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DaVinci Resolve Colour Grading Tutorial (Start to Finish for Beginners)
Ben Claremont
Overview
This tutorial simplifies DaVinci Resolve color grading for beginners, focusing on essential sliders rather than complex tools. It guides users through adjusting exposure (contrast, pivot, shadows, highlights) and color (color boost, temperature, tint, hue) by eye to achieve a natural look. The video also covers applying grades collectively using remote grades and saving custom grades as LUTs for efficient, consistent results across multiple projects. The core message emphasizes a streamlined workflow for beginners to produce professional-looking footage without advanced color science knowledge.
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Chapters
- Beginners should focus on essential color correction sliders in DaVinci Resolve, avoiding complex menus and tools.
- The goal is to make footage look natural, like the scene in real life, or slightly enhanced.
- Color correction can be broken down into two main steps: adjusting exposure (brightness, contrast) and then color (warmth, saturation).
- Understanding how to apply grades to individual clips or collectively using remote grades is crucial for workflow efficiency.
This chapter sets the stage by demystifying color grading, assuring beginners that professional results are achievable with basic tools, which builds confidence and encourages practice.
The speaker demonstrates selecting clips and right-clicking to choose 'Use remote grades' to apply a single grade to multiple segments of a talking-head video.
- Start by adjusting contrast to achieve a natural look, experimenting by moving the slider left and right.
- Use the 'Pivot' setting to control how contrast adjustments affect highlights and shadows.
- Correct shadows by boosting them if the image is too dark, and bring down highlights to prevent blown-out details.
- Adjusting shadows and highlights by eye helps recover detail in the darkest and brightest parts of the image.
Proper exposure is the foundation of good color grading; mastering these sliders ensures your footage has balanced brightness and detail, preventing common issues like loss of information in shadows or highlights.
The speaker shows how dragging the 'Highlights' slider down recovers detail in a neon sign and their face that would otherwise appear pure white.
- Use 'Color Boost' (similar to Vibrance) to enhance less saturated colors without over-saturating already vibrant areas.
- Adjust 'Saturation' carefully, as it affects all colors equally and can lead to unnatural results (e.g., an 'Oompa Loompa' look).
- Use the 'Temperature' slider to correct skin tones, typically by warming them up slightly (moving left).
- Avoid the 'Tint' and 'Hue' sliders unless absolutely necessary, as they can easily create unnatural or undesirable color shifts.
These color adjustments bring life and realism to your footage, ensuring accurate skin tones and a visually appealing color palette without making the image look artificial.
The speaker demonstrates how adjusting 'Temperature' to the left makes skin tones look more natural while allowing 'Color Boost' to enhance background colors like neon signs.
- Use the 'Before/After' toggle (sparkling red circle) to compare your graded footage with the original.
- The 'Mids & Detail' slider acts as a sharpening tool; use it sparingly (10-20) to enhance facial details.
- The same basic color correction process applies to various footage types, including landscapes and city shots.
- Save your preferred color grade as a LUT (Look-Up Table) to quickly apply it to future projects, saving significant time.
Learning to save and apply grades as LUTs is a powerful workflow optimization technique, enabling consistent branding and style across videos without repetitive grading.
The speaker generates a '.cube' file from their current grade, navigates to DaVinci Resolve's LUT folder, and drags the file in to create a custom LUT named 'YouTube Cube'.
Key takeaways
- Beginner color grading in DaVinci Resolve should prioritize simplicity and essential sliders over complex tools.
- Achieve natural-looking footage by adjusting exposure (contrast, pivot, shadows, highlights) before fine-tuning color.
- Use 'Color Boost' for selective color enhancement and 'Temperature' to ensure accurate skin tones.
- Remote grades allow for efficient application of a single look across multiple clips.
- Saving custom grades as LUTs is a key strategy for speeding up workflow and maintaining visual consistency.
- Always compare your graded footage to the original using the before/after toggle to guide your adjustments.
- Sharpening ('Mids & Detail') should be used subtly to enhance details without overdoing it.
Key terms
Color GradingDaVinci ResolveExposureContrastPivotShadowsHighlightsColor BoostSaturationVibranceTemperatureTintHueLUT (Look-Up Table)Remote GradesSharpening (Mids & Detail)
Test your understanding
- Why is it recommended for beginners to focus on simple sliders rather than advanced color grading tools in DaVinci Resolve?
- How can you ensure that your color-graded footage looks natural and representative of the original scene?
- What is the difference between 'Saturation' and 'Color Boost' in DaVinci Resolve, and when should you use each?
- Explain the process of saving a custom color grade as a LUT and why this is beneficial for workflow efficiency.
- How do the 'Shadows' and 'Highlights' sliders help in correcting exposure issues in a video clip?