The Resolve / Colour Grading resource thread

[Emanuel]

LOL Hadn't checked... Funny : D My bad, I should have paid attention to that date. Only in Internet days we have April Fools in late June! : -D

[webrunner5]

Ahh, you are getting old. Welcome to the club.

[kye]

@BjornT was kind enough to share a grade he did using Filmconvert and Lumetri.

Here's his final grade:

and my manual grade:

These are the adjustments:

First node is WB

Second Node is this Luma Curve:

Third node is Hue vs Hue:

Fourth is a YUV channel mixer with a key to only apply it to blue:

This is the main 'look' of the grade, and remember that although the snip above says RGB, that the node is in YUV colour space.  If you're looking for cool looks then a channel mixer in YUV mode is where it's at!

Fifth node bumps up the Luminance and Saturation of the yellows (in the trees) via Hue vs Sat and Hue vs Lum curves.

Sixth is a key on the skin colours that shifts the yellows slightly towards pink (with a Hue vs Hue curve) and also raises the brightness a little (with a Hue vs Lum curve).

This was an interesting exercise and I primarily did it by having the two shots on top of each other with a Difference blending mode, and looking at the resulting image with the Waveform view, and also having the two shots next to each other on the timeline.  I'd go back and forth between the two shots and look at what the main issue was, then go into the Difference mode view and play with the controls trying to make the waveform go as low as possible (low waveform = smaller difference between the images).

I tried a number of things in curves where you'd end up with a curve that would look like a rollercoaster and that would tell you that something was going on with what you were adjusting, but that this type of curve wasn't the answer, so I went down a few of those rabbit-holes and trashed the node and tried something differently.

Anyway, that might be useful for someone.

 

[BjornT]

13 hours ago, kye said:

@BjornT was kind enough to share a grade he did using Filmconvert and Lumetri.

Here's his final grade:

and my manual grade:

These are the adjustments:

First node is WB

Second Node is this Luma Curve:

Third node is Hue vs Hue:

Fourth is a YUV channel mixer with a key to only apply it to blue:

This is the main 'look' of the grade, and remember that although the snip above says RGB, that the node is in YUV colour space.  If you're looking for cool looks then a channel mixer in YUV mode is where it's at!

Fifth node bumps up the Luminance and Saturation of the yellows (in the trees) via Hue vs Sat and Hue vs Lum curves.

Sixth is a key on the skin colours that shifts the yellows slightly towards pink (with a Hue vs Hue curve) and also raises the brightness a little (with a Hue vs Lum curve).

This was an interesting exercise and I primarily did it by having the two shots on top of each other with a Difference blending mode, and looking at the resulting image with the Waveform view, and also having the two shots next to each other on the timeline.  I'd go back and forth between the two shots and look at what the main issue was, then go into the Difference mode view and play with the controls trying to make the waveform go as low as possible (low waveform = smaller difference between the images).

I tried a number of things in curves where you'd end up with a curve that would look like a rollercoaster and that would tell you that something was going on with what you were adjusting, but that this type of curve wasn't the answer, so I went down a few of those rabbit-holes and trashed the node and tried something differently.

Anyway, that might be useful for someone.

 

Great work. I look forward to when they release nitrate for Resolve and hopefully Juan Melara does a video on it.

[Shell64]

Wow kye, you nailed to replicate that film convert grade. Nice job!  That’s way better than what I can do in resolve, but I’m still learning lol. 

[heart0less]

16 minutes ago, BjornT said:

and hopefully Juan Melara does a video on it

It's a shame he virtually stopped making new videos, I found them really informative, even if you were just starting out.

 

Same goes for Avery Peck.

Which I find even more surprising, since he promised to keep uploading new videos regularly..

 

[kye]

5 hours ago, heart0less said:

It's a shame he virtually stopped making new videos, I found them really informative, even if you were just starting out.

I think it's the old problem that the people who really know what they're doing are off doing it, rather than hanging around talking about it (or making videos, which takes way more time than even posting on forums).

[heart0less]

4 hours ago, kye said:

I think it's the old problem that the people who really know what they're doing are off doing it, rather than hanging around talking about it (or making videos, which takes way more time than even posting on forums).

Yeah.. 

Karma doesn't pay your bills. 

[kye]

36 minutes ago, heart0less said:

Yeah.. 

Karma doesn't pay your bills. 

Unfortunately.  Of course, the other place that the knowledge lives is behind paywalls or online courses, but all of that is paid too.

We're lucky for what Juan has given us.  I suspect that part of his motivation is to show how little the YT guys know by showing what real knowledge looks like, and it certainly worked for me - the difference is pretty stark.

Juan should work with someone to offer a course - I'd be very interested in it!

[kye]

Just found this guy - looks like he knows what he's talking about....

 

[kye]

Interesting film from Blackmagic...

Shot on P6K, post in Resolve 16, and the credits say "Produced in 14 days" so presumably a short timeframe project.

What I think is interesting is that (although it doesn't say it) I suspect that the whole production was done in Resolve, so that likely means that all the VFX are from the Fusion page.  This would be pretty cool as I think that the Fusion page has huge untapped potential and we haven't seen it in use yet as the people who really know Fusion are off getting paid not being on YT.

It would be interesting to see some BTS, especially of what happened in post for this.

[heart0less]

 

[kye]

@heart0less - that is a fascinating video.  Thanks!

What I found interesting about it is:

• They credit the guys at LiftGammaGain (I suspect most similar videos come from people who either don't know about LGG or plainly rip it off without saying)
• They mention a LUT for all of 2 seconds before talking about everything except colour
• They made a complete tutorial that didn't include possibly the most significant things that (IMHO) make something look like film

They also did something that I think was great - they showed the LGG thread.  A quick search and now I can go read it! 

The thread is only about halation and gate weave (which I had to look up - it's the jumping around that film does - like why the credits move around when being projected).

It's also interesting that it's started by Jason Bowdach whose name was familiar - he'd written one of the reference articles on film emulation that I refer back to on occasion..  

So, all that said, here are the other links that I've found that are useful if you want to emulate film...

To start, this article is very good and talks about non-linearities and saturation behaviour: https://www.provideocoalition.com/film-look-two/

It also links to this very interesting video showing how Alexa handles things:

Noam Kroll has a decent write-up: https://noamkroll.com/how-to-make-your-digital-footage-look-like-film-in-post-production/

The article from Jason Bowdach that covers a lot of ground: https://blog.frame.io/2019/10/21/emulating-film-look/

and lastly the article the video above references: https://liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php?threads/halation-and-gate-weave.13056/

of course, after all this, the film look really comes from lighting and composition in the first place, and remember that if you want the film look then it's better to first get someone to look at your film (ha ha) so it should be entertaining in the first instance

Film is probably an infinitely deep rabbit hole....

[Emanuel]

 

 

[kye]

Interesting technique I hadn't seen before....

 

[kye]

 

[kye]

Just watched this grading video and found it really useful.

There's a few things in here that I hadn't seen before, and I think the look (nice bright and colourful) has more practical application than emulating some particular movie or other..

 

[heart0less]

Thanks for sharing, there are definitely some neat tricks there.

 

But I'm getting a little annoyed by his trendy "YouTuber" approach.
"Are you guys pumped, are you guys ready? Before we jump to this tutorial, two days left to sign up for my masterclass".

Ugh.

[hk908]

Waqas is great. I'll take slightly annoying intro but very in depth tutorial/explanation over the very annoying and surface level explanation Peter McKinnon's of YT.

[kye]

I agree with @heart0less that sales is sales, but also with @hk908 that content is content, and Waqas certainly puts the content in the videos.

Every time I see a YouTuber flogging some brand or other I do recoil slightly, but then I remember that TV was full of ads for things I had no interest in whatsoever that went on for whole minutes at a time and did so every few minutes of content.  I'd rather see a content creator promoting their own materials, or having one ad in their video than having to watch clusters of ads where everything about it was turned up to 11 to try and get me to hear it from the next room when I went to get a drink!