The Ultimate Color Density DCTL 🌈 (it's cheap!)

In which I present my new Color Density dctl for DaVinci Resolve. Get it here: iridescentcolor.com/product/d...
More on Tetrahedral Interpolation by Juanjo Salazar: drive.google.com/drive/folder...
Steve Yedlin: Display Prep Demo and Followup: www.yedlin.net/DisplayPrepDem...

[@VelvetPleasures]

Thanks for this! Bought it and love what it lets me achieve without major experience in color grading.

[@TheNicomachean]

Thanks for creating and sharing this. I just purchased it from your shop! I'd love to see more videos about these color transforms. I intend to use these tools to do display prep for a project I'm working on soon. So, further breakdowns/explanations would be extremely helpful!

[@brown2840]

This is Christmas early!!! Finally a density tool that's affordable and just as lovely as "those others" :P Thank you from the bottom of my heart :)

[@IridescentColor]

Thank you, and you're welcome!!

[@cffilmmaker]

Thank you so much, I’ve been waiting for an alternative that didn’t cost an arm and a leg, this is going to change my grading forever

[@IridescentColor]

I'm so glad to hear this is helpful to you! :)

[@lombardy3274]

£15 is an absolute bargain - I will be picking up a copy for sure. I’ve tried a bunch of other cheaper density DCTL’s but they are very simplistic. I was looking at MONONODES but can’t justify that pricing and this looks like it’s doing comparable things.

[@mustafakamal8608]

Thak you so much. Finally DCTL that cost friendly for us that are not in developed country. By the way can you breakdown your fusion set up to show cube like that.

[@IridescentColor]

I'm so happy to hear that this is widening accessibility for people in less privileged regions of the world! I'll see if I can make a quick video about the fusion setup!

[@nicolo7598]

This is very interesting and it seems like a rather must-have tool for Resolve, however I can't quite understand where this would sit in a grading workflow. What is this exactly meant for? What is its purpose within the grade? Is it meant to sit before or after a color space transform? I feel like these aspects should have been discussed and discussing them will help you market the tool. Right now this is only going to sell to people who know exactly how to implement this in their grading workflows, which is not that many people as you may have realised. There's also probably a bunch of people who are going to buy this without a clue on what to do with it, which might just get them to hate the tool and say bad things about it. One hypotetical scenario that springs to my mind is I often end up with washed up colors on the highlights, resulting in me trying to copensate with the Hue vs. Saturation curve. However that affects the entire image and colors, which often makes skin tones look way off. One could also just decrease the highlights gain, but that would have an even stronger and damaging effect. Would that be an ideal use case scenario?

[@mcewan1978]

Thanks for that, i just bought it. With the other DCTL producer(you know) the thing is it came as an expensive package, and all i wanted was the density tool, well done and thank you!!!

[@IridescentColor]

Glad you like it! I totally know where you're coming from so I'm very glad you found this helpful.

[@HikingWithCooper]

Ditto. Almost bought it last night but dang, I'm not making money doing this. This DCTL came at just the right time. Can't wait to get home and take it for a spin!

[@elianmusic7452]

Incredible. I will buy it when i get my bmpcc6k soon :) Amazing stuff.

[@VicerFx]

You're amazing bro

[@IridescentColor]

Thank you! Doing my best!

[@samuelguce]

Thankyou muchly! I'm new to density grading and this will surely help get my head around it while really bringing my grading to another level - thankyou

[@samuelguce]

Enjoying playing around with it however I’m wondering if you have a recommendation on where to place in the node structure? (In log space pre-lut or after my rec709 transform lut?)

[@imcrimson8618]

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for linking the resources in the description! I find looking for resources on color science hard to find😅

[@IridescentColor]

You're most welcome! I know what a pain it can be to look this stuff up (and I also feel a sense of responsibility to give credit to the people on whose work I'm building).

[@Gedaly]

That's a nice looking tool!

[@IridescentColor]

Thank you Gedaly!

[@SwitVideoProduction]

Thank you ever so much!

[@hoff-music]

awesome - thank you 👍👍

[@JDTremaine]

Very nice. I've tried a few density plug-ins, but not really been satisfied with any of them. Maybe this one will be different. It'd be nice to have one that works and is intuitive. Maybe this is the right one.

[@HikingWithCooper]

This is great! (I'd pay more than 15 but no baksies :) ). Tried it. Loving it!

[@faceicu]

thanks 😁

[@Pinionistus]

Would you be kind to share how did you create this cube on the left view ? Would love to use this for tutoring people on color science.

[@IridescentColor]

Yes! You need to create a LUTCubeCreator Node upstream of whatever other nodes you have and then right klick the left viewer and klick Views > and set it to 3D histogram. then right click the viewer again and under 3D Histogram choose Solid and under 3D Histogram > Sampling choose 1:1. Hope this helps :)

[@emucolor]

great!

[@OneMonthTwoCameras]

Very excited about this. I went ahead and purchased the + version for the additional features but it appears the density sliders there are slightly different. Does weight in the + version equal the preserve highlights function of this version?

[@IridescentColor]

The weight slider is similar but gives you a little more control, more on how it exactly behaves here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pmS7Z31vfJJqpMkfeature=shared&t=83

[@OneMonthTwoCameras]

@@IridescentColor Ah wonderful thank you so much!

[@sanadakhumanthem3557]

I loved it, I tried pixeltools hueshift which is great as it has hue, density, saturation for RGBCYM and skin tone separately on a single dctl, is it possible to make such a dctl with your tetrahedral, spherical and HSV interpretation. Sometimes we want to use just a single node to do everything making the nodegraph cleaner, other times people want separate dctls/nodes. Furthermore is it possible to add zero as middle ground on the slider and density or any other adjustment goes in a positive and negative way like adding density or subtracting density. And if possible can you add Brightness to the list, Hue, Saturation, Density and Brightness for every primary 😁. That would be like the best thing. Mononodes Density DCTL pack has everything separated for hue, brightness, sat, density and all, which sometimes create 5 6 nodes and changing them again and again going each and every one of them takes too much time and clutter on nodegraph. Just my ideas though 😜

[@IridescentColor]

Thanks for your feedback! I know where you're coming from with having to use several dctls that mess up your nodegraph. I try to strike a balance between plenty of functionality and not making the tool completely overwhelming to use with tons of sliders. It's really a shame that DCTLs don't allow for collapsible sections. If that was possible I would totally be on board with making such a tool. I honestly wish I was familiar with OFX plugin development; I think that would be a much better framework for that (and if I had more time I would be extremely tempted to abandon dctls in favour of OFX plugins). Personally, I get really overwhelmed when there is 20+ sliders without visual separation, so I'm unlikely to make a dctl that includes all of these things, because I would personally hate using it. I like your idea of including negative density though - certainly something I will have a play around with and potentially add if it works out.

[@sanadakhumanthem3557]

@@IridescentColor I think OFX pipeline gives is more advanced api options as most plugins like borisfx, beautybox or filmbox are made as OFX, just give it a little time bro, its all the familiar codes only. It won't be that hard for you. Thank you

[@mustafakamal8608]

Do you make the desaturated version? Where it does the opposite, desaturate and make the color lighter?

[@IridescentColor]

Yes, this is something I'm working on at the moment!

[@akcivan]

Hello man, thank you so much just bought your DCTL and having issues on my blackmagic mini panel, trying to reach you to show what it happen.

[@IridescentColor]

Hi! Have you tried using the version with "NE" at the end of the file name? DCTLs with emoji icons in them can unfortunately cause issues with the control panels. The version without emoji icons should hopefully work fine. Please let me know if you continue having issues!

[@simonrabeder1599]

What input color space do these dctls expect? I work primarily in ACEScct/AP1 custom node workflow. Is it best to drop it in there or should I transform to something different?

[@IridescentColor]

They're definitely optimised for DWG/Intermediate but they'll work fine in similar wide gamut / log spaces. Since ACEScct uses values below 0 and above 1 you could potentially run into issues with those getting clamped, so it might be worth at least gamma tagging your node as DaVinci Intermediate (provided that your timeline space is defined correctly) or something similar to bring those values in. When in doubt, you can't go wrong just transforming into DWG/Intermediate if you can live with the node tree clutter. Hope that helps!

[@simonrabeder1599]

@@IridescentColor cct never goes under 0 and only potentially goes over 1 but with most scenes doesn’t. It won’t be a problem to transform into dwg forctge operation. I will test this and can get back to you if there are any problems.

[@kent5147]

How do you feel about Resolve 19's color density option in the Slices feature?

[@IridescentColor]

Well I certainly have mixed feelings about it. I think I'm very biased since it's directly threatening my income, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. It obviously has the huge advantage of being beautifully integrated into the UI, and for shot level grading it seems like a useful feature and I'm sure many people will be very excited to have it there and not bother buying any DCTLs instead. In terms of using it for look dev, I'm a bit more sceptical, and I think their implementation of negative density is very much inferior to mine. But I think I might have to make a video pointing our the ups and downs compared to DCTLs like mine or MONONODEs.

[@joshpickup2581]

any idea how your method differs from the mononode density dctls

[@IridescentColor]

Great question! Yes, i have an idea. In the spherical method, they are very similar identical, as the standard MONONODES density dctl uses the same method as far as I can tell. There are very minimal differences in the falloff if you match the parameters but none that I would expect to make a significant difference in a real life scenario. They are exceedingly close to each other. In the tetra mode, my dctl principally functions exactly as Stefan's tetra version does; however his deep slider and my "preserve highlights" slider use different methods. Mine is more consistent between different modes, whereas his tetra version uses a completely different method for the deep slider that gives different (albeit very beautiful) results. Then there's obviously the HSV mode and the couple of other features that mine has and the MONONODES ones don't. Hope that is useful :)

[@amirulbimo289]

​@@IridescentColorany different the method of your dctl compare to pixeltools?

[@ryanpaulretouch]

Can these DCTLs be baked into LUTs for camera viewing? Or will they be bypassed?

[@IridescentColor]

Yes, they can be baked into LUTs.

[@KanopiCreative]

This is probably a stupid question but what is the difference between increasing density to decreasing luminosity and increasing saturation?

[@IridescentColor]

Not a stupid question at all, and the answer also depends a little bit. The term obviously originally comes from analog film, but I think it's fair to say that in terms of digital color grading, what people have come to mean by the term is a sort of "subtractive" style of saturation where more saturated colours become darker rather than brighter (the latter being what happens when increasing sat in HSL for example) to mimic how film would behave. So it's not just a simple decrease in luminance, but a decrease in luminance depending on the level of saturation of the color, which is another layer of complexity which then can be achieved in different ways, for example with spherical or tetrahedral methods. In a lot of these cases, overall saturation doesn't actually increase at all, but the rendering of saturated colors changes. In the spherical method for example, very faint colors almost don't change at all (hence the natural looking skin tones), whereas very saturated colors can appear massively darker (without getting desaturated) Hope that makes sense!

[@KanopiCreative]

@@IridescentColor That's awesome thanks for taking the time to answer my question. I've bought the product and am liking it a lot so far!

[@IridescentColor]

@@KanopiCreative You're welcome and thanks for buying the tool. Glad you like it!

[@user-pi1si1er8s]

Does this have to be used in the fusion page?

[@IridescentColor]

No, it's designed for the color page - I just used fusion to demonstrate how it affects the RGB cube.

[@user-pi1si1er8s]

Wow awesome! I'm going to pick it up right away @@IridescentColor

[@dondouglas]

"With the other DCTL producer(you know)" I went to see since it caught my attention to promote a product like (it's cheap!) and I found the comments and then the product page. The truth is that basing a campaign on discrediting another developer seems like a bad strategy, exploitative and immoral. Do you also sell LOUIS VUITTON handbags? I don't know what your DCTL will do and I won't know because I would never buy something cloned, in the best of cases. You have all Mononodes products at a bargain price. Congratulations to you and the buyers who do not deserve to have people developing to move forward.

[@IridescentColor]

Wow that's quite an intense comment. You seem to have a lot of strong feeling and assumptions towards me. "Exploitative and immoral" are rather strong words indeed. I will say I'm not sure exactly where I'm discrediting anyone - I have my own pricing strategy which is mainly based on my own experience with poverty and has nothing to do with trying to discredit anyone. Everyone has the right to sell their products at a price that they deem reasonable and everyone has the right to decide whether that's a good use of their money. Incidentally, almost all of the operations in this dctl are based on math and science which is available online to everyone willing to dig for it, much of it it open source. Neither I nor Stefan or Kaur or anyone else has invented any of this - it's all built on the work of brilliant people who preceded us, some of whom I have linked in the description. It's curious that you admit to not knowing what this DCTL will do while at the same time claiming it is a (worse) clone of something else. Maybe it would be a better strategy to first ask questions and engage in constructive conversations rather than immediately attacking people online?

[@IridescentColor]

Btw I'm also really not sure that Stefan, who is a big established name in the industry, needs you to defend him against exploitation by a small insignificant guy on KZbin. And I think you're most certainly doing him a disservice my comparing him to an overpriced fashion brand whose prices are completely based on name recognition rather than ethical production practices…

[@dondouglas]

@@IridescentColor I think you haven't understood the substance of what I write about. It can't be anything personal since I'm writing to a brand called "Iridescent Color" and I don't know if it's one person or it's 40 developers. Therefore there are no "feelings", nor assumptions, I base it on what I am seeing and really "the resemblance" to "that other man's other website" is quite obvious. So it's not a defense of another company or another person, it could have been Oleg Sharonov, Dehancer or Joel Famularo. Each one has contributed to the wonderful company that is Blackmagic incorporating his work, which has allowed it to improve its software. These people can develop their work because there are people who buy their developments, depending on the use and need of each one. I apologize for the intensity of the comment, although considering that I am an insignificant guy on KZbin it doesn't seem like it will have too much significance. - The strategy is to mention in the title "the other DCTL, but cheap" And obviously it is a very popular argument so the rest of the opinions that are not mine are dedicated to commenting in that sense. But in my humble opinion and in the hypothetical case that they do the same, I think you are taking advantage of a well-established path. It is one thing for programming to be open source and another to emulate 1-1, in hypothetical features but in image and other products. You can do that or whatever you want, but since you do it on a public channel, you run the risk of someone having another point of view and expressing it. I would like to see DCTL that do something else, not just lower the price of a product on the market.