then shift the blues to cyan in just one layer!

Tools:
Resolve evolves well over the time. Yes. The tools not really! While the new tint/temp sliders will for sure attract new users, it's easy to find out that they are simple the gain ball in the directions of blue/yellow/magenta/green. Baselights new Basegrade e.g. is a true new developed tool where developers thought about how to face the actual needs in colorgrading.
And a tool like "Technical Grade" is a very good example that an old(?) (log-Tool) can be used to achieve very nice looks with incredible speed.
What I want to point out is, that it is a unpolite product policy of BM to change tools and to let the old version dissapear while color graders work based on that tools. Like it happened with the keyers when clean blacks and clean whites were introduced (which are not really better treatments).
"Color Match" tool. I find this tool is a good example for the missing seriousness in the product development of the real core of Resolve: Color! I would not recommend using Color Match, which does not result in a Video-Grade or Log-Grade at the beginning of a dailies chain. It results in a black-box (LUTs/keys) with doubtful results.

Usability:
The reason to give a great compliment to BM is usability. I think it is (beside the price) one key factor of the success story of Resolve. I wish this hard work of making a product more smooth to work while giving the operator every feasible option, will be further done for Baselight. Filmlight did a great job with the "color journey view" and hints like "this codec expect full range" in the render dialog. 

[Abby Bader]

Great to see you here @Rainer Bueltertand thank you for your great, detailed and insightful explanation! Personally, I prefer Baselight because I feel more comfortable with the toolset and I feel that it lets me get to a more pleasing result faster.

Edited November 20, 2016 by Abby Bader

[Margus Voll]

I do not have as much experience probably on other platforms but i would say any tool gets you there.

Mostly comments i see about Resolve clearly reflect people using it wrong or are mis informed.

 

[Rainer Bueltert]

Thanks Abby for your warm words! Margus, I can only recommend making experiences with other platforms (Scratch & Baselight). When you have the recources and time to do some projects on it, you will see that you can get there easier and more comfortable. Specially on long formats I think it is not to get through to the project in the given time. It is to get it done nicely and to have still energy left to run the extra mile to make it perfect. This you can get with Baselight with all its functionality to make you super efficient (DBS (try, apply, view), "real" Grouped Grading, Smart Dissolve....)

 

[Margus Voll]

I have some Nucoda plans set up now and time will tell how it will go.

 

[Bledar Cili]

Thanks everyone for your help, i am looking for basic training for baselight, can you hepl me??

Thanks

[Ildus gabidullin]

17 hours ago, Bledar Cili said:

Thanks everyone for your help, i am looking for basic training for baselight, can you hepl me??

Thanks

 

To learn the basics Baselight, Filmlight has a great channel on Vimeo

https://vimeo.com/filmlight/

and learning should start with this video(assuming that you, a little bit, know how to use Avid MC)

 

 

 

 

[Tom Poole]

System schystem - I've used Resolve and Baselight. Both have advantages and I will agree that the Baselight panel is a beaut. But at the end of the day it doesn't mean anything if you ain't got the eye, taste or ability to make the client happy.

To be honest, I probably use about 10% of the Resolves tools. I find that people who wax lyrical about the tech side of the color boxes, usually aren't very good. My advice to my assists and people coming up is always the same "Immerse yourself in all things visual - photography, film, art, whatever it is". These are the things that will make you a good colorist, and also allow you to hold conversations with other creatives. 

 

[Margus Voll]

"No you got that wrong, bigger speakers make sound better"

But i agree with you totally. I have seen some god stuff done even on AE so it is not as much what you use but what comes out of it. Experience is also great help here.

[cameronrad]

I work in photography/retouching and am currently trying to learn video/colorist tools. I found this quote interesting and wanted to get some thoughts on it. It's from Pascal Dangin who is a notable stills retoucher, owner of Box Studios in NY. http://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/customers/case-studies/film/restless.php

Quote

Dangin notes that he selected Baselight for his grading platform because its toolset closely matches the tools he employs when working with stills. "The RGB color tools in Baselight are the same as the ones you find in traditional still photography applications," he explains. "Most systems rely on separating the gray-scale component of the image from the color information. As such, it does not respect the original photographic intent of the shot."

"Disassociating the two results in an 'un-photographic' look. Whereas in an RGB model, color and contrast are linked the way film is. When you desire less contrast you also change the color saturation."

I haven't used Baselight before but have briefly used Resolve. Mainly so I can translate Resolve's tools into Photoshop equivalents. For instance, Offset/Printer Lights in Resolve = Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer's constant slider. Anyways from what I've found, I seem to prefer the way Resolve handles color vs. Photoshop. The only area where I felt Photoshop really excelled was with Blend Modes like Soft Light which Resolve has now. Has anyone else had any observations while working with curves decoupling luminance/color vs. traditional rgb curves?

 

 

[Julien Chichignoud]

I'd say that regardless what people think is the best software, there's a lot of insight to be gained from learning more than one tool.

I can't speak for Baselight, but personally when I trained and worked on Mistika, after several years on Resolve, I came out with a lot more understanding of what each tool was doing and about colour grading in general. I use to swear by Resolve, and it is still my tool of choice, but seeing how things work in Mistika made me more conscious of how every grading software has strength and weaknesses, and learning a new way to work because to have to adapt to new tools can give you new methods and tricks that you'll use in other software.

It's kind of all blended in my head now, but I think that even when working in Resolve, Mistika has taught me more about how to use blending modes (because of its layer system) and organise my grades better (again because of how the "layers" work and how you "propagate" changes. Symphony taught me how to use curves (because the other tools were rubbish), and I probably got something from Speedgrade too.

Regarding that Pascal Dangin quote, it's something I've heard as a criticism of Resolve too, with its YRGB tools that are a bit of a bastard way of working since it's doing its own math to keep the luminance levels the same (so you're affecting all channels when you're changing one). Personally I think it has its strengths, but it puts off a lot of purists.

So learn the two. Maybe throw in a third. You don't have to be proficient in all of them (I certainly would need a bit of a refresher before taking a job on Mistika), but you can decide for yourself what works best and learn new tricks in the process.

If you need to choose, I'd also base my choice on what your clients and potential clients use, as well as the actual benefits of each tool. At the end of the day you often don't have the choice, and you'll get some jobs partially based on if you know how to run the machine they have or not.

[Jussi Rovanperä]

You can only use RGB controls and emulate a color timing / darkroom workflow. However it needs consistently shot material, where lighting ratios are decided for the final look in mind. 

For more "commercial" workflow, these tools alone are too restricted, but if you use the RGB tools as far as you can, before jumping into luma/saturation controls, you will better preserve the "photographic intent", and have a richer color.

In Resolve you can set the Lum Mix to 0, so the Y control has no effect, so lift-gamma-gain will be "pure" RGB. Also you can set the Lum Mix default to 0 in project settings/color.

I don't really see Baselight excel over Resolve in this aspect.

Edited December 4, 2016 by Sjors Krebbeks
Removed quite a few enters that made the post longer :)

[Anthony Raffaele]

I would have to agree that you need to develop an eye and watch a lot of films and go to a bunch of museums. You can't work on films and not be able to talk about them. You also find inspiration in other art forms. So a broad understanding of art is great. If you want an over view ... the story of art is a great read. And if your starting to color, you should be learning how to match grade. Single most important skill that will get you working on more projects.

I've graded on resolve, lustre, baselight, and some other smaller platforms. Resolve and baselight have similiar tool sets. My opinion is they only differ at advanced levels. if all your doing is banging on lift/ gama/gain until you have a good image and then keying skin tone and adding a vignette ... you can do it on any platform. If you want to recreate a style of image like a 2-strip look or something that looks like it was run through a telecine with the coring over cranked, you need flexibility in your tool set and  I use the same show lut for every film. So the looks I create are done by manipulating the image layer by layer. The layer system is what makes baselight stand apart. Similar to oil painting, you broad stroke lower layers and fine tune higher layers. Building subtle adjustments layer by layer. I think baselight offers those tools with more depth, flexibility, and overall larger set of options. Plus is aces color science and implementation blows the rest out of the water.

All my pontificating aside, it's a matter of comfort and personal preference. I may find doing something in resolve cumbersome but someone else might think the same process in baselight is cumbersome. 

So I guess ... you can split the diff.

 

 

[Margus Voll]

2 minutes ago, Anthony Raffaele said:

 

All my pontificating aside, it's a matter of comfort and personal preference. I may find doing something in resolve cumbersome but someone else might think the same process in baselight is cumbersome. 

 

 

Excellent point!

[Abby Bader]

9 hours ago, Anthony Raffaele said:

Plus is aces color science and implementation blows the rest out of the water.

Great to see you here Anthony! Can you elaborate more on how Aces in Baselight is better than in the other correctors?

[Anthony Raffaele]

For one, they revamped their color pipeline several years ago to fit more into the aces color model ... idt/working colorspace/odt. You don't have to be using aces to take advantage of their color mapping. You could easily map your r3d files from red log to xyz then color and output a dcp and rec709 pass with minimal adjusting.

They have been constantly updating colorspaces adding a ton of hdr options like HLG (hybrid log gamma). As well as a large selection of display rendering transforms. For those of you who aren't familiar, DRT/RRT's are basically the lut in this style of color work flow. Only smarter! The drt will transform your working color space into any output color space. It maps the points correctly. And this is where the baselight really shines. It's color mapping is so good that when I did the video trim for cafè society we added a half a point of red to the entire film and that was it. (After we did creative adjustments in the video pass but no actual matching).

In their new version they will be adding a "gamma compression" operator. For those of you that have worked in aces, it will help roll back illegal/ negative values. This is an inherent problem in the aces colorspace. It's so big that color literally roll negative and solarize.

I could go on and on technically but one of the main points of understanding these new technologies is to find options and inspiration to help tell the story in front of us. And to find a way to use all the "techno mumbo jumbo" creatively. 

i would also add that resolve and even lustre are creeping their way into ACES. Both can do it. Although ftom what I've seen their ease of use isn't quite there yet.

[Orash Rahnema]

hi all,

this thread is really interesting!

I wanted to ask to whoever is already using it if baselight for avid (or nuke) is worth it, how similar is to the proper baselight and what tools are missing.

I mean, I am working in the italian market and there are no baselight in Milan (where i am based), around here is mostly resolve and lustre.

I've always been very curious about baselight (and nucoda and mistika and scratch) as i believe is good to learn how other tools works, unfortunately there is no way to put your hands on this colour tools here where i am, so either the knowledge remain theoretical based on tutorial or  looks like the only real proper affordable solution would be to get a baselight plugin. Unfortunatelly i can't afford 50k+ to get a baselight machine (i wish i could).

What i don't really understand is, if filmlight manage to make a plugin for avid and nuke, why don't do a standalone software as well.

[Anthony Raffaele]

The baselight for avid plugin is pretty extensive. it has about 95% of the tools set of the regular baselight program. It lacks some major functionality that the baselight proper has, like the ability to compare shots and multi paste corrections. All of the quality of life and speed functionality is missing. That being said, we have a colorist at our facility using it on a case by case basis. 

[Andy Minuth]

I second that. The colour pipeline and toolset of the Baselight Plugin is identical to the full systems. But a huge drawback is the missing timeline and all the workflow tools. It is nice to learn, but to do a full project under pressure might be a bit of pita.

[Bruno Mansi]

I particularly like the render-less round-tripping between Avid and the full Baselight system.