Use DaVinci Resolve Like a Real Pro: Creative and Technical Color Balancing (DWG Workflow pt. 2)

Our series on using DaVinci Wide Gamut continues with a focus on creative and technical color balancing, including the difference between balancing and shot matching.
Follow the whole series to master Resolve's fantastic color management pipeline to reliably create striking footage in every project!
Part 1: Project settings and setting your look: • Use Resolve like a Rea...
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[@artyom_color]

"Append node to selected clips" is a gem 🖤

[@AlbertKarhuFilms]

This is what a real professional sounds like. Thank you for being yourself and giving us tools AND thoughts to chew on.

[@dougfranckwolf]

Great vid, thanks so much for sharing your knowledge. One note I would like to add as a 20 year veteran VFX guy whos worked on everything from huge movies, music vids, my friend's short films etc.., is I cannot stress enough how correct Cullen is about keeping things simple. I have worked with many VFX people who throw every plugin and complex system to try and make a shot look good. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but even when it works amazingly well, a client can come by and start changing every aspect of a shot. If you have a ton of plugins, a spiderweb of nodes, its not an easy thing to start to untangle all that to isolate how to address the client's need. And client's changes can be a challenge on its own. But if you can make it work with a few nodes and you stick to the simplest tools, it makes like a lot easier. Esp at 3am and all you want to do is go home and sleep. :)

[@PostColorGear]

Cullen, I appreciate you making these videos. This is the kind of stuff that I enjoy watching. Sometimes, I can get stuck on the technical side of things, whether it comes to watching content or creating some for my own channel, but workflow overviews like this are a breath of fresh air. Thanks again!

[@khanhlammaune]

Sir, thank you for your "keeping things simple" tip. I have tried to remove many things on my nodes tree, and now my life is easier than ever before. The more I put in, the less I can control them. So, it looks good in some parts, but not all of them. Now, I know how to simplify the process. Btw, the way you explain is easy for me as a non-native English learner.

[@jackieronimo8112]

I have to say after watching your videos for a few days now this is some of the most informative content I've ever watched from one professional to another. I'm so tired of the bullshit videos using every tool and buzzword in the book. Seriously great work man.

[@AadilDar]

Thnk you for your time.! Could you please close the Gallery & Clips tab Or may be narrow down the Node viewer whenever possible, so that we could get the zoomed in view of viewer. As you might be monitoring on the second monitor, but for us that space could be useful..!

[@kiranraval]

thank you for clarifying chapter 2 I had read it three times to understand now I've got it.

[@benmcphee4401]

Just curious... why the offset ball and not temperature/tint? Wouldn't the ball be harder to repeat each time and have the possibility of introducing slightly different shifts on each clip?

[@peturthor5140]

Looking forward to the next one!

[@residentbeedle]

Great video, Cullen. I enjoy watching your content a lot. Just had a quick question: how would you incorporate using a colour chart into a DaVinci Wide Gamut workflow? Thanks 😊

[@brcury92]

Looking forward to pt. 3

[@MPAflix]

I like it very much, it is absolutely professional. What about saturation? You didn't mention it at all. Shouldn't we add another node to deal with Saturation?

[@MPAflix]

@@CullenKelly Glad to tell us your approach. It would be nice to specify it in another video. I'm sure a lot of audiences have the same demand. Cheers

[@kao4258]

Thank you for your work it really helps !

[@Landonlacey10]

I can't believe Anthony Kiedis is helping me refine my Davinci Wide Gamut Workflow, what are the odds?

[@gabrielwolfcolor]

Thank you very much. It is always a pleasure to follow your well structured guidelines. 🙂 Are you planning a video on best practices for (Vimeo) HDR10+ grading and exporting? Best from Berlin

[@dmzdj]

Thank you so much!

[@denisdodo]

find u tonight! u r perfect) thanks for your work

[@Marina120785]

Hi Cullen! Can you please elaborate a bit more on how you achieve color separation with just the offset wheel? Doesn't the offset always work uniformly, pushing the whole image in the same direction?

[@Marina120785]

@@CullenKelly Yes, thank you! So, in this case you are actually balancing the shot. I guess the term separation for me meant adding color contrast or depth (split toning).

[@Freddd95]

The three shots at 10:40 look very different from each other in terms of color balance though?

[@koushikbhattacharya832]

awesome class.thank u sir♥️.sir how do i watch ur blackmagic color management new tutorial what u have mentioned in the last class?

[@sobolevskys]

Cullen, can't find part 3.

[@johnnywong83]

of all the workflow I watched on KZbin your workflow makes the most sense. However this is great if all the cameras are RAW or has profile that Davinci support. What about when the camera is not RAW or has no profile that Davinci support... say some footage from action cam coming off of a gopro, insta360 or some generic camera maybe even some aerial footage shot by drones?

[@TharanTandale]

Always finding so much value in every single video, thank you Cullen! I sometimes find making a balance adjustment using the gain wheel in a linear state to feel the most organic, especially when the balance is quite off. Using offset in this state tends to throw the black points off (as seen on a grey scale ramp). Could you tell us why you would choose offset over a more photometrically accurate method? Is it just the simplicity? Thanks again!

[@BarrettKaufman]

Love it. Question though, if a whole scene skews green would it be more efficient to do a scene wide adjustment (maybe via post-group clip node)? And then after that address each shot individually?

[@BarrettKaufman]

@@CullenKelly Awesome! I look forward to it

[@JTBrown-qt4hr]

Hi Cullen! Thanks so much for putting these videos together - super helpful. I have a quick question about gamma shift and using Davinci Wide Gamut on a Mac system. I've only ever achieve color accurate grading by forcing a Rec. 709-A color space and have yet to try the Davinci Wide Gamut - would I just need to output to Rec. 709-A for DWG rather than the Rec 709 Gamma 2.4 that you chose to output to in this tutorial to avoid a shift? Thanks for your time!

[@corgam]

Awesome content, as always. I wonder what your take is on software that accelerates the color balancing/matching process, such as colourlab.ai, do you think it will spoil colorists and make them a bit lazy? it seems like a double edge sword to me, great benefits (aka speed) but also a massification of the craft, kinda like what happened with the dslr phenomenon, where people with a Canon 5D instantly became "DP's", so now with these softwares anyone can be a "colorist"?. Maybe I'm too pesimistic :P Cheers!

[@peterquigley2700]

Hi Cullen, just when i thought i had an OK workflow ,I find your stuff! Definitely next level. Question if I may, If following your workflow I wanted to use a REC 709 Lut and not a DWG Lut as you used, would I need to do a convert DWG to 709 infront of the 709 LUT ? thats what makes sense as the LUT expects rec 709? When I convert DWG to 709 The image changes significantly (no Lut Yet) I would have thought DWG to 709 wouldn't change the image as the overall output was 709 anyway? Or does putting a 709 lut in the project level of the clip on its own apply the lut after the 709 set output anyway? Cant get my head around this and before I buy your luts and change my workflow I want to understand how to use my rec 709 luts Thanks.

[@CullenKelly]

Great question! This is a complex topic, but the short answer is that you really can't use LUTs that go from log to Rec709 when you're using color management. It requires patience, but I recommend making the move to a color managed workflow and then finding new ways of achieving what you like in your 709 LUTs. It's worth the effort for the speed and improved results you'll get!

[@alex.muntean]

Have you ever seen Luke Cage? I think you look at times like “Shades” from the series. 😁

[@he.smile_]

omg you're right

[@MehmetKozal]

wow, indeed

[@kuunami]

Oh wow. I see it too now.

[@JonPais]

ha

[@JonPais]

@@CullenKelly 😂

[@Laitings]

HI Cullen Thanks for some great videos! I just found your channel and it's an instant subscribe. I've been planning to get into CMS for a good while now. But I have a quick question with a probably long answer. Very often I'm sitting with a DOP that want's to prepare an on-set LUT to use in camera as a base for the look. In most cases the LUT needs to be applied in camera to monitor on Arri Log-C material. Is it possible to grade a LUT in a CMS for this situation? Or would you just stick to making the LUT in a non-CMS on Arri Log-C material? If you use a non-CMS workflow to create the LUT, how would you go about getting this base LUT into a CMS workflow and achieve what the DOP originally wanted? Hope my question makes sense. A video on this would be great!

[@geodude9537]

would have been nice to see what you were doing

[@shadowgold1]

love it

[@QualityAntics]

Just purchased your luts and following your DWG workflow and I can't get a nice image haha what am I doing wrong. image looks pretty good out the box converted from Slog3. when I apply your luts the highlights get crushed and skin tone is super saturated. HELP haha

[@QualityAntics]

Ahhh I had my colour processing to custom input to slog3 timeline colour space DWG and working luminance to sdr 100 as thats what I had been told by friends who follow you....

[@pabloarribas550]

Hello! Thanks for your videos, this content is so relevant to my work. I have a question: how do you copy the correction of a node to another clip? It's something with the mouse o a comand? (Thinking when you were copying the offset balance through the timeline). Thanks!

[@pabloarribas550]

@@CullenKelly thank you so much for your help. And for taking the time to answer.

[@ausdoug974]

I hope that you don’t mind a very beginner question. Many of the colour correction videos which I’ve studied said that it’s very important to use the scopes when making changes (especially isolating the skin to use the skin tone line), since some monitors aren’t precise. During this video, the balancing was made without reference to the skin tone line. Do you recommend isolating the skin when making these adjustments or just eye-balling it as part of the overall evaluation of the scope? Thank you.

[@ausdoug974]

@@CullenKelly Thanks very much. I’ve watched several of your videos many times and am finally starting to understand your points. I very much like the emphasis on the colour correction tools being a means to an end and not ends in themselves. Thanks for putting in so much time to help us. Even beginners like myself learn so much from you.

[@eduardo.presser]

Hi, Cullen! Recently I've seen an insight of yours in mixinglight where you say that we should think about color balance in terms of two axys in the vectorscope (skin tone line and green/magenta). What are your thoughts about the differences between this approach and the one you present here (offset wheel)? Thank you, as always, for the amazing content.

[@ramproductions5738]

I use both in my pipeline actually. I tend to think of the Chromatic adaptation tool as a way to do color correction (i.e., kelvins got really offset during production and need to be brought back to a standardized flow, therefore giving a more technical, exact positioning), whereas offset balance is more a characterization of matching shots together within the overall look and feel of the image. I could also see it being more of the ideology of simplicity, since chromatic adaptation is an OFX and requires far more on the computer than a offset change would, not to mention that it builds the muscle memory in your hands when using the offset wheel (if you have a panel device to use) on how certain balances are developed. Would love to hear Cullen's thoughts on the matter, however.

[@JimRobinson-colors]

@@ramproductions5738 I agree if you have a good relationship with the DP or Cinematographer. There are people that might spend all day getting the lighting and balance to get the look and mood that they intentionally use kelvin in their decisions. I always get nervous, then nagating all those decisions and making things look the way I like.

[@ramproductions5738]

@@JimRobinson-colors Oh definitely! I should be more specific in that it's a route I usually take if the the shot's WB is significantly different (and unintended) than other shots in the scene and needs a solid number correction based on that. More akin to "someone hopefully unintentionally fell asleep behind the wheel" to allow the temp/tint shift to be that dramatic between shots. There have also been projects I've gotten where there are multiple cameras all of the same shot and one is dramatically shifted than the others. A quick technical correction like this can really aid in bringing it back towards the others.

[@JimRobinson-colors]

Where is the link to place the questions for the live stream? Although I agree with the whole concept, it feels to me that some of these decisions should be made further up the chain with a scene referred workflow. I am not sure why in this case, we don't work in a macro and do a pass in the timeline level of Exposure, Contrast and Balance? For example : When you end up pushing offset toward magenta on every clip - maybe it might be an idea to do it at a higher level and then in a micro clip adjustment that doesn't require that, back it off. I believe Walter Volpatto kind of does that with basically by having two places to do it in his fixed node trees with the macro being rippled to all selected clips and then tweaking individual clips near the front end on the clip. The last 3 weeks I have asked why if a DP or cinematographer exposes to middle grey, whey we don't universally set the footage to middle grey to maintain the intention of the photography? Then any small mistakes from set would then be dealt with at the clip levels. From my point of view by not adopting that workflow we seem to still have our toes in the display referred workflow, where for example the old contrast and saturation s-curve to go from LOG to rec709 - the most common approach ( as you have pointed out numerous times) is to use the CST instead. So why are we not doing the big moves with the Exposure and Balance in the same manner, and then tweaking the clips that stand out as the ones that are not playing along? In this approach we would retain the intentions of the DP and make broad brush strokes.

[@JimRobinson-colors]

@@cicolas_nage The idea is to cut down the time. If every clip needs more magenta, why do it over and over? That is the whole concept of macro - micro.

[@JimRobinson-colors]

@@cicolas_nage by doing at a macro stage though instead of copying grades, when some don't need it, you still have the micro level to tweak it. copying nodes to only specific clips and not others can get really easy to lose which is which.

[@ErrickJackson]

I understand what you're saying, but I would argue what Cullen is doing here is the micro adjustment you're talking about and what you're describing is just a part of the look development process. Additionally that process should be tailored to the way the project is shot. Using myself as an example, the way I like to work is in groups, with the whole timeline working under the same look operation in my group clip space. I take several hero shots that represent the different types of scenes I may end up working with, get them in split view and build my look with them. Typically I'm also balancing those hero shots first as well because I want the image to still look balanced in its standard 709 transform and not be dependent on the look development process to be the balancing action. The problem comes along with how the project is shot. Some of the projects I work on are shot exactly to the contrast ratio the Director/DP is looking for and they're not looking for me to change that. Others aren't that careful and I'm having to shape that more to their post-production taste. That's something I have to consider if I'm going to create overarching Offset and saturation movements as a part of my look. However from shot to shot, there may be minute balance adjustments I need to make based on changing lighting scenarios, production design, etc. to maintain that balance under the look. Indeed, if every shot needs a push to magenta and that's something you spot when you're first watching through the cut, then you should just make that shift a part of your look development. Because look development is effectively shaping colorimetry and general contrast curve (like how a 3D Lut is basically a color matrix + 1D curve, potential nonlinearity aside) that defines the visual tuning of the project. I think what you're describing is exactly that, but it still depends on how much effort was exerted during production to establish that perfect photography so that our job actually ends up being global, timeline-level adjustments and not much else; a reality I would argue is just exceptionally rare.

[@Energine1]

Hi Cullen, Im currently working off grid in a jungle outpost and have only smallish laptops/ipads/phones. Is there a chance you would consider uploading in 4k or a mouse pointer plugin as it is quite difficult to keep track of the small curser and menu selections on these tiny screens. Thanks either way I'll get through it cheers!