How do you use DaVinci Resolve 17 for beginners?
So let's choose Zarya Alexa input gamma is log c and as soon as we do that it's converted to rec 709 properly we don't need to fill this out output color space or output gamma since we already selected that in our timeline settings okay but if you have something else selected in your timeline let's just say if I have DaVinci white gamut selected you're going to see the colors are going to shift
And I did not select rec 2020 but I want to select rec 709 gammas 2.4 so now everything should look proper okay so we're already parked on our hero frame and what I want to show you is this so usually what happens is let's just say the cinematographer sits with you and goes we want to go for a high key look let's bring the entire image up so usually what you would do you would go under your primaries you would take your
Offset right here and you will raise that okay so let's just look at this example in a different way let's say that this is going to be a horror movie and the DP goes let's make it super dark so when you pull this down the director of photography is expecting it to drop like stops as it was shot like that but unfortunately right now we are working in a rec 709 color space and more importantly the way these tools
Behave is that everything is happening after the way it was shot okay so when we bring this down let's just see what's happening right here you see like how everything is just getting clipped and that information is just gone so if I were to save this version okay and then reset this node now I'm going to go to my first favorite tool that I've been using a lot in resolve 17.4 which is
The hdr palette is okay and the difference between this and what we just saw in a regular primaries offset is that here we can select our color space at gamma so let's just say the color space is there Alexa and gamma is log c what does that mean what this means is that now this control is going to behave like you are changing the exposure in
Camera okay and this right here the exposure meter turns into just like how it is on a camera so if I wanna pull it up a stop I can just double click on this and hit one and hit enter and now it just brought up a full stop so this is a lot easier also to communicate with your cinematographer as well compared to working in this method which you're just sort of like eyeballing it and don't necessarily have
A way to measure by stops okay so that is a very cool difference something that we did not have access to before so here um if I were to make it dark look at how differently it behaves like look at this now this like we brought it down to by two and a half stops and it feels like it was shot later in the day let's match the results look at this
Okay what we did here and you see like how stuff got clipped if we go back in our primaries and how we were pulling this down remember when you pull this down it looked like that and like everything was clipped and it just looks so weird compared to like what's happening here like everything all the information is there like look at that so hdr palette all the information is there look the roll-offs are gentle soft whereas here super digital
Looking blacks are gone it feels like it was done in post compared to here which it exactly feels like it was done in-camera so now I wanted to show you the darker version to prove a point but I'm going to reset that and what I want to do instead is let's go back into our hdr palette and let's just say we create a more of a high key look so I'm actually going to crank this up and keep it
You see as it gave us enough contrast so our skin and colors don't look thin but then at the same time what we did here was we created a nice stylized high key look, okay so that was done by using our hdr wheels offset and literally bringing it up by 0.82 or we can even just do 0.75 so three-quarters of a stop right three quarters we just brought up three quarters uh to a stop and it gives us this and the DP will know exactly what's
Happening right if he's uncomfortable with like pushing it that much he'll tell you all right let's just give me half a stop okay um so this looks great nothing is blown out all the information is there at this point the other tool that I want to show you is this so we go right here under color warper and I'm also going to compare it with another tool that I use a lot which is hsl curves and that was the way that you would do what I'm about to show you
Before but now I think with color warper it's a lot easier why is it that let's just go and create a hypothetical scenario let's just say the director goes I want the her shorts to be more of a proper yellow okay instead of like this fluorescent green I want it to be yellow and I want it to be a little bit darker so traditionally you would do this you would go under your curves, okay you would go under hue versus you which is this
And you will tap this area right here to select it okay and then you will take that and you will pull it down right so where do we want to go up a little bit and now we're adding that color and then we can spread it right so like it's gentle right so now it's pretty gentle it's pretty organic we can keep it somewhere around here so we're kind of doing it and but now we just changed the hue versus hue we got to go under hue
Versus saturation and they also wanted to make it saturate so we got to click right here now we got to add more saturation we got to spread it out so it's smooth we got to go back on this and move it over so everything looks pretty good then they want it to be a little bit deeper of a yellow than what it is so we're going to go to hue versus luminance and we're going to click on it again and then we're going to pull it
Down a little bit right not too much and then we're going to go over and now we're going to spread it out go back and we're going to move it over something like that and it took this long to do this the results are really clean so that is amazing that's why I love using hsl curves so the job got done but it took a while and as a colorist you know you're always fighting against time okay so now what I want to
Show you is I want to reset that and show you a much faster and even more accurate efficient way which is by using color warper, okay and it is way more granular than what we just did but you don't have to keep doing the same thing three times you can do it all at once okay so the first thing that we want to do is like right now uh this spiderweb if you will is very general so six by six grid right we wanna change that we wanna have more
Just click right here and then pull back so here we can adjust hue saturation and luminance all at once so we have the skirt selected let's go ahead and make it more of a pure yellow something like this looks good let's go ahead add some saturation so we can add saturation right here and let's go make it a bit deeper right so we can just pull this down like so
And this doesn't look bad and I can even swing the hue up a little bit more right just make it warmer and all of that got done just with a simple swing right here by selecting it in our hue versus saturation,, okay everything is gonna stick and everything is gonna look proper okay so let's go back to our hero frame and at this point we can also go well what about the sky can we do something with the sky let's go-ahead
Select this area right here click on it so it is selected right here I'm going to start with the hue I'm going to start swinging it and see where do I like it so maybe I like a little bit of a teal variation in the sky something like that so it's a warm sunny day and now let's take the saturation and crank it always go too far and then pull it back so something like this and just by doing these two simple things
Now imagine you doing that on the spot with your client it will literally take hours off your work and you can use that time creating power windows working on your secondaries and like really make your projects sync so guys I'm going to say it again I cannot stress enough how important time is when it comes to color grading and having these tools over the traditional means to attack the things that I attacked here and you will see
How much extra time you will gain that you will end up spending on the creative process of color grading which is more fun let's just be honest so if you enjoyed
