How do you do color grading on DaVinci Resolve?

How do you do color grading on DaVinci Resolve?

About that, if you want to learn more check it out on my channel but what we get looking at my Scopes here is that this is pretty much a monochrome um image, okay and we can see the colors right the only color that we see here on our Vector scope is the steel all right and then we can confirm that looking at our Vector scope too like where everything is sitting and this tells us the entire story okay that we need to know how I'm gonna switch back

To our image and this is the uh shot from Sony A7 S3 I believe and it is shot in s lock 3. so this is what we got we're taking an image from Sony and trying to compare it or create a look from stranger things and this was shot on red okay so the way I'm gonna do this is gonna be as always let's just lay out the Note 3 all right so I'm gonna create about five nodes, uh this one is going to be our CSD color space transform, uh this one is going to be our S curve okay this

One is going to be our look and then this one is going to be our secret sauce, okay, and then this one is going to be our adjustments the sequence always matters and you're gonna find out why it matters so much and I always tell you guys that you guys need to know the proper Note 3 structure to like create awesome grades this is going to

Be a good example of that and then if you guys want to learn more about that let's just take a second and mention um my free webinar link is going to be in the description and guys this teaches you how to set up a proper note tree and 100 other things in one hour this training is jam-packed okay it comes with practice footage power grades and lots created by me so if you want to learn more about that you should join this free training link is going to be

In the description and now let's jump in all right so the first thing that I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna go under my CSD color space transform drop on our of and then go ahead and give it proper information so we already know uh that this was shot in s-log 3 and then the gamma was s-log 3 right here and then we wanted to be Rec 709 and then we're gonna set that to gamma 2.4 let me show you my uh color management my timeline color

Space is set to DaVinci white gamut intermediate this is how um I always work ever since they introduced DaVinci white gamut I feel like it's the cleanest uh color space and how every tool operates I love it so this is what I've been using uh since the birth of again DaVinci white gamut so I'm going to cancel out this is how everything is set up and this is where we're at and this is where we need to get to so long ways to go and

I want to show you something okay when I play this through you guys are going to see all these different colors that are introduced here okay once again if we go back to our image what did we talk about let's just go and park right here and look at all the colors that we have compared to what we need to create okay so this is as difficult as it gets so knowing your tools is a must because once you have that knowledge it's really

Easy to just look at your reference and go okay I know what to do I can do X Y and Z and get there and this is where I come in my job is to give you that secret sauce so when you're asked to create a certain look or if you're just working on your project and want to experiment and create a fun look you'll have the right tools for that particular job, okay so what I'm going to do is the next step is going to be to go under in our secret sauce node and in here I'm

Going to type in compressor color compressor okay I'm gonna drop that on I'm gonna go back to my hero frame and uh or we can just for the example's sake park it somewhere around here and look what happens so the idea behind color compressor is that I can create a Target color which in this case will be blue and then if I click right here I can take my com you know compress Hue parameter and start compressing that Hue

Meaning I'm saying hey bring everything closer you can see it in your vector scope what's happening I'm saying here bring everything close to that blue like just bring it all in close to that blue see so we just basically removed any other color that is not blue okay and then for the saturation to get cleaner more believable results I'm gonna go open that up to somewhere around here maybe we can extend it just a little bit more

Something like this we can just leave it here because then that's going to give us organic results all right and we pretty much eliminated any other color than what we need to focus on at this point I can go back to my hero frame and our job with this tool is done okay now what I want to do is I want to go under my look node and I'm going to pop open my reference and here all I'm going to do is just look I'm going to go under my Hue and I'm going to start messing with

It's okay I'm going to start moving it around to like where I think we are in the ballpark so like say somewhere around here okay around here so what's going on like we're still not close like this looks just kind of weird and what's happening is that there's way too much saturation right now so what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab my saturation and I'm going to start closing it in okay uh not too much so we'll keep it

Somewhere around here and now I'm Gonna Keep moving my hue to something like this and now look at it okay so that one step this one node brought us close and because we unified all our Hues by using this tool we are right in the ballpark next step is going to be our custom curve so here what I want to do is I'm just ballparking it to what's going on here and I'm gonna create a point

Somewhere around here and I'm gonna start bringing it in okay and I'm gonna keep bringing it in um something like let's see maybe something like this doesn't look too bad if I do before and after okay and at this point, I'm gonna go back to my look and keep adjusting it, okay so I'm gonna move it around now and then what do we need to do like kill the saturation a little bit yep that helps

And then like look at it I'm just literally focusing right here to get in the ballpark so this is before this is after just look at what these two nodes did right here and at this point I'm going to go under my adjustment I want to take my gain and I want to pull it down a little bit I'm sorry I want to grab my gain so let's go back in here and pull it down a little bit not too much okay

So just a little bit and I'm just looking at this right here okay and I'm going to put these two right in the same ballpark so if I do before and after you can see what's happening even if you look at my highlights so now somebody can go well where are the highlights here if I were to go here and hover over you guys can see that the highlights are peaking like even here they're up there and that's what's going on over

Here to our highlights are up there okay so our highlights are pretty accurate we have an accurate image right now and it didn't take a lot of steps to get there now one more thing that I want to do I want to go under my curves and I want to add a little bit more green into the areas that have a bit more bluish tint than what's going on here okay so I'm going to go under my greens and I'm going to lift it a little bit

I'm going to go under my cyan and lift it a little bit uh not too much so even something like that something like this I feel like is a little bit of a closer match if I do before and after so this doesn't look too bad, okay and once again guys look at what we got going on here look at their image and look at our image we're right there in that world okay uh one more thing that I want to do in my custom curves I want to

Lift my blacks just a tiny bit so I'm going to go under my log wheels and I'm just going to pick up my Reds a little bit okay and just look at what I'm doing right here I'm trying to match that okay so I just like lifted my Reds just a tiny bit okay and I feel like I'm happy with what it does I'm gonna go back in my curves and I'm just gonna go back and bring back some of that bluish cyan it's pixel peeping guys like you don't necessarily have to do it but I'm just a

Freak like that so I feel like just by little we can go a long way okay we can bring these worlds together now what I want to do at this point uh it's extracurricular and uh I just wanna so so here's the thing right like I see a little bit bluer here compared to like the green that we see in our reference okay so that's why setting up your Scopes like this is very important so I'm going to go back in and

What's causing that so like let me take my blues and move them so now we're getting a little bit closer I'm just looking at these two okay I'm happy with what's happening here let's give it a little bit more saturation and then pull it back if we need to all right this is very very close I'm not going to obsess over it anymore and the next thing I'm going to do is let's create one more node right here and

Let's call it halation, okay and the tool that I'm going to use is a dancer so obviously this is a paid plug-in so you might not have access to it so this is again extracurricular you don't need to do this step this just adds that much more realism and this is the tool that I pretty much use on every single job that I work on a professional job that I work on and uh the power of this tool is just

Second To None okay so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go under halation and I'm going to turn that on now one thing that I do want to mention is that trust me every major project that you see and the way it looks they're using either their proprietary plugins or they're using these third-party plugins okay so because there's only so much you can do inside resolve that extra mile that you want to go to make it look Hollywood or

High-end commercial these tools can get you or help you get there um very easily very effectively Okay so before we even get into enhancer the one thing that I want to show you is this remember I said a proper notary structure matters the most let me detach this by hitting e detach this node and then plug this node right before our secret sauce node look what just happened

Same color changes same everything look at the results now I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna put it where we had it you understand what I'm saying that's just one quick example of like why it is important to have a proper notary structure because you might just think if I'm using an off then it should always go at the end that's not the case the same thing with this like usually, I tell you guys to put halation up top why am I putting halation down here

You're about to find out okay so what I want to do here is I want to go down here and I want to intensify it like really push it for you guys to see what I'm talking about so if I go all the way you can start seeing a little bit of like this red halo that's coming in right before after right this thing is coming in now if we go to our reference we can see just a little bit like around our guy it's a hint and this is where this red

Comes from it's not pronounced at all but it is just a suggestion let me show you this again if I detach this node by hitting e and I put this right here look at what happens like this is not halation at all Elation should have that little red fringing and now if I detach it again and put it where I had it you see that is the most natural effect right here and that all of this is being caused because of like what we did in the uh color compressor

Node okay so in this particular example then you have to put halation down here so that's why guys it matters and you should check out my free training because there are so many hidden gems and Easter eggs in there when it comes to building a proper Note free it's going to blow your mind so once again now we don't want to push it this far because that's going to be unrealistic because that's not what's happening in our um reference so

I'm going to go ahead and go back on that and just leave the halation to just do this this is a subtle effect but it just does enough but what I wanted to use this tool for is for green as well and obviously when you turn on grain it's ignorant makes no sense so what I want to do is I want to take the amount to bring it down to like around five-ish okay I want to take the resolution all the

Way up so 100 film resolution means like 8K basically and if I bring this down that's like just 240p or something okay that's the way I was told by the factory driver uh from enhancer the shadow detail I want to bring it down to like around six-ish highlights I'm going to bring it down to five-ish uh highlights the same thing midtone same thing and then chroma I want to leave it like this that's what I want to do and if I pull back to look at

This before-after so much natural texture looks so beautiful and now if we just go back and forth between the two and if I do this just look at what we created okay now a couple of things that I am noticing right now is the saturation levels are still really really off okay so what I'm gonna do and then another thing is like just the overall exposure I feel like we

Have just this is still brought up quite a bit compared to what we see here so I'm going to go under my adjustments first of all I'm gonna go back into my gain and I'm gonna pull that down and I'm just like literally going by like the feel like where does this feel close to me like where they're just like now living in the same world so even like somewhere around here I feel like it starts to look better okay and now

I'm gonna go under my highlights and what I want to do is just raise my highlights, okay so they are kind of up there because again look at this light right here okay so I want to just make sure that my lights go up there too like pretty bright so they just go all the way up so that right there is looking good to me even something like this because I'm just looking at these two right there

Okay now I want to go under my saturation and then pull that down a little but not too much and then let's go back under Hue and bring a little bit more of that blue in there and this is looking good right so I mean small changes and one more thing that I want to do is I want to bring up my girl just a tiny bit so that's going to get done under our shadows so I'm going to

Go in here and uh in my S curve on this level I'm just going to go ahead and bring her up I'm just kind of eyeballing it right now so even something like this so this to me looks much better so guys check this out okay if I just do this and go between the two I mean just look at what we started and where we ended up and even down to something like this like how close we've gotten there and let's do this so I'm gonna go all the

The way here and I'm gonna go in this mode let's kill all of these so this is our log direct709 conversion then we went ahead and compressed our colors and created an S curve to get in the ballpark dialed in our colors this is our look node made adjustments that made all the difference in the world okay that made a big difference and then halation just does enough to

Separate our highlights and then uh green is also added in here now going back in here you know yes this might be better in terms of like this shot right here but we have to remember that we're trying to create that world right there okay so like what else can I do can I just go back in my gain and lift it a little bit like does that do anything like if I just like lift that a little bit like that so

We can see our girl just a little bit more and then maybe go under my log wheels and grab my shadows and pull it down just a touch so that might not be bad okay where we're at right now so I'm just not gonna obsess over it anymore I'm gonna go in here delete this one and then let's go ahead and save this one and this is what we got guys

and the best thing about it is this okay if I just hit play let this entire thing play out I don't need to create power windows I don't need to create qualifiers I don't need to worry about any artifacting or additional power windows or making sure nothing is blowing out like everything is locked in it's perfect and this is our entire look DNA okay we can apply this on the entire scene and then just go in using our

Offset to make sure that the exposure stays the same right for shot matching purposes but this is what we got and guys this is why I tell you it is very important to know the ins and outs when it comes to color grading but you have to put it in context right if I would have shown you the color compressor without the context it would have been really hard for you to understand how it works but now that you've seen it in this particular example I'm sure a whole