r/colorists

Okay so someone smarter than me please tell me if I have a handle on Judd offset.

X-300's and some early OLED's needed Judd offset to look right but then later dual LCD and better OLED's came along and fixed the issue necessitating Judd offset?

With the more recent screens, if you include the judd offset in the calibration, that's just to match to a x-300 or some hero monitor that has Judd offset?

If clients are viewing on iPads or laptops, then it's better to not have judd offset?

Hi everyone,

Out the outset, apologize for the lengthy post.

I'm relatively new to professional color grading and currently grading a **Crime-thriller feature film**. I haven't had the opportunity to work directly with a professional colorist, so most of what I've learned has come from online tutorials and experimenting in DaVinci Resolve.

I've been working on this project for about **3 months**. I've gone through all **7 reels several times**, and each pass has helped me improve. However, before I lock the grade, I'd really appreciate feedback and **Industry best practices** from experienced colorists on whether my **workflow and node structure are appropriate for a commercial/theatrical feature film**.

I'm using a **Group-based workflow** with this general structure:

**Group Pre-Clip**

1. CST: ARRI LogC → DaVinci Wide Gamut / Intermediate

**Clip**

1. Exposure
2. White Balance
3. Contrast
4. Saturation
5. Power Windows / local adjustments
6. Highlight adjustments
7. Tone adjustments

**Group Post-Clip**

1. Overall tone / look
2. CST: DaVinci Wide Gamut / Intermediate → DCI-P3 / Gamma 2.6

# I'd really appreciate professional advice on these points:

**1. How should clips be grouped in a feature-film workflow?**

What is the usual professional approach for grouping clips to make grading faster and maintain consistency?

* By scene?

* By day/night?

* By location?

* By lighting condition?

* By exposure?

* Some combination of these?

For example, would you normally create one Group per scene, or use Groups primarily for common technical/look adjustments?

**2. Is my current node structure appropriate?**

Is the general:

**CST In → Clip Corrections → Look/Tone → CST Out**

approach reasonable for a feature film, or would you recommend a different structure?

**3. Is my correction order appropriate?**

At the Clip level I'm currently doing:

**Exposure → WB → Contrast → Saturation → Windows → Highlight/Tone adjustments**

Is there a preferred order that professional colorists generally follow?

For example, should WB be established before exposure, or does the order matter less as long as the image is being evaluated correctly?

**4. What is your professional approach to white balance?**

When grading ARRI footage, how do experienced colorists establish a reliable/consistent white balance?

Do you primarily rely on scopes, known neutral objects, skin tone, RGB balance, reference shots, or a combination?

**5. How do you maintain consistent tone throughout a feature?**

One of my biggest challenges is maintaining a consistent visual tone across different scenes, lighting conditions and reels.

My current thinking is:

**Clip level → technically balance exposure/WB/contrast**

then

**Group/Post-Clip → establish the creative/cinematic tone**

Is this a good approach?

**6. What is the professional technique for maintaining a consistent look across the entire movie?**

I'd especially appreciate advice on how you approach:

* Scene-to-scene matching

* Reel-to-reel consistency

* Day vs. night consistency

* Skin tone consistency

* Maintaining a consistent cinematic contrast/tonal response

* Creating and managing the overall "show look"

**7. What is your professional approach for Perfect Skin Tone?**

I realize there are many different professional workflows, so I'm not necessarily looking for one "correct" method. I'm mainly trying to understand **how an experienced feature-film colorist would structure this workflow from the beginning**.

If possible, I'd also appreciate recommendations for **good professional tutorials, books, or online resources** that explain feature-film grading workflows rather than only individual Resolve techniques.

Thanks in advance to everyone who takes the time to read this and share your experience. I really appreciate the help.

Hi all, I’m working in da Vinci resolve.

When working with black or dark hair, it does not seem super prudent to have it anywhere in the middle. While lighting more flat and cranking the ISO can be good for dark scenes, there’s frequently an amount of it that I’ve run into as difficult to recover as not a black mass.

Even if the hair isn’t super noisy or clipping back in the log footage, you can still bring it up with lift dark hdr and custom curves and compensate for lifted middle, and that can be fine, but frequently running into spots where I’m like “this cannot be made any less black without ruining the contrast”

I’m pretty clear that you can film something flat and exposed and day-to-night it, just desaturate, low contrast, pull everything down and it makes it feel dark with everything visible.

But it’s just in situations where you want both contrast and highlights that it feels like a challenge.

Do you have any tips and tricks to deal with this?

That being said, plenty of horror movies as of late have had intentionally underexposed silhouettes relative to the backlight or the key side. So many movies I’ve seen it’s like yeah dark side texture is gone, or black hair is only realizable as hair due a sliver of a highlight and maybe a tiny bit of contour. Sinners and obsession are the examples I’m thinking of. Really tender parts with dim faces and eye-light that looks really cool, but I feel like on this site, people would say “you’re crushing the low end and losing information”. I also feel like sacrificing contrast or any semblance of milky is bad, right? It also feels like it’s not just horror/noir night scenes, feels like common practice to just let a lot of dark things remain black. And say you have a silhouette sort of scene, you have to extend those exposure levels to other shots in that scene as well.

So where do you draw the line and how do you decide just to go for clipped low end?

Too embarrassed to post this on my main account as I’ve been grading for years and all.

I normally grade with timeline/output in the color management in Resolve set to Rec709/gamma2.4 or DWG/rec709 2.4 and when I export I choose tags rec709/rec709. Clean feed to a flanders etc etc. exports match my timeline and never any issues.

I recently saw a video where Walter Volpatto had his color management set to the default rec709 scene for both timeline and output.

I grade everything from music videos to short films to broadcast tv and beyond. Sometimes I have to cover a colorist in posthouses and they almost always have their proj management set to the same as me (rec709/2.4).

When should you have your project set to rec709 scene?

Thank you.

I’m not asking about gamma shifts or 2.2 etc. I don’t have those issues. And I always export with rec709 tags unless it’s for theatre etc.

Hi colourists,

I'm self learning proper davinci workflows from tutorials like Darren Mostyn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTMRQP_V7E

Long way to go but generally finding my feet after being Premiere Pro for life.

Question:

Workflow is looking good with CSTs in and out into DWG following DM's process the into a final LUT (phantom neutral).

DM-based node tree

I will be condensing this tree a lot but for now just learning proper structure so I understand what's happening.

Overall image is heading where I want it to be so I can develop a more specific look, but I'm getting intense saturation burn on certain colours like red/green/yellow. Is there a core reason/setting I'm missing that is making this happen

log3G10

cst in node (rec709-dwg)/cst out node (dwg-RWG) + final phantom lut (which is a red log3g10 phantom lut)

Even without the csts in and out (taking the workflow in and out of DWG per DMs process), and using only log3g10 phantom lut at the end, the burning is still happening in the reds.

Am I missing a basic setting/understanding? (probably). Any advice greatly appreciated.

There is this option in the CSTs which when selected does seem to pull it in. But that just doesn't seem like a correct solution. I feel there's something more basic that I'm not doing correctly.

https://preview.redd.it/y7ujyxczbfuh1.png?width=826&format=png&auto=webp&s=17fc77154701f0cdbf2a9688a69884b9eae9ae96

Even when ignoring the finishing phantom LUT and following DMs process exactly to rec709/gamma2.4 in the CST out. The burning is still there (below).

https://preview.redd.it/rg6dorybdfuh1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0f0464ffb10828c984bdf3fa0175b513ac2f2b9e

General Project settings

https://preview.redd.it/higfim4j9fuh1.png?width=980&format=png&auto=webp&s=ca40d72c77a113ad92d1113710c648394c3b083f

Camera

Nikon ZR

4k, R3D, log3g10, 25p

Cheers. Love the sub.