Color Grading Concepts

DaVinci Resolve's Color page is a powerful environment for manipulating the aesthetic of your footage, and at its heart are the Primary Wheels, featuring controls for Lift, Gamma, Gain, and Offset. These foundational tools allow for precise adjustments to the brightness and color balance across different tonal ranges of your image.

Here's a detailed explanation of each concept:

1. Lift (Shadows)

• What it controls: Lift primarily targets the darkest parts of your image, specifically the shadows and blacks.
• How it affects the image:
  • Luminance (Brightness): Adjusting the master dial beneath the Lift wheel alters the overall brightness of the shadows. Increasing it brightens the shadows, which can "open up" dark areas, while decreasing it deepens them, creating richer blacks.
  • Color: Moving the color ball within the Lift wheel allows you to infuse or remove color tints specifically from the shadow regions. For instance, dragging the ball towards blue will introduce a blue hue into the darkest tones of your footage.
• Purpose: Common uses include crushing blacks for increased contrast, imparting a moody feel by cooling down shadows, or correcting unwanted color casts in the low end of the image's tonal range.
• Characteristic: In the Primary Wheels, Lift's influence is broad and somewhat overlaps with other tonal ranges, producing smooth and natural-looking transitions in your adjustments.

2. Gamma (Midtones)

• What it controls: Gamma is responsible for adjusting the midrange tones of your image, which typically encompasses most of the visible detail, including crucial elements like skin tones.
• How it affects the image:
  • Luminance (Brightness): The master dial below the Gamma wheel brightens or darkens the midtones.
  • Color: Manipulating the color ball within the Gamma wheel adds or subtracts color from these mid-range areas. This is particularly effective for shaping the overall warmth or coolness of a scene without drastically altering the extreme shadows or highlights.
• Purpose: It is ideal for tasks such as enhancing skin tones, adding warmth to daylight shots, or softening any harshness present in the mid-range details.
• Characteristic: Similar to Lift, Gamma also exhibits an overlapping effect, influencing the entire image but with its strongest impact concentrated on the midtones.

3. Gain (Highlights)

• What it controls: Gain is used to manipulate the brightest parts of your image, specifically the highlights and whites.
• How it affects the image:
  • Luminance (Brightness): The master dial underneath the Gain wheel adjusts the brightness of the highlights. Increasing it makes whites appear brighter, while decreasing it can help recover detail in areas that might be overexposed.
  • Color: Moving the color ball within the Gain wheel allows you to introduce or remove color tints from the highlight regions. For example, adding yellow here can warm up brighter areas.
• Purpose: This control is frequently used to refine highlights, achieve accurate white balance in bright areas, or to introduce a specific color aesthetic to the brightest elements within a scene.
• Characteristic: Gain primarily impacts the highlights, but its adjustments can subtly extend to the midtones and shadows due to the inherent overlapping nature of the Primary Wheels.

4. Offset (Global Image Control)

• What it controls: Offset functions as a global control, uniformly shifting the entire image—including shadows, midtones, and highlights—in both brightness and color.
• How it affects the image:
  • Luminance (Brightness): The master dial below the Offset wheel serves as a master exposure control, brightening or darkening the entire image uniformly.
  • Color: Moving the color ball within the Offset wheel applies a color tint consistently across all tonal ranges of the image.
• Purpose: It is an excellent tool for making initial overall exposure and white balance adjustments to your footage, establishing a foundational look for your color grade.

Relationship to Primary Wheels

Lift, Gamma, and Gain, along with Offset, are integral to the Primary Color Wheels (also known as "Primaries Color Wheels") in DaVinci Resolve. These are the default color correction tools typically used for initial adjustments on the Color page.

A defining feature of these Primary Wheels is the overlapping nature of their tonal influence. This means that an adjustment to Lift, while primarily affecting shadows, will also subtly influence midtones and highlights, contributing to a smoother, more organic visual result. This design facilitates broad, initial color corrections and balancing, often leading to a more natural appearance in comparison to tools that strictly isolate tonal ranges.

Other Related Concepts on the Color Page

While Lift, Gamma, Gain, and Offset are fundamental, the Color page offers other sophisticated tools for more refined control:

• Log Wheels: These wheels, often labeled Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights, offer a more targeted approach with less overlap in their influence compared to the Primary Wheels. They also allow you to define the specific tonal range where the correction takes effect. Log wheels are typically utilized for more precise adjustments after the initial primary corrections.
• HDR Wheels: Providing even finer control, HDR wheels segment the image into numerous zones (e.g., Dark, Shadow, Light, Global, Black, Highlight, Specular) and offer precise manipulation of the position and fall-off for each zone.
• Contrast and Pivot:
  • Contrast: This slider modifies the difference between the light and dark areas in your image. Increasing contrast makes whites brighter and blacks darker, creating an "S-curve" on your waveform display.
  • Pivot: The Pivot control works in conjunction with the Contrast adjustment. It allows you to set the central point or "fulcrum" around which the contrast is expanded or compressed. By adjusting the pivot, you can selectively brighten or darken the midtones when applying contrast, thereby fine-tuning the overall exposure impact. For example, a lower pivot will cause more of the image to darken when contrast is increased, while a higher pivot will cause more of it to brighten. Aligning the pivot to your footage's middle gray value can help maintain consistent exposure across different shots.

Primary vs Secondary

In the context of color grading, particularly in DaVinci Resolve, "primary" and "secondary" refer to two distinct stages or types of color correction, each with its own purpose and set of tools.

Primary Color Correction

Primary color correction involves making broad, global adjustments that affect the entire image or large portions of it. These are fundamental adjustments to the overall brightness, contrast, and color balance of your shot.

• What it addresses:
  • Exposure: Getting the overall brightness of the shot correct.
  • White Balance: Ensuring that colors look natural and that there aren't unwanted color casts across the whole image.
  • Overall Contrast: Setting the difference between the brightest and darkest parts of the image.
  • General Look: Establishing the foundational aesthetic or mood of the shot.
• Tools used for Primary Correction:
  • Lift, Gamma, Gain, Offset (Primary Wheels): As discussed, these are the quintessential primary tools.
    • Offset is the most "primary" of all, as it affects the entire image uniformly.
    • Lift, Gamma, and Gain also affect large portions of the image, even with their focus on shadows, midtones, and highlights, due to their overlapping nature.
  • Contrast and Pivot: Adjusting the overall contrast of the image.
  • Temperature and Tint: Global white balance adjustments.
  • Saturation: Global adjustment of color intensity.
  • Log Wheels (Shadows, Midtones, Highlights): While offering more refined control than the standard Primary Wheels, Log Wheels are often still considered primary tools because they make broad adjustments across their respective tonal ranges, albeit with less overlap.

Think of it this way: Primary correction is like painting the entire canvas with broad strokes to get the overall mood and lighting right. You're trying to achieve a neutral, balanced, or desired overall look before diving into specific details.

Secondary Color Correction

Secondary color correction involves making targeted adjustments to specific parts of the image, rather than the whole. This is where you isolate certain colors, objects, or areas and modify them independently without affecting the rest of the shot.

• What it addresses:
  • Targeted Color Changes: Changing the color of a specific object (e.g., making a red car more vibrant, changing the color of an actor's shirt).
  • Selective Brightness/Contrast: Brightening a face, darkening a distracting background element.
  • Skin Tone Refinement: Precisely adjusting skin tones without altering other colors in the shot.
  • Enhancing Specific Elements: Making eyes pop, emphasizing a logo.
  • Power Windows/Masks: Isolating an area to apply an adjustment only within that region.
  • Tracking: Following a moving object or area to ensure the correction stays applied to it throughout a clip.
• Tools used for Secondary Correction:
  • Qualifiers (HSL, RGB, Luma): Used to select a specific range of color, saturation, or luminance in the image. For example, using an HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance) qualifier to select all the green in a shot to make it more vibrant.
  • Power Windows: Drawing shapes (circles, squares, custom polygons) to isolate a specific area of the image for adjustment.
  • Trackers: Applying a Power Window or other effect to a moving object, ensuring the isolation follows the object throughout the clip.
  • Keyers: Using an alpha channel or luma key to isolate elements based on transparency or brightness.
  • Curves (Custom Curves): While curves can be used for primary adjustments, they become secondary when used with qualifiers or windows to target specific color ranges or luminance values.
  • Specific Effects/Plugins: Many ResolveFX or third-party plugins are used for secondary enhancements (e.g., sharpening specific areas, adding glow to lights).

Think of it this way: Secondary correction is like using a fine brush to meticulously refine specific details, highlights, or objects within the painting. You're correcting imperfections or enhancing particular elements after the overall foundational look is established.

You should perform secondary adjustments (and most of your primary grading) before transforming your footage to Rec. 709.

Why the Distinction?

The distinction between primary and secondary is crucial for an efficient and effective color grading workflow:

1. Foundation First: It's generally best practice to perform primary corrections first to establish a solid base. Trying to fine-tune a specific color (secondary) before the overall white balance and exposure (primary) are correct can lead to rework and inconsistent results.
2. Efficiency: Broad primary adjustments are quicker to apply and often solve many issues across the entire image.
3. Control and Precision: Secondary tools offer granular control, allowing you to address specific problems or artistic needs without disrupting the rest of the image.

So, Lift, Gamma, Gain, and Offset fall squarely into the realm of Primary Color Correction because they are foundational tools for adjusting the overall look and balance of the entire image across its various tonal ranges.