what is up everybody welcome back I want
to talk in this video about DaVinci
Resolve which I have talked about a lot
lately and this is a software
application that I use for color grading
video footage did a video on that about
a week or so ago and I've had several
people ask me since can you use it to
grade still images and the quick answer
is yes in fact DaVinci does several
things really well it's not going to
replace something like Lightroom or
Photoshop necessarily but if you want to
use a nodal editor and use DaVinci
Resolve to apply LUTs and color grades
that way it does support it quite well
you can do several things with it you
can bring in still images it supports
several file formats you can do JPEGs
Tiff's Camera Raw probably won't support
whatever your camera shoots but if you
convert it to a DNG file it does support
DNG raw which is very cool the other
thing is very cool is you can export a
frame from a video to use as a still
with all your color grading applied and
that works really well too I shoot
mostly in 4k so that's 8 megapixels so
it's big enough to do a lot of things
with so let's look at DaVinci Resolve
and I'll show you how you can do some of
these things with still images so first
of all I'm going to show you how you can export
a still from a video clip so right now
this is a video clip that is in here and
I have you can see the nodes over here
on the right pane and I've applied some
levels adjustments a LUT some color
grading and then also a vignette with some
stuff in it so here's quick before and
after and there's before that's straight
off the camera and then once I color
grade it and that's what we have in the
end and I want to export this as a still
image so the way you're going to do this
is you're going to right click on the
viewer here and you going to say grab
still and then what it's going to do is
over here on the Left pane it's going to
put that still there and it puts it
there temporarily because what this acts
is kind of a screenshot of your video
clip and it took that specific frame so it
saves two things it saves a full version
of the image but it also saves the color
information so what's cool is I can just
use this to apply to other footage if I
want so if you want to apply the same
look or color grade to another clip you
can just click and drag to do that or
you can export this as a still and to do
that you're going to right click on that
little thumbnail then and you're going
to say export and you do have the option
of exporting it with
the display LUT or with that color
information or just straight up and so
here's your file formats here and I
usually export it as a tiff file where
you can also just straight export as a
JPEG also if you're not going to do any
further editing and boom you're done so
that's how you take a still clip from a
video file now let's talk about how you
would bring still images in to work with
them here and what I'm going to do is
I'm going to go into the media pane down
here at the bottom and I have a folder
here with a couple images in it I've got
TIFF image and two DNG's so let's bring in
one of the DNGs I'm going to click
and drag this down to the media pool
once it's in there you can go to the
Edit window and I'm going to select it
over here and what I'm going to do is
right click and I'm going to say new
timelines using selected clips and it's
going to create a timeline now this is
where this differs from something like
Photoshop or Lightroom because what it's
going to do is it's going to treat it
like video and so you're kind of still
limited into that 8 megapixel 4k
resolution and it'll be interesting to
see I haven't checked out the beta
version of DaVinci Resolve 14 yet but if
it has some more still support that
would really be cool so once I've
created that timeline then I can go over
to my color pane here and you can see we
have the clip selected and I can add
nodes and I could you know mess with my
levels my curves adjustments and colors
and all that stuff and create a grade
around this or better yet I'm going to
reset all nodes and grades there we have
this still that we grabbed from the
previous example and it's still there
and this has all the color grading
information in it so let's say that I
want to apply this look to this new
image here so I can simply bring that
over and click and drag and drop it and
there we go now I have all the color
information set up from my previous
grade and I'll probably want to edit it
further from that which is going to
bring me to my next point and I want to
clarify a few things about working in a
nodal editor because a lot of people get
really excited about the idea of a LUT
and a LUT stands for color lookup table
it's a file that you can bring into the
software that gives it a set of
instructions on what to do color grading
that image and so a lot of people will
find LUTs that you can either download
for free or you can buy on the Internet
and the whole idea of just being able to
apply the LUT and render the footage out
it's really cool but LUT's really don't
quite work that way there's a few things
you need to understand about working
with LUTs - LUTs are completely dependent
on the source footage at what camera was
it shot on what color profile was used
what gamma profile was used what are all
those settings was is it exposed
properly and so just bringing footage in
and applying the LUT usually you're
going to have to work with it a little
further and I want to talk about that
because it's really important it's the
same thing you wouldn't work just with
Lightroom presets and never tweak
anything beyond that so I want to talk
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art of photography so let's talk about
grading with LUTs
and DaVinci Resolve now I have a sample
setup here it's just a clip and I have
created three nodes and there is no
color grading done and all on here
they're all blank but I want to use this
as an example so this is a nodal editor - is
what we call DaVinci Resolve it works
with nodes and if you consider Photoshop
being a layer based editor the idea in a
layer based editor is that anything you
add to a layer above effects the layers
below for the most part you can set that
up to where it doesn't but that's the
idea behind a layer based editing
situation so this is nodal based and so
what this means is the nodes work side
by side they don't necessarily impact
the same way if they did if they were
stacked in two layers let me show you
what I'm talking about if I select the
middle node here right and I'm going to
do a quick and
dirty curves adjustment and we are going to
click-and-drag the darks and destroy
this image it looks terrible right if I
click on the node on the right here
and can go the opposite direction and
you can see I can bring all of that back
and it didn't necessarily destroy
anything you would never be able to do
that kind of thing in a layer-based
editor consequently I can also let's
reset that node grade I can go to the
node before it and I can also bring the
blacks up in that and I can bring it
back to pretty much where it was with
the source footage so that's the
difference here is that the idea is that
you can make adjustments on one node
that don't necessarily have
repercussions down the line with other
nodes you can cancel things out if
something is too dark can make it
lighter in another node not that's great
practice but that is the idea now this
changes when you introduce LUTs into the
equation you bring that file in with
that color information it changes what
can be done and where and let me give
you an example with this so if I load up
a different version of this and this is
one where you can see here I have three
nodes that are set up and only one of
them has something applied you can see
the little icon down here that means I've
applied a LUT and so this is a LUT this
is one I found on the Internet this is
kind of one of the trendy looks that
you see now with the faded out blacks
and let's say that that's what we're
going for it's cool but I just don't
want them faded so much so if I go to
the node before it and I try to darken
the blacks and bring them down you're
going to see that whoa it just starts
banding and nothing ever goes black it
just goes a really dark gray and so
let's bring up the waveforms here with
the Scopes shift command W we'll bring
that up and you can see we'll look at
the RGB parade here and you can see that
there is kind of this hard line down
here right around 250 or so well black
occurs at zero so when I move this down
you can see that that LUT has actually
put a hard floor in there it's how low
the blacks will go it's part of the
color information that's
baked into that LUT so what I would
want to do in this case is actually go
to the node after the LUT let's reset
that node grade and if I go to the one
after that LUT then indeed I can bring
them all the way back down to zero if I
want or I can split the difference and maybe
if that look is just a little too trendy
in there and I don't want to have it
that faded out I can make adjustments so
it does matter when you use a LUT
whether you grade on the right or the
left depending on what you want to do to it
generally speaking things that happen
before the LUT - the LUT is locked in so
that's kind of working within the
parameters of the LUT and then if you go
to the right side then you're able to do
a little more with it now let me show
you an example where you have kind of
the opposite thing go down and I'm going
to right click here let's go to version
two load that up and I have three nodes
set up I'm going to grab the middle node
and let's go down apply a 3D LUT if you
look in this film looks folder everyone
should have this because it comes with
DaVinci it's free and these full of LUTs
and so if I go the rec.709 Kodak 2383
let's grab that one
I like this LUT but it is really
heavy-handed and I mentioned that in the
last video and so how would you grade
for this you know what can you do so in
that last example we found that we were
able to fix that by going to the node on
the right so let's go to the one after
the LUT and what I'm going to do here is
it's really contrasty and
there's a lot of darks and the blacks
are really crushed in here so if I go to
this one I try to bring the blacks up
you can see that Wow look it here's that
line once again remember and so this is
an example where I'm just raising
everything but I don't want it to all
hard raise I want and I want to kind of
split the difference somewhere so let's
reset that node now in this case I'm
going to go to the node on the left and
now when I lower the blacks you can see
that it still kind of locks them in down
towards zero and so I can make this a
lot less contrasty in this case because I
am applying my curves adjustments here
before the LUT and that's really
important so I'll give you a quick
before-and-after this is kind of down
and dirty but you get the idea so here's
before with no grades applied thats
straight off the camera here is after
with my grades applied - it's still a
little bit heavy and I would probably go
work on that some more but my whole
point here is if you're going to get
into working with LUTs it's going to
make a big difference of which side of
the LUT you apply your grades to and for
instance in this case if you just bypass
the LUT node here you can see that
everything's really washed out so it
kind of looks to me like this LUT is
expecting log footage
to come in so I've had to kind of
replicate that in the node before and
that's not uncommon I mean a LUT is
designed to do a certain thing with a
certain way something was shot and if
it's not getting that it's not going to
look right and so you're going to have
to understand how to adjust that and so
you're going to experiment a little bit
and so that's typically why I will put
the LUT in the middle of two other nodes and
so I've got room to try different things
depending on what I'm trying to do to
that look to modify that so I hope that
makes sense to you guys I will put a
link to DaVinci Resolve you can get it
it's free from Blackmagic software you
do have to have a fast computer to
handle it if you have any questions feel
free to leave me a comment I'd be
interested to hear from you and as
always we've enjoyed this video
please remember to like it share it
subscribe to the Art of Photography for
more videos and I will see you guys in
the next one until then later
