DaVinci Resolve 17 | Color Grading Tutorial
all right, so let's get the party started.This is going to be a very straightforward node tree, so let's start building out our node tree.I'm gonna have about six nodes.First one for, alright.
I'm gonna keep some of it a surprise, okay?
So let's break it down like this.
Don't get confused yet.
So, the first node, let's call it Halation plus green.
Okay.
The second node is gonna be our HDR palette.
This is going to be our primaries.
This is going to be the sauce.
And then, this is going to be our CST.
This one will be our LUT.
So this one, we're gonna base this off of the kodak2383.
I'm gonna drop in a color space transform I'm gonna change the output gamma to cinnamon for us to have a proper conversion.
And then, this, I'm gonna change it to Rec.709.
Here we're gonna select Alexa.
And then in gamma, we're gonna select Arri Log C.
So this is what happens.
It looks kind of weird, that's okay because once we go under our film looks, let's apply, which one do we gamma apply?
Let's apply the middle one.
So as soon as I click on it, everything is looking proper now.
I mean, it's still pushed, right?
That's just this LUT. It's really, really pushed so we're gonna fix it in here, alright, in these nodes.
So in this node first of all what I wanna do is I do want to open up my image a little bit So I'm gonna do a little bit of a gamma gain dance.
So I'm gonna go gamma up, gain down.
something like that.
Gamma up a little bit, gain down.
You know, 'cause we've gotta create a cool film look, right?
I mean, this is just looking weird
This is, it has started to breathe a little bit so I like that.
I'm gonna keep that there.
I'm gonna come in here, HDR wheels.
Let's click on these three dots and give it a piece of proper information.
So color space is Alexa, and then am gamma in Arri Log C so now all these parameters are gonna work
as if I'm making changes inside my camera, okay?
So now what I wanna do is I,m gonna go under my HDR shadows, I'm gonna grab my shadows
I'm gonna lift them up about maybe a quarter of a stop.
Something like that so if I do before and after, there you go, so these, if I do before and afterlook at this.
We created really nice roll-offs.
You can see it, top and the bottom end.
See how it's kind of crushed down here and crushed up top?
Started to breathe again.
So this is much better, okay.
Now, what do we have to do?
I mean the image looks way too red, right?
just look at it What is going on?
if I click on this guy right here, we get to have our scop0es so we can change that to the waveform.
And this is only for setting up our proper balance and then I'm gonna minimize this because we're gonna be focusing on this section for this right here node, our sause node.
So for primaries, what do we see?
There's a lot of red in here.
I'm gonna go under my printer lights in here.
So keep your eyes right here in our offsets.
And what I wanna do is let's take out some of the red.
So as soon as I do that, it's starting to look way better, right?
Maybe a little bit too much cyan in our shorts right now.
So okay, doing that helps. And then. So now we have to find a balance, right?
So I'm gonna do quarter offset and this time I'm gonna just add a bit more cyan back in.
So something like that and If I do before and after looking so much better,
even look at it in our vectorscope.
So, started to look really, really good, okay?
I mean, just look at it.
These two made a world of a difference.
Right here, so guys, this part you cannot avoid, okay?
I'm gomma show you the easiest and the fastest way to do the complementary scheme thing
but this cannot be minimized, the power of primaries and what you can get from your image, look at without.
So an amateur will end up with something like that after applying a LUT and then he'll be cussing out the LUT.
Whereas all you need is just a little bit of experience and knowing what you're doing to get a really good film-like quote-end-quote image, okay?
So this is looking really good.
What do i need? What am I looking at?What else can we do right now to this image?
So I'm gonna go under my primaries and I'm gonna go under these bars and make changes on this level, okay?
So what happens if we take some of the green out in our gamma?
just pull this down a little bit and then take some of the yellow out too.
Not too much, so something like this.
If I do before and after. Okay, That doesn't look too bad.
So this is a super small change.
You guys saw what I did here.
And barely anything but I feel like it just helps out just a tiny bit
so I'm gonna leave it there.
I think we're ready to jump into our sauce.So what is this sauce thing that I'm talking about?
And let's check it out right now.
So I'm gonna minimize this.
We're gonna change it to parade and we should be good.
Actually, you know what?
Vector Scope might be better. So let's keep it here. And this is it. This right here, Color Warper, okay?
What is Color Warper, how do you use it? Let's find out really quick.
So what we're looking at right now is having the ability to not only select a certain hue and shift it, but we can also control it on a saturation level, okay?
Whereas when you are in your HSL curves, right?
So we have hue versus hue, here we can only swing the hue of a specific color but it doesn't give us the ability to control it on a saturation level, alright?
So this is way more granular than the HSL curves.
Then we move over to the second tab, which says Chrom and luma.
And this is also extremely powerful because not only we can string the hue from yellow to blue to yellow or green to magenta or magenta to green, but we can also affect the luminance at the same time.
Once again, when you are in your course and if you go right here, you can only affect hue versus luminance. You can only affect the luminance of a certain hue but it is very broad.
It doesn't give you the granular control that you need.
And now let's just put it to action, okay?
It'll make a lot more sense. So usually I open it up, by default it's a six by six grid,
I think it's just too broad. So I go by 12by 12 which gives us finer control over cach hue and saturation point, okay? So now that we're here, What we can do is, the reason why I think this is the future of color grading is that this is the first time in DaVince resolve
Where we can interact with our image on the screen, okay? So can just literally click right here and start moving this and you can see down here what I'm doing.
This is something that we could not have done before. So obviously this is not a good representation of it, what I'm doing, but if you're not going psycho, this could be extremely powerful, right? I mean, I just go in the skin and I'm like, alright, I need to add a magenta, I need to pull out some of the yellow.
Whatever it is that we want to do, we can do it on screens, very, very powerful.
Or you can use it for, I wanna affect the sky, right?
So I can just tap on it. It can give me that point and now I can come in here and I have two options, one, I can control it on the actual web right here or I can control it individually by using these, alright?
So what I wanna do is I wanna do this. I'm gonna grab the sky and I'm gonna add just a little bit of color I'm not gonna overdo anything, okay?
That's not gonna look good. So look at the power of this, guys, come on. Check this out, what I just did.
How small of a change that was, look at this, the color separation king over here, this tool.
It's crazy if you use it sparingly, okay?
Push it too far first and then dial it back. But just look at what we just did, with a split second we created that.
Now I wanna add a little bit of warmth in my highlights so I'm gonna grab this and I'm gonna go towards the left and I Just added warmth. That's the split toning action that happening right here.
Look at this.
Two moves, and what we got. Okay?
And you can keep going but like what I'm seeing here with the changes that I've made just with my hue versus saturation part of this tool.
Now let's go under Chroma and Luma and let me show you what you can do here.
EX tremely powerful, so now I wanna go.
Okay, the color I really Like that I see here, but now I wanna add some depth to it so I can just click on it.
First of all, don't forget.
Let's spread it out.
Six bu six is just too narrow.
This is a bit broader, I Iike that.
Now let's click on this right here pull it down and look what's gonna happen.
And I can add a bit more blue.
Before and after, just look at that.
So it brought our image down, right?
At this p[oint, you can go, dude,
I don't wanna bring the skin down,
I just wanted to bring the sky down.
That's okay, now you can click on the skin and lift it up.
Boom, right there.
Look at this effect that we're creating.
And now I can go in here and I'll be like, you know what?
I want this to be very green, not so much teal.
And I wanna lift it up a little bit so I can go, alright, let's add more green.
So now I'm adding way more green, right?
And I Gifted it up a little bit, but that dirtied up everything over here.
So I can just click right here and counter that.
and our highlights right here.
And then once again, what happens if I go back in here, grab this and even just pull it down a little more?
See, I obviously don't wanna break it, but I wanna see what else can I get out of it.
So I can really go that far
Without cracking anything, okay?
So just look at the detail that we brought in the sky, the warmth that we added right here, how we lifted the shirt to keep the good contrast exposure going, and then brought the shadows down.
Look at the detail that's coming back.
See right here?
It was blown out before, brought that detail back. pulled up his skin, pulled up the green in here.
And guys, that's the power of it, okay? You can just use it, however, your heart desires but this is just a beginning to something that I feel is truly the future of color grading.
Because when we make changes on the screen, it's more tactile.
We have a different level of connection than just using these knobs, right?
It's so different.
And now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna finish it off by dropping on Halation and it looks weird when you first drop it on so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go under my gamma and I'm gonna dial that back. I'm gonna dial it back to something like this and now that looks pretty good.
It's a cool effect so I'm gonna leave it on
where it is right now, maybe dial it back
just a tiny bit more.
I like the rest that's happening here.
And I'm gonna go here, turn on my grain.
Obviously, it's a bit too much so I'm gonna dial it back to something like this.
I'm gonna take my size and keep it somewhere around here.
So that does a really nice effect overall.
If I park It here, before, after.
And then Halation is gonna show through here.
Before, see the rim on the glasses?
After I think it's a really nice effect so I'm gonna leave it right here. So let's take all of this, kill it,
where we started to where we ended up, okay?
So it started with our 2383.
it was super, super strong.
Dis some lift gamma gain dance.
And just look at this, this is gorgeous.
You can print this and look absolutely stunning and all happened before your eyes using primaries.
Then went in my HDR and just lift up the image a little bit, I think it goes a long way, just these two right here make all the difference in the world.
And then showed you the magic that you can create.
Now, obviously, as I said,
it's up for interpretation, right?
Like somebody can go, dude, I like the image before better. well, that's totally up to you but I wanted to show you the power of this tool and how it can be used. and then we topped it off with Halation.
Made a big difference. And one more thing that I do notice here that we can mess with this, right?
I can go grab these greens and really state creating some separation here too.
So look at it.
What it was before to what I just did with it.
I just added. Again, did you see how easy that was?
If I just do before to after, right?
How easy it was to go in there in the leaves and just completely change the color of it.
Even back there, right?
We changed all of that and it was just so simple.
We can obviously do the complete opposite, right?
We can just take this and go the other direction and make it very fall-looking, right?
Which could also be pretty cool, actually.
so we can do this.
Which creates a completely different type of effect. So I think I actually prefer this more.
So this was our image before the color warper, this is our image after the color warper and you see the split toning that I was talking about?
And how easy it was to create it here?
Let's check out the final look in full screen.
Video Link