Adjusting the primary sliders in DaVinci Resolve 11 will fine-tune a video's color in ways that may be easier, or more complicated, than adjusting the color wheel. In this online video, learn how to use sliders to control individual color channels for the video's lift, gamma, gain, and offset. Adjust the green channel for a profound effect on red and blue channels, and adjust the contrast wheel underneath the primary sliders to affect all sliders at once and maintain color relationships.
- We've been exploring the color wheels here in Resolve, and there's a flip side to the color wheels and these are the primary sliders. And the first thing I want to point at is the direct relationship between lift, gamma, gain, and offset, and the sliders. Notice I switch to these sliders and they're named precisely the same, lift, gamma, gain, and offset. So if I take the gain, and I'm just going to take this and push red all the way up, right? Let's take a look at the color wheel, and look what's happened, it's pushed red all the way up.
If I take this color wheel and push it, okay all the way to magenta here, that works for me. Let's click on the slider, and these are the moves you'd have to make to the individual RGB channels to create this one move I did here. So the primary sliders give us individual controls to individual color channels. I can take and just add more or less blue, and the end result is moving this from here, over to here. If I very precisely want to raise my green lift, what I can do is come over to my lift channel, and raise my green.
And the way the image processing works here in DaVinci Resolve, what you'll find is, the green channel tends to have a pretty big effect on the red and blue channels. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but can often be used to your advantage. In other words, sometimes you can do in one move what would otherwise take two or three clicks to do, because of this relationship. And then if I wanted to go ahead and raise the green in the gain, I could go ahead and do that to help balance out the color channels, and then come in here and raise the blue gain.
Right, so I've got these very precise controls. I can also control them as a group. So for instance if on this shot I take this green gamma and push it and then pull back the red gamma and let's lift up the blue gamma quite a bit. Alright, now let's say I'm happy with that but overall I want to drop all of these color channels together, I can come down to my contrast wheel, and I'll pull to the left, click and drag to the left, in order to darken the gamma, pull down my gamma, and notice it's maintaining the relationship of the red, green, and blue channels.
If I bring this back to default, I've got my red, green, and blue channels, and that initial relationship has been maintained. The other thing to keep in mind is as I'm moving red, green, and blue, we've got a fourth slider here. We don't have any kind of fourth slider control in here. There's nothing in here. We've got the contrast ring, we've got the color wheel. What the heck is this? And let's go ahead, let's reset our lift, and let's switch over to the color wheels. Let's make a big move in the lift channel. And I made a big move but notice I haven't moved this fourth slider, but if I grab my contrast control, that fourth slider is moving, and that's called the Y-only or luma control.
That's because this control works on a very specific component of the video signal, and that video component is called luma. The luma control has an effect on the objects in our images, which changes our perceived brightness of it. And we're going to talk specifically about this Y-only or luma-only control and how it differs from the master wheel YRGB control in the movie on Y-only versus YRGB. But I just want you to understand that these sliders, are a way to do very specific moves that are very difficult to do within the color wheels.
If all I wanted to do was pull the green channel down, but nothing else about my gains, that's really tough to do here in the color wheels. It's very difficult for me to make a change without also effecting my red and blue channels. But I can do that by switching over to the slider, and now I can make a very, very specific correction within a much broader tool, which is our lift, gamma, gain controls, which are again big, honking primaries.
Author
Released
11/7/2014In these tutorials, indie-feature-film and broadcast colorist Patrick Inhofer guides viewers through color grading with DaVinci Resolve and Resolve Lite 11. With emphasis placed on real-world techniques and workflows, the course will help editors and aspiring colorists edit in the timeline, perform primary and secondary color corrections, match shots from multiple cameras, create mood-rich looks, and render out movies to share with clients. Interspersed throughout the course are "lingo" movies, which will help you learn the language of colorists, and "in action" chapters, where Patrick applies the lessons learned to a real-world music video for the band Minimus the Poet.
- Building a Revolve system
- Comparing Resolve and Resolve Lite
- Tweaking preferences for better performance
- Getting clips, timelines, and projects into Resolve
- Editing footage in Resolve
- Evaluating images like a colorist
- Working with serial nodes
- Making contrast and color adjustments
- Making targeted secondary corrections with keys and shapes
- Creating looks with third-party plugins
- Matching shots
- Rendering, delivering, and archiving footage
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
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with Maxim Jago3h 16m Beginner
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Introduction
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Welcome3m 16s
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Using the exercise files9m 50s
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1. Building a Resolve System
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Who uses DaVinci Resolve?3m 52s
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Upgrading DaVinci Resolve5m 30s
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2. Understanding Databases, Users, and Projects
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Databases: Disk-based5m 30s
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Updating databases6m 36s
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Managing users4m 27s
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3. Getting Started with DaVinci Resolve 11
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Interface overview7m 36s
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Customizing the interface8m 50s
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Working with dual displays5m 19s
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4. Editing a Project in DaVinci Resolve 11
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The Edit page in detail4m 45s
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Keyboard shortcuts5m 38s
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Editing into a timeline7m 32s
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Working in the Edit mode6m 39s
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Working in the Trim mode7m 5s
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Working with audio8m 51s
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5. Moving a Project from a Nonlinear Editor (NLE) to Resolve
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6. Image Evaluation: Seeing Like a Colorist
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7. Understanding Nodes
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What is a serial node?9m 39s
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8. Primary Color Correction Tools
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The Primary sliders4m 9s
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Y-only vs. YRGB adjustments5m 57s
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Adjusting hue and saturation2m 16s
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The RGB mixer5m 1s
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Raw controls7m 50s
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Working with log footage7m 59s
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LUTs in action5m 22s
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What are 1D and 3D LUTs?4m 53s
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9. In Action: Primary Color Correction
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10. Secondary Color Correction Tools
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Using the Hue Vs. curves8m 4s
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Tracker: Fundamentals8m 31s
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Tracker: Advanced tracking3m 59s
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Tracker: Stabilizing shots5m 25s
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11. Shot Matching
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What is shot matching?4m 31s
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Overview: The gallery8m 40s
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Gallery: The Reference Wipe7m 42s
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The split-screen view6m 46s
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Matching exposure8m 13s
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Matching color7m 53s
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12. In Action: Secondaries and Shot Matching
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Hero shots: Fixing problems6m 51s
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13. Building Looks: Essential Tools
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Node and input resizing6m 46s
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Render cache: User mode8m 33s
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Render cache: Smart mode7m 37s
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Keyframing fundamentals8m 27s
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Temporal noise reduction7m 58s
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14. In Action: Building a Look
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15. Rendering, Delivering, and Archiving
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Rendering: Individual shots10m 56s
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Final rendering and delivery4m 52s
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Backing up and archiving5m 30s
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16. DaVinci Resolve Updates
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Conclusion
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Goodbye2m 54s
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Video: The Primary sliders