Defining and using color space aware tools

in this video I'm going to show you what color space aware truly means and how you can use your understanding of this concept to grade better images so before we dive into resolve let's get a couple of definitions on the board what do we mean when we say color space aware well we typically use this term to describe a tool and what we mean when we say that a tool is color space aware is that it has some awareness of the color space that we are operating within pretty self-explanatory right but what difference does that make what does it matter if a tool is color space aware versus unaware which we're going to talk about in just a moment well what's implicit in that term color space aware is that that tool is tailoring or altering Its Behavior based on that awareness of the color space that you're operating within and by the way we've learned in other videos here on the channel that there are actually any number of color spaces that we might work within inside of resolve and depending on what exactly we are trying to accomplish we can get Better or Worse results depending on the color space that we choose so color space aware tool is simply a tool which is aware of the color space that we have chosen and which changes its Behavior based on its awareness of that color space but there's another kind of tool that we need to talk about before we can dive into resolve and get Hands-On that would be a color space unaware tool for lack of a better term and this is really important to talk about because the fact is the majority of tools inside of resolve the vast majority of tools inside of DaVinci Resolve are actually color space unaware so what exactly does that mean how does a color space unaware tool contrast with a color space aware tool well again at face value pretty self-explanatory a color space unaware tool has no idea what color space you are working in but again the question comes up of what difference does that make the difference that that makes is that a color space unaware tool does the exact same thing regardless of the space that you are using it within and it doesn't make any attempt to tailor or alter Its Behavior based on that color space because it has no awareness of that color space so with these basic definitions in play Let's Take a look inside of resolve now and get a sense for practically how a color space aware versus a color space unaware tool differ in terms of their operation so I've got a project that I've set up here inside of resolve and I've done the first couple things that I always do at the beginning of a project I've got my color Management in place I've got a look in place here at the Timeline level of my node graph which is a combination of my free Fuji 3510 film emulation Lut with one of the components of my Voyager PRO Pack called Hyperion I've got a nice little overall look here but we're not going to be focused too much on that we're just focused on getting a decent reproduction of our image what I now want to focus on is color space unaware versus color space aware tools and we are going to start with color space unaware tools because as I said these actually represent the majority authority of the tools available to us inside of resolve so let's take a look at my favorite color space unaware tool maybe one of my favorite tools of all time in the World of Color grading and that is good old offset offset is a simple and Broad and very powerful tool it has been with us longer than any other tool in color grading it actually goes all the way back to the photochemical era because it has an analog and what are called printer lights if you've ever been exposed to the ideas of the way that movies were mastered in terms of the way that their color balance was rendered before we had color grading at all but I digress I get excited I get romantic about offset but all we really want to do right now is take a look at offset and how it behaves as a color space unaware tool so right now I am operating in log I'm in a log color space because I'm working inside of DaVinci wide gamut intermediate and because I'm in a log color space if I reach for my offset wheel right now and I spin it to the right or or to the left I'm going to get an exposure like response in my image so if I just pull this a little bit to the left I've kind of trimmed my exposure down and I've got a moodier image than I did a moment ago right now here's what I want to do I want to see what happens when you change the working color space that you are using a color space unaware tool within so as I said right now I'm grading in log let's see what happens if I move into a linear Gamma or a linear tone curve which by the way represents one half of a color space a color space is made up of a primary set and a gamma curve or a tone curve okay easiest way to do that there are any number of ways that I could do that but a really simple one that you can use inside of resolve when you have your color management all set up is you can simply right click on a node and go to your gamma and I'm going to flip this to linear now watch what happens when I do hey the image changes like quite a bit right it doesn't look at all like it did a moment ago even though my offset adjustment is in the exact same position that it was a moment ago this is the essence of a color space unaware tool there's two things we need to understand that are happening here first of all the behavior of the offset wheel is not changing at all it is still applying the exact same arithmetic to the image but the visual result is changing because of the color space because of the tone curve of my color space that I have shifted from log into linear okay so that's what I want you to remember about a color space unaware tool Behavior does not change visual result does change okay let's now contrast that with a color space aware tool I'm going to go ahead and reset everything here in my node graph for now and I'm now going to go over to the only area in all of resolve where we are going to find find color space aware tools remember I said most of the tools inside of resolve are color space unaware it's really true the only place you're going to find color space aware tools is here inside of the HDR palette everywhere else color space unaware everything within this palette is color space aware now let's get a sense for how that plays out practically when we're working on our image I'm going to go down to my Global exposure slider here and I'm going to pull it to the left and you can see that without getting super scientific or picky about it I'm getting a similar result when I pull my exposure to the left is I was getting when I pulled my offset over to the left I'm getting an exposure like response in my image right but let's look at something let's do the same exact experiment that we did with our offset wheel a moment ago and right click on our node and go to gamma and flip it to linear Watch What Happens nothing at all how could that be why is that why the difference well the HDR zones palette the exposure wheel within the HDR zones palette is color space aware so it knew when I was in log a moment ago and it now knows that I am in linear and it is changing its Behavior accordingly so we add our two principles that we talked about for a color space unaware tool right Behavior does not change visual result does change exact opposite with a color space aware tool the behavior is actually changing when I flip that gamma from log to linear but the visual result as a result of that change in color space is staying the exact same or I should say as a result of that change in Behavior the visual result is staying the same so color space unaware behavior is the same result is different color space aware behavior is different but the result is the same so when we're working with the color space aware tool it is going to try its very best to give you the exact same result no matter what color space you are operating within okay so now the question arises okay that's great now I've got a better sense of color space underwear versus color space aware and we even understand where we are going to find color space aware versus color space unaware tools inside of resolve but what does that all mean which one should I use which one is better which one is worse how do I decide whether I should be using a color space aware versus a color space unaware tool I'm going to give you my take I don't think there's necessarily an advantage to using a color space aware tool versus a color space unaware tool or a disadvantage for that matter I simply think that being aware of color space awareness is the most important factor here because I know when I'm working in my primaries for example I know that my primaries are not color space aware I am aware of their awareness if that makes sense and as a result I know that I I need to be mindful that I am using the right tools in the right setting we've made one example just a moment ago that when I'm using offset that's going to give me an exposure-like response when I'm working in log when I'm in a color managed environment right another example if I turn my gain to the left or right while I'm working in log this is a contrast adjustment it's going to stretch my highlights further out or bring them further in and closer to the floor of my image okay so I'm getting a Contrast adjustment when I just gain in a log color space but if I move back into that linear color space that we talked about a moment ago I'm now going to get an exposure adjustment so it's not important that you necessarily log this particular set of rules or details about working gain in linear versus log although this can be useful what's more important to me is that you understand the idea that I am bringing color space awareness to the table because I recognize that the tools I'm choosing do not have color space awareness so I need to bring that awareness to the equation right contrast that with working in something like the HDR zones palette which do have color space awareness I don't need to bring that same level of awareness of working space and I don't need to go oh well because I'm in log I should use gain or I shouldn't use gain depending on what I'm trying to get I'm going to get consistent Behavior out of the knobs in the HDR zones palette regardless of the color space that I'm working in so that's kind of cool right maybe that relieves me of having to think so much about my operations but here's the flip side of working with a color space aware tool if you don't like what it does in log you're not going to like what it does anywhere else because it's going to look identical so that's the thing to be mindful of when you're using color space aware tools is the results that you get with them regardless of the color space that you are working in are going to be identical so that's really the best sort of election criteria for when you should use a color space aware tool is when you like what it does because it really only will ever do one single thing as opposed to a color space unaware tool which we now know has the same behavior regardless of color space but will yield different visual results based on color space color space aware tool that's not the case the result is always going to be the same so which is better color space unaware versus color space aware neither is better what's most important is our awareness of the awareness of our tools if that makes sense I hope that's a helpful set of guidelines for what exactly it means when we talk about a tool being color space aware versus color space unaware and also some helpful principles for when you might want to use which and why you don't necessarily need to be afraid of one or the other or prejudiced to only use color space aware tools or only use color space unaware tools when you're grading

Channel: Cullen Kelly

Views: 7,080

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Id: 0AlUfvaeITE

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 26 2023