Easy Color Management DaVinci Resolve 18
Resolve is finally becoming an adult.
finally becoming an adult but actually, I was still just a dumbass. Good times, though. Anyway, what i
want to show you what you need to do before you start color grading in Davinci Resolve 18 or 17 if
you haven't downloaded 18 yet. Color management! So, you're about to color grade some log footage
any log footage it doesn't matter what camera Canon clog Sony s-log it doesn't matter this is
s-log 3 from my sony a7s iii and it looks like poop flat no contrast no saturation poop now i
do hope that your poop doesn't look like that you know flat no contrast and no saturation
because you might want to go to a doctor or is it the other way around when it does have
contrast and saturation I don't know interesting wow um so the first thing we need to do now is
figure out what color space we're going to use now if you're doing video then chances are what
you need is rec709 because that's the standard for
Tv broadcast video you know the standard and even
if you're color grading for youtube specifically rec709 is also a good choice even though
technically I think that youtube uses srgb but the differences between rec.709 and srgb
are so small that you're not going to notice the difference that much so just use rec.709 and you
sho would be okay and for the sake of keeping this video simple I'm also going to use rec709 okay
now how do you make sure that your project ends up looking perfect the right colors the correct
color space there are a few ways to do it and first, I'm going to show you how I used to
do it the wrong way it's not the wrong way but there are better ways first of all in your project
settings set the color science to DaVinci yrgb da Vinci's own color space and later I'll
show you this one the color-managed option and then the timeline color space rec 709
gamma 2.4 output same as a timeline so also rec709 2.4 and remember if you specifically
want sb then you change this to srgb but also remember when in doubt just use rec709
for video okay we're off to a good start now
But my s-lock footage still looks like poop so
what we need to do now is bring that log footage that logs profile into the rec 709 color space we
need to make this look natural like a normal image not all flat and poopy and I used to do this
manually which is possible you adjust the curves and the log wheels to add contrast and add
saturation and at some point you'll end up with an image that looks like what it looked like when you
shot the video because that's what you want to do you want to get a natural-looking image
but doing it like this manually you have to be experienced and even then it's pretty much just
guessing so not ideal a second way to do it is by using luts and that's a much better way
because chances are that you can get luts for the camera that you have sony has luts to convert
s-log 3 into rec709 for example and it'll give you a correct result but you need to download
the correct versions of the luts and I mean you also have to know how to use luts do you put the
lut in the first node or the last node or the second node and there's nothing wrong with this approach
but I think there's a better way two ways actually
The first method is what I've been doing for a really
nonextended is using a color space transform so you go to the color tab and then up here you look
for the color space transform drop it on your node and then of course you have to select the input
color space in this case was s gamut.synet3 input gamma slog3 and then boom this is a great
the starting point for your color grade because this is a scientifically calculated correct image and
make sure that the tone mapping mode is set to da Vinci here because otherwise look you might get
tones and colors that jump out of that rec 709 color space and the tone mapping will keep them in
will contain them but the problem with this method is that you're working on a node level and
just like with the luts you have to know how the nodes work do you put the color space
transform in the first node or the last node there's not a correct answer for that
so for a beginner, it might be a bit confusing so there's another way to do it a much simpler
way less overwhelming if you're a beginner and even I use it right now so let's reset
this node goes back to the project settings
And instead of the standard DaVinci resolve the color
science set it here to the color-managed option then color processing to sdr we're not going to
do hdr here and output, of course, rec 709 hit save and now two things might happen first
of all DaVinci, resolve might recognize your camera and the color profile that you used on your camera
and it will automatically bring the footage into the rec709 color space and it will look great
automatically you don't have to do anything if you go here to the color tab and
camera raw this is where you'll see if it recognizes your camera and the color
profile if it doesn't then all you need to do is right-click on the clip here and select the
input color space in my case s gamma3.cineyslog3 and boom image looks great scientifically correct
and if you have multiple clips you can go to the media pool down here select all your clips and set
the input color space for all of them to whatever you need and now you have a great starting point
for your color grade without worrying about nodes and where to put color space transforms
or luts it will be automatically correct
