What Is A Color Space?

Want to feel like a pro on set? We’re talking about making better choices so you can grade faster, get better images, and encounter fewer problems as you grade.
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[@RavikantRai21490]

These are becoming some of the most invaluable videos on colour-grading. Definitely way better than watching your typical youtuber teach you how to colour grade where they go the display referred route and then promote luts based on zero colour-space considerations.

[@mattovenden6324]

High value: words spoken ratio here. Nice one Cullen 👍

[@cthaneshh]

Hey Cullen, just wanted to let you know, this whole deal behind understanding color management, color space, and all the technical knowledge pertaining to color department is quite complicated and your tutorials make it so much easier for me. I've gone thru your entire Davinci WGamut playlist and I have taken notes, and watching new vids on your channel explaining the same concept simply adds so much more clarity in understanding what you've taught already. Just wanted to let you know, I truly appreciate the efforts you put in to grill the foundational basic concepts again and again. Thank you so much Cullen.

[@CullenKelly]

Thank you!

[@JoeSki42]

Thank you for being so clear and detailed.

[@team2films]

Great job Cullen. Really appreciate your accuracy and precision with the way you explain these topics. You're one of the clearest voices out there when it comes to colour and Resolve. Thanks for all your work.

[@JimRobinson-colors]

The word Gamut definition has always helped me in remembering which is" the complete range or scope of something",this helps me in how I have kept the concept in mind. If someone was to run the full gamut of something, by definition it applies to the full gamut of a camera or a monitor etc. While the color space defines the colors in a specific subset of a color model, the color gamut is the range of colors supported by a device.

[@thatcherfreeman]

One ambiguity is that I've seen the literature use the word "Gamut" to encompass both the colors and the range of the luminance scale too. So to be extra safe I like to use the term "Primaries" to refer to the RGBW xy chromaticities and "Transfer function" to refer to the mapping between code value and scene or display brightness. Thinking about it now, I suppose implicitly the overall range of luminances would be captured by this "transfer function" half. Could totally be wrong on that though, curious if you have a better set of terminology or would revise mine

[@kulbhushankale4853]

Watched so many videos on color space but this one I found simple and on point to understand. Thanks for sharing the knowledge Cullen.🤝

[@DianeZupi]

Agree, thank you Cullen!

[@tobia_montanari]

Great informative video, Cullen. Just a couple of weeks ago, I published a blog post about the difference between the terms “Color Model” and “Color Space”. It’s surprising to see how frequently they are used interchangeably, even within programs.

[@florubenberger]

Absolutely! These terms get mixed too much...

[@letromortel]

Agree Can you give your blog post link ? In Resolve UI use terms ColorSpace instead of Gamut (not everywhere), but it is indeed confusing for the newbies

[@ProtivitiUK]

Culllen - you said that for example Slog 3 is a colour space - My understand is that Rec 709 is the gamut and the gamma is in your example is Slog3 - so the "colour" space is in a sense the combination of the two. If I shoot in cinema raw lite - the default space when grading would be Canon Cinema Gamut + Clog 2....

[@RomanGWatch]

Thank you very much

[@oscarabello84]

Hola! What color space should I use on a macbook pro m1? or an imac? I know it is a topic that is repeated and repeated, but I read different solutions. What is the best recommendation to edit color in davinci with a macbook pro screen? At the moment I am saving for an external monitor, but in the meantime, I must edit color with the screen of this laptop. Thank you for your help and the help of whoever can answer me.

[@CullenKelly]

Hey Oscar... Great question! I've got some videos coming soon that cover this topic in detail. Stay tuned!

[@oscarabello84]

@@CullenKelly thank you

[@airbeoneairbeone2872]

you're a true gem, dear teacher. So, using a Colorchecker for each color R+V+B 100% clairly identified on the scope wafeform , I have to check and (makes them equalized to 1 for 1) that : -> 50% of my INPUT (camera) of this color are strictly EQUAL to -> 50% of my OUTPUT (Display) for the same color (by looking for the encountering of thoses 2 values on the middle line of the wafevorm scope) in order to reproduce strictly, what the camera saw, to what the display is able to show, and by being able to identify the 2 respective's colorspaces to set in color space transform, or timeline color management Am I right ?

[@ekeneuneke2443]

Hi Cullen, what then is the difference between gamma and log? Why do some color spaces use the word 'gamma' and why do some color spaces use the word 'log'

[@scottdoar2161]

I saw someone talking about camera colour matrix's the other day. any chance you could do an explainer on what the heck those are?

[@thatcherfreeman]

The camera has a bunch of photosites, each with a red, green, or blue filter above it. Suppose you point the camera at a patch of yellow paint in daylight. Daylight has a spectral distribution (amount of power at each wavelength) similar to CIE D55, and the yellow paint will absorb a certain proportion of the power at each wavelength and reflect the rest to the camera. Each photosite's filter will transmit only a relatively narrow band of that spectrum and expose the photosite beneath. As a result, each photosite will be stimulated according to the amount of red, green, or blue light that hit it. The catch is that the photosite filter spectral transmittances aren't the same as the cones in your eye and they differ between cameras, so this is why cameras have different color primaries. Long story short, the camera will see this yellow paint and measure some linear RGB value. It will then apply a 3x3 best-fit matrix to convert to XYZ or to your display color space, before doing tone mapping, and/or log/gamma encoding. That matrix is the matrix you're talking about.

[@МАВ-ц6э]

спасибо!

[@anamorphicalan]

Very good

[@londonztoa6359]

Thanks Cullen. Less fuzzy now..

[@stefanocson6237]

great

[@johnwaldmann5222]

A less illuminating tutorial than I had hoped for. Not up to your usual standard Cullen. I hope my earlier (now deleted comment) did not overly offend you. I’d had a rough night trying to explain some these concepts to another editor, and had high hopes this tutorial would assist. Sorry if my tone was a bit over the top.

[@shebbe]

You may have better luck with this one. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fYjaomaqpsppo9k

[@antonarap]

Oh so Davinci WG or Aces are not color spaces then... My bad.

[@mrfroopy]

Color space.. the final frontier. (haha)