Well folks, we're doing it again! Tomorrow we'll be working on a project and my good friend and colourist João Homem said he was down to answer some more questions and shed some light on the mysteries of grading!
Write em up, let us know what you wanna know!
I once read that colorist Tom Poole (drive, severance, euphoria) will start his process by using a film LUT that only gives the tone curve of film, not chroma. Curious if anyone else works this way or if you’ve seen any LUTS out there that do this. Or if maybe you can take a film LUT and extract only the tone curve element.
1st image is in Rec.709 and 2nd is after the grade.
Its a footage from the Blackmagic website
Do you guys use memories that much or find them useful compared to stills?
Before and after from a grading practice session.
Before image + format:
Camera: Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65
Codec: Blackmagic RAW Q1
Sensor: 8K 2.2:1 Open Gate (11680 x 5360)
Lens: 75mm Cooke Panchro 65/i @ T2.3
FPS: 24
ISO: 800
Shutter: 172.8°
White Balance: 5000K / Tint +5
Color Science: Generation 5
Filmbox Kodak Vision3 500T LUT was already baked into the source footage.
After image attached above.
Node tree attached above as well.
Workflow / node breakdown:
01 - DWG transform
02 - White balance adjustments
03 - Lift Gamma Gain balancing
05 - Saturation shaping
06 - Contrast work
08 - HDR exposure balancing
10 - Power window / masking work
12 - Toning adjustments
13 - Additional look refinement
14 - Film grain
15 - Rec709 output transform
What I was trying to achieve:
I wanted to push the shot toward a darker and more nostalgic cinematic mood while still keeping the image soft and natural. I tried focusing on subtle highlight rolloff, warm practical lighting, restrained saturation, and gentle contrast without making the shadows feel overly crushed. I was also trying to preserve the organic texture from the Cooke lenses and the baked-in film emulation while shaping the scene into a more emotionally heavy atmosphere.
Would really appreciate feedback on the contrast balance, skin tones, shadow density, and overall mood of the final grade.
Would love to hear feedback on the overall look and what could be improved.
I’ve been absolutely enamored by colorist Damien Vandercruyssen’s work on the new AppleTV show “Widows Bay”. Every still is just a joy to look at. So rich but soft at the same time. I’m curious how you would go about creating this look? And something other than the answer “90% of the look is just good work from the DP and a good film print LUT”.
Of course there’s a million ways to achieve this look but I’m curious how you would personally do it. Whether it’s all native resolve tools and a CST, or maybe you’re using Jp499 and different DCTLs, or filmbox / genesis. Would love to hear yalls thoughts!
PS - unfortunately I don’t have any stills since the show just came out but I’ve linked the trailer incase you haven’t seen it
Hi all,
I want to preface that I'm not a professional colorist, but I really don't know where to go for advice / feedback at this point.
I'm using the LG C2 42" OLED connected to my Mac Studio the Blackmagic Decklink MiniMonitor 4K in a Thunderbolt PCIe box. I got this back in 2022 to use as a poor-man's reference monitor.
I calibrated it with Calman Home. Maybe a year or so after I started using it, I realized that the monitor had quite a bit of banding. I first noticed it when grading a shot of a sunset from a wedding. I thought it was my footage at first. I checked it on my MacBook M1 Pro, and LG IPS screen, and no banding was present.
I honestly had to ignore it. I didn't have the time to troubleshoot. Here we are, 4 years later and it's really starting to bother me.
Here are the things I've done that make my believe it's a panel issue and nothing to do with my Resolve / Decklink or HDMI settings.
I created a short video using the grayscale gradient in Resolve. The image just pans left to right. I exported it as an H265 10bit file, and confirmed no banding on the export with my IPS and MacBook Pro (XDR Mini LED). I loaded that onto a USB stick, and put it into the TV. The banding is very apparent on the TV.
I've done all of the normal things: Pixel Cleaning multiple times, sharpness to 0, all processing off, HDMI Deep Color on etc. I even reset the entire TV to make sure my calibration LUT from Calman Home wasn't wonky.
My question is...Has anyone else experience this, and is it just the way it is? Did I get a bad draw in the panel lottery and should I just move on? Is there anything else you can think of that I haven't tried?
Comparison images: https://imgur.com/a/RVwpsM0
Photos obviously make it look worse than it is, but you get the idea.
Thanks!
Hey everyone,
I’ve been grading in DaVinci Resolve using a DaVinci YRGB workflow with CSTs (basically a CST sandwich workflow) up until now, and I’m trying to properly learn and switch over to ACES.
My current workflow is usually something like:
Camera Log → CST to working space → grading → CST back to Rec.709.
Now I’m a bit confused about what the proper ACES workflow should look like inside Resolve.
A few things I’m trying to understand:
Should I switch fully to ACEScct?
What’s the main advantage of ACES over a CST-based workflow?
In ACES, do you still use CST nodes often, or should everything be handled through IDTs/ODTs?
How should the node tree ideally look in an ACES project?
What’s the correct way to handle different camera formats in the same timeline?
How do you approach the look, creation and contrast in ACES compared to CST workflows?
I’m mainly trying to build a proper professional workflow instead of randomly converting color spaces without fully understanding what’s happening underneath.
Would really appreciate advice from people who moved from CST workflows to ACES and how you approached learning it inside Resolve.
Hi I’m a third year film student right now and I’m hoping to be a colorist in the future. I’m applying for some very good grad school programs because I heard they can give u good connections and it’s easier to get a job if ur graduated from AFI USC NYU etc. Is it really very helpful? Or work experience matters more? Thank you.
My question is really just for the CST and where to start from . I was the DP for the film and no budget for a colorist .
I was messing around and threw a 2383 davinci lut on it and honestly looked like a great starting point .
But I am struggling to find some help on this and every colorist I talk to doesn’t really have a direct answer .
Any thoughts would be appreciated!
full ress screenshots if you're interested in seeing the shot's true grain: https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/45a34b89-f19a-49a0-9600-b8a298bbfa17
Hello everyone.
Just wanted to get some more professional opinions from some professional colourists :)
Not sure how well the screenshots ive taken will show how grainy the footage really is but essentially I've been supplied a load of shots to grade that are incredibly noisy. The grain in the low ends basically looks like TV static.
This project had two DP's (first one left at some point, not sure why)
The shot you see above was shot by the first DP who was using a Blackmagic Pocket 4K. All of the overly noisy shots all come from this first DP.
The second DP used an Arri camera and all shots from them look great.
Are we as colorists always expected to fix overly noisy footage like this or can I defend my case and blame the first DP for a lot of these shots been extremely hard to fix lol?
Thank you everyone :)
Its a footage I got off the Arri website
I feel like shooting is one thing, but color grading is a completely different skill.
Sometimes I get something I like quickly, other times I keep tweaking and end up (many times) overdoing it…. How was it for you and do you have any tips for a beginner?
I use DaVinci resolve and have watched so many tutorials on YouTube and so many different approaches that I’m lost
Hello,
Been testing grain survival in web delivery (Frame.io + Vimeo).
All tests in 1080p delivery.
I thought I’d share my findings, and I’d also be curious to hear how others approach this. I noticed that grain can sometimes help reduce banding, but it often gets heavily destroyed by compression.
ProRes
H.264
Notes
H.264 export
Curious if anyone has found a grain approach that consistently survives H.264 without just brute-forcing bitrate, or if it’s fundamentally always a trade-off.
I'm very new to colour grading and wanting to get good at it for some personal projects. I would love some feedback on this and how i could make it better. It's a 4k S-Log 400iso clip I found on youtube to practise on. I think for a first attempt its not too bad, maybe too harsh blues and reds? The ground is strange too- I also added a grain overlay i found online. I edited it in Premire Pro, trying to achive a film emulation look. 24fps 100mbit S-Log2. Before and After pics included. Trying to achieve the film emulation look
Thanks 😄
Hey folks. I'm a doc filmmaker who has handled my own color work for years now, and I’m hoping to get a reality check from the working colorists here on something that's been driving me nuts about online color education and products.
Why are so many YouTubers and folks selling DCTLs or emulations demonstrating their workflows on a sequence of completely random stock clips?
They’ll jump from a high-key studio portrait, to a moody sci-fi frame, to a stylized street scene. Treating every single frame like an isolated piece of art.
To give a specific example, I recently saw rave reviews for Henry Bobeck's (sorry to pick on you Henry – you're not the only one) Color Separation DCTL. The math sounds keen, and on the individual stock clips in the walk through video, it looks effective. But the immediate red flag is how this actually functions across a real workflow. If a DCTL is shifting your background hues based on a target subject, the second you cut to a different clip, your background white balance is altered. Suddenly, you're chasing your tail messing with the hue sliders shot-by-shot just to keep continuity.
Am I crazy, or does this totally defeat the point of establishing an efficient pipeline with a look? I’ve always been taught that you set up a robust color management foundation, lean heavily on a solid CST/DRT/look from the jump, establish middle grey, and then gently manage exposure, contrast, and balance at the source.
If a tool forces us into heavy per-shot surgery just to maintain consistency across a sequence, uh, is this defeating the job of a colorist? It’s easy to make Arri stock clip of a model at golden hour look nice for a 10-second IG clip. It’s a whole different ballgame making a look hold up when you cut from a brightly lit room to a back-lit interview under shifting light.
Am I missing something here…would love to see workflows that use real world frames from scene to scene in a doc or film.
Long story short, I have to color a short film for some classmates and it is the first time I face something that will be this dark (it is about a power outage)
Any advice for this specific scenario?
I saw this on Instagram, how do you achieve this type of color grade? It looks like deep saturated, little towards blue?
Hi! I just got the CinePrint 35 from Tom Bolles (a friend gave it to me) but I am a bit confused on how can I use it with my videos shot with Samsung Log footage. Cineprint says this
Supported cameras/log profiles include:
And because it is unpopular, it doesnt seem to have the Samsung Log. Da Vinci Resolve 20 has the Samsung Log thing as input. However, I just want to ask if how can I use the Cineprint Powergrade for my log.
Is my intuition correct that I just need to put a new node prior to the already CST node and just put Rec 2020 and Samsung Log as Input Color Space and Gamma? And then the Output Color Space / Gamma will be the Input Color Space and Gamma in the existing CST node?
Thank you!
i record rec 709 footage and edit it (screen recordings). i have wondered for a long time if there is any advantage in using a CST to convert it to davinci wide gamut, make adjustments there, then another CST to bring it back to 709? or is that just a waste of time as it is already such a limited color space