Blackmagic Design just capped months of beta development for DaVinci Resolve Studio and Resolve with the official release of version 19. The company touts over 100 feature upgrades across all sections of the application, including the Fusion and the Fairlight pages. I want to zero in on just several of the main color page enhancements.
ColorSlice
The concept of vector-based color correction goes back to the original chroma procs on RCA color cameras. The color spectrum is divided into six vectors, which are the divisions that you see in a vector scope display. The very first DaVinci color correction system used vector-based control knobs instead of the trackball panels we are familiar with today. Although it’s a bit more hidden, Resolve has had six vector presets available in the Color pulldown menu. This has now been expanded through the addition of the ColorSlice panel.
ColorSlice is based on seven vectors: the standard red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta, plus a seventh for skin tone. The latter isn’t really an official color vector, but rather it’s an overlapping region. Color correction for skin, regardless of pigmentation, generally falls into the pink-orange color range. Although this style of correction panel is new within Resolve 19, it’s similar to the PixelTools HueShift plugin for Resolve, as well as features in other NLEs and plugins, like Avid Symphony and Color Finale for Final Cut Pro..
It might take a while for new users to get comfortable with ColorSlice, because it uses a subtractive color model. This means you are adjusting saturation and hue without altering the luminance of the shot. There are global controls plus the individual vector controls. Each vector has a center control, which determines what the midpoint for that region is. If you’re in the red vector, then center lets you zero in precisely where red is in that clip. Hue lets you shift the color. For instance, turn a red shirt into a magenta shirt. Then you have two sliders for saturation and density. As expected, saturation increases the intensity of the color for that vector. Density controls the lightness or darkness of that color.
Like any secondary color correction, the more isolated individual colors are from each other, the easier it becomes to cleanly swing a given color in more extreme directions without impacting the overall shot. For example, it’s easy to change the skin tones of a person in a shot with a greenish background and not alter the tone of that background. But if the background is in the same color and tonal range as the person’s face, such as beige, then this same level of control can’t be done using ColorSlice alone.
Film Look Creator
From Koji Advance (for FCP) to Colourlab Ai to FilmConvert Nitrate, there is no shortage of options to impart the characteristics of film. Now Resolve has added its own variation as a custom Resolve FX plugin (Studio version only). It combines both color styles and physical attributes/defects, like grain, weave, flicker, etc. What it does not offer is specific film stock emulations. However, there are Film Look Core Looks, which include Rochester and Akasaka (presumably a nod to Kodak and Fuji). When you first apply the effect the default will already display a basic look with certain features enabled. All of the presets impart some color changes to begin with. Select Clean Slate from the pulldown if you want to begin with the most neutral image and customize from there.
The controls are mostly self-explanatory, except maybe Split Tone. This creates a curve where the highlights and shadows pivot around a center point. As you push the controls, the highlights will become warmer and the shadows cooler. The Amount slider pushes the differences to be more extreme. Hue Angle changes the colors around the vectors and Pivot determines where the transition is from dark to light within that curve.
Some of the other settings, like halation, bloom, and grain may have already been enabled, based on the preset you selected. The Default 65mm will be slightly different than the Default 35mm preset, for example. While something like grain might be fine in the preset, I would definitely turn off Flicker, Gate Weave, and Film Gate until you know the look you want.
Defocus Background
Defocus Background is a new Resolve FX plugin that works in conjunction with the Magic Mask. When you first apply the effect, nothing happens, because there’s no mask yet. Let’s say you want the foreground person in focus and the background out of focus for a shallow depth-of-field effect. Using the Magic Mask tool, quickly draw squiggly lines over the person in the foreground on the first frame of the shot. Track the mask for the length of the shot to define it throughout. Now you can adjust the background defocus.
Besides a focus change, you can also change the saturation and even colorize the background. Note that you can go beyond the end stop of the blur amount and saturation sliders by mousing over the numbers and pushing the level even more extreme. Open Advanced Options to select between lens and gaussian styles of blur. The lens choice adds blur distortion characteristics of an anamorphic lens, as well as the ability to impact highlights for a bokeh effect. Remember that this is intended as a quick effect. It’s pretty convincing when you use it subtly. Resolve also includes a Depth Mask effect when more sophistication is needed.
Other
When you need to apply noise reduction to an image, there’s a new UltraNR setting under the Spatial NR section of the Motion Effects tab. It’s more processor-intensive, of course, but gives you better results. Unlike the other three modes, UltraNR includes an analyze curser/window that you can position over a target area within the shot for optimal results. This is similar to how the Neat Video noise reduction plugin works.
The last major color page addition is Node Stack Layers. I won’t spend time on it in this article, because it’s mainly a way to organize complex node trees. This is a power user feature. If you do basic color correction and you only get a few nodes deep, then it’s an advanced tool that you probably don’t need in your workflow. There are plenty of YouTube videos that cover this in detail.
Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 19 is available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and the Apple iPad in free and paid (Studio) versions.