Emulate Film Characteristics with Split Toning for Look Development | Davinci Resolve

welcome back to the channel today we're going to be talking about one of the base foundational building blocks of any look and that is split toning now uh just as a little backstory when I first started hearing about split toning when it came to film making I was actually really resistant to the idea and that's because before I started getting into any sort of color or to Vinci resolve I had messed around with split toning in photo editing applications and the thing is this this term split toning doesn't always mean the same thing across different platform forms when when I heard that term the way I had seen it used was this really in my opinion ugly way of tinting the Black Point and the white point of an image an overly engineered too heavy-handed kind of faded blue and warm look and if that's your background uh can I encourage you hold off judgment for a moment because when I talk about split toning in reference to color in filmmaking what I'm referring to is the warming up of the highlights and the cooling off of the Shadows specifically used using the curves tool right it's that one we often call it a 1D color adjustment so it's if you think of color in terms of a cube we're not adjusting the the outer edges of the cube in this case we're just going to use the the contrast curves to give us this result now it is possible to make this look really ugly but I'm going to show you some ways that you can practically implement this on your projects all right let's jump into Da Vinci resolve here so one of the first questions we need to ask ourselves when it comes to split toning is where is that split going to happen because if we kind of think of the waveform here we're going to kind of warm the highlights a bit and then cool the Shadows so at what point is that split happening now where that split happens it can be a subjective choice right we're artists we get to break the rules when we want to but if you aren't intentionally trying to break the rules the the spot that you should most often default to is Middle gray in this case then you're not going to be tinting the white balance of the image so I have a little test chart up here and uh this has um some steps up top ramp on the bottom and then this gray p in the middle is set to the uh the great point for uh Da Vinci intermediate uh if you want this uh image to experiment with you're more than welcome to have it uh it's free Link in the description uh if you don't want to download it you can kind of create something similar here if you grab just a uh a ramp inside resolve along with a 10-step ramp that's built in you can kind of do a similar thing you know crop them together and then create a compound clip here let me do that compound clip just going to say gray and so you can do something like it the reason why I like this one that I used is you'll notice it has uh 16 uh steps up top rather than just the 10 and this uh this middle gray patch is something that you would have to go and create yourself so uh you know two options for you um but there's there's a reason why I prefer working off this uh this test image here and what you can do and resolve is as you start to try to develop your split tone uh we can just take our little qualifier tool here so qualifier click on the mid gray and you'll notice in our curves we've dropped a point point right on the the mid gray point of uh D Vinci intermediate which is very very convenient for us uh the next thing I'm going to do is uh if I were to just start you know grabbing the curve and moving it around what I find is that it's often very sensitive work so I'm going to drop my key output here often I just do you know 333 it's about a third of the effect so we're just we're kind of scaling back the the sensitivity of the tool here so the output is not going to be quite as strong now as we're trying to decide you know what do we do with the highlights what do we do with the Shadows what we can one of the ways we can look to see well what are some best practices is actually by looking at uh what kind of split toning naturally occurs in film so one of the ways we could do this is in resolve we're actually provided with a Kodak 2383 film print emulation this doesn't fit with the da Vinci intermediate space but what we can still do is open up the Scopes and see what's happening to the split toning and you'll notice right the uh the the blues are are brought down a little bit so we're getting this warm boost in the highlights where kind of the red and green channels are a little more prevalent and then as we go towards the bottom end of the image right we get more of a blue boost happening then the red and the green is also a little bit lower and you can also just look at the screen here right as we look at this ramp you'll notice the warm boost in the highlights and then the uh the cool tone sneaking in in the shadows also can I point out to you that uh we don't get any weird gross tinting of the the the white point or the Black Point the Black Point might have just the tiniest bit of cooling to it but you're you're really neutralizing a lot of the curve when it comes to the bottom end and then towards the top right they're all kind of returning back towards uh a more neutral point with that knowledge Let's uh let's delete the L there and start thinking about this split toning so I'm going to pop out the uh the curves here just so we can uh have a little more space to work with as I look at the uh steps up top and as the waveform at the bottom let's start doing a similar thing we noticed that at the top right we had a little bit more of a a warm boost at the top we notic that the blue kind of dropped down a little bit and uh in that L there we had a little bit of a green addition I'm not going to do quite as much initially but let's uh let's just start pushing this out a bit and see what we come up with all right so there we have the the beginning of some of the the Highlight warming and now let's jump down to the uh the bottom portion of the image the Reds I'm going to drop some of the red out so we start getting some of the uh the blues coming through give ourselves a little bit of a a blue boost at the bottom and then I think for right now I'm going to leave the greens fairly neutral I think for this example we're gonna we're going to start there uh I like it okay so now that we've done this we uh we have to kind of move out of the theory portion and start testing it on actual Clips so what I'm going to do is uh right here I actually have some frames from a previous film I worked on now they have already been color managed into Da Vinci intermediate so uh at the end of this oh you know what I'm in the uh the clip phase right now I am going to move this to the timeline so we're now affecting all of the uh the Clips in the timeline I'm just going to label this to be a a good little colorist that's our split toning and then at the end I am going to go over and drop our uh D Vinci wide gamut to rec 709 color space transform uh so that these images start looking um they have a proper color management pipeline so let's take a look at an image like this to begin with so uh if I the split toning off looks like that and if I add the split toning back in it looks like this so immediately one of the things that I'm finding is I feel like this is already a little bit uh strong in its in its Essence so I'm going to back out a little bit of the uh Cooling in the bottom end of the image there so let's just toggle that on and off okay yeah that feels a little more uh a little more appropriate for what I'm looking at let's also take a look at we're just going to kind of jump through a number of images here uh maybe uh let's look at this kind of exterior shot so here is the before and there is the after yeah we're getting some of the uh kind of nice Cooling in there um one of the things I know just from working on this film is that uh I like a little extra contrast in this image so I'm going to apply some linear contrast uh just to give our images a little more depth to it so let's go like 1.15 that's reasonable okay um that's a little more appropriate so do you see how in this image as I I toggle this off uh we have a very warm looking shadows I'm seeing especially in the hair as we add it in we're starting to get some of this this cooling into the image now once again I feel like that's still a little strong so let me back out the uh the key output here to something more like maybe we try like. 28 toggle it off and toggle it on and I am I am really liking the results that we're getting there so uh let me jump back to this image toggle it off toggle it on and do you see how we're already getting some nice color separation this image is naturally either kind of warm and skin toned or kind of more neutral with the background kick on the split toning and all of a sudden we've got some nice color contrast being built into the image now as I look at some of these brighter daylight shots let me uh let me maybe look at let's start at this image here if I pull this off and add it you'll see that the adjustment is definitely having an effect I'm noticing some of the cooling happening towards the lower end and the skin is definitely warming up a bit um and while I like this it's not too extreme of a shift I don't feel like I'm radically altering kind of the the base of the image but one of the things we have to remember is that when we're developing a look for the film this is something that's going to touch every single shot and we have to test this in different environments as a reference point let's check out uh this one right here this is a a much darker looking image let me uh let me look at this without the split tone o so it's a little warmer do you see how this radically shifts the look of the the look of the scene right here like we're we're going from kind of this this tannish khaki look to now this sun we are full committing to a a cool blue tone so you you really need to test out whatever your whatever your adjustment is test it out and if you don't like it make it a little more subtle this is I think one of the mindsets that we have to have as colorists when we're when we're building out the look of a film is the more variety of shots that you're working with so the longer the piece the more different environments you're working in often times the more subtle of a touch you need to have because that's going to be working over for all the shots if you're working on something like a short film you can often be a lot more aggressive with the look that you have at a global level because it's not going to need to be as durable over many shots uh you know this is another good example of of looking at split toning if I take this off um we'll notice Let Me zoom in here uh this image is already so blue in the shadows that when I disable it it it doesn't feel like we're getting dramatically Bluer but what we are doing is this little cast of light is getting just a touch warmer due to the split toning and that's adding a little more color separation in the image now something that you might have noticed if you've played around with any sort of print film emulation is often times the split the pivot point that happens in the curve actually doesn't happen at the midgrade point of the image let me go show you this uh Kodak L again you'll notice that the split actually happens a lot higher on the curve so uh the mid-grade point right is is lower right down here the the split is happening much higher now as long as you know that that is your intention that's okay to do do but as you're building Global looks can I encourage you do your best to preserve that midg gray Point as often as possible it's just going to save you from feeling like you're throwing color casts into the image now one of the other things you can do is uh if if you feel like you want to preserve your mid-grade Point even more you can actually add little like limiting uh points here like I'm going to add I'm holding down I'm on a Windows uh PC here but I'm holding down alt and you'll notice that when you hold down alt and add a point it locks it so what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of add just a couple extra points to help clarify the uh the gray Point here in the in the middle of the image so as I do this for the uh the red green and blue that will just help us get a little extra Clarity there and as I pull up the waveform and check the adjustments we've been doing you'll notice that we're splitting right over this nice mid- gray point and you'll notice that the uh the the mid- gray box is represented by this kind of chunky line here going right through the center of the image so we have this nice warm boost in the high and cool boost in the uh in the shadows there now let's say that you really do like how the split is happening in that Kodak 2383 L over there towards a higher part of the image but you also know that you don't want to color cast everything blue well let let me just show you something here and this is a little thought experiment for us let's say that there are certain scenes that you really do like a uh a Bluer cast you want that split Tony to happen on a a higher part of the image so let me add a a node before this and I'm just going to drop its key output to uh something a little bit lower so it's easier to work with and and let me pull up the waveform so keep in mind I'm working right before the split tone here watch what happens when I grab the gain I'm going to grab the gain and cool it off just a little bit you notice what's happening do you see how the split is starting to go up the image let me reset it here so the split of the split toning the pivot is happening right there as I cool off the gain of the image you'll notice how the split toning starts to slide up further so let's say you get a scene like this and you really want to cool off the image but you didn't want to build that cooling into the split tone well you can just you know you can add a node and this would probably be on either the clip level or the uh or the scene level you wouldn't want to do this on the timeline level but I'm just going to do it on the timeline level right now just for the example sake and I'm just going to you know make this key output really small for now watch this I can grab the gain and make the image a little cooler before it hits the split toning now we're still getting a nice warming of the highlights and a cooling of the Shadows but the split of when the cooling is hitting is now higher in the image and and this can go either way maybe uh maybe if I just reset the gain here maybe we look at something like uh this shot here where we want to warm it up a bit further well we could do that we could warm the whole image up but we're still going to get like let me back this out you see how warm the Shadows get we're still getting split toning but we're warming things up before then so the the warmth is taking up more of the image uh same thing here right if if this is we've got the the warmth added we're still getting the the warming and the cooling of the image but it's happening before the split toning takes place uh by the way one of the little tricks that I do to uh save myself time is whenever I'm starting to build out split toning uh in my uh Power grades I actually keep a utility elect called the uh the mid-gray curve anchor and all that is is it's uh it's just got my curves already pinned to the uh the DiVinci wide gamut 18% grade point uh in the same uh same place on my free Resource page that you find the test image that I was working off of I'll also include this uh Power grade here just you know if you want to save yourself some time you can import that into your power grades and just drop it on and then you have a a point pinned one other tip I'll mention here with the curves tool is uh one other way of adjusting the sensitivity of this uh if you don't want to adjust the key output you can adjust the sensitivity of each channel here but one of the things I want to warn you about is that uh so let's say you know let's say I just you know added some egregious split Tony here for a moment if I wanted to adjust the sensitivity of my red adjustment I could dial this down but be aware uh neutral so no adjustment is actually at 50 so you notice as I disable unable this node nothing's happening when you go below 50 it's actually trying to invert it so uh just make sure you set it to maybe like 70 if you're trying to decrease the sensitivity of a certain Channel or you know uh for all the channels together so you could do something like set them globally at like 75 just don't go below 50 otherwise you're working in the opposite direction I also want to emphasize to you that there's not one way to do split toning so maybe rather than splitting the tones like this you say that you know I just want to work in a uh subtractive method that rather than you know dropping the blues and boosting the Reds you're just going to maybe just drop the blues and then you know in the shadows you're just going to to drop the Reds there so that would be a way of working in what we might call a subtractive way you're not necessarily adding color you're rather taking it away and and this is a a totally viable approach like if we go look back here I think uh my gut is these are going to be all a little green for my tastes so uh I probably would jump back in here and grab the greens below mid gray and neutralize them a little bit more and uh and and there we go right we we're getting this split toning in a way that's a slight different method of generating it there when we start talking about look building and the tools behind look building there's a little bit of a philosophy I I just want to leave you with and that is you don't need to make a meal out of a single ingredient I think sometimes when we're presented with a new tool like split toning if this is something you haven't played around with a lot before it might be tempting to feel like you have to build the look of your film right here often times a really rich look is built up of a couple small thoughtful purposeful adjustments don't feel like you really need to you know slap the audience in the face with your split toning if it's too much if it's doing things you don't like make it a bit more subtle one of the goals that I have whenever I'm building a look for a film is ask when I add this adjustment is is it only doing things that I like cuz if it's doing things I don't like I either need to dial it back or find a different way of approaching the solution so don't feel like you need to make a whole meal out of this ingredient if you want that uh diin intermediate test frame that I was working off of of uh as well as that power grade with that Anchor Point already set for you uh find the link in the description it goes right to my Resource page you'll find those both for free as a download available there the next step from here is just give it a try uh if you feel like you've been resistant to split ton in the past maybe your challenge is can I do it in a really subtle way that works well and if you're someone who's already on board try testing your adjustments over a lot of different shots and see is it working is it only doing things I like and do I need to scale it back a little bit if you found this video helpful feel free to hit this subscribe button and the like button that helps me know that this actually was helpful for you and uh let me know your thoughts down in the comments all right I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Barrett Kaufman

Views: 28,074

Keywords: davinci resolve, davinci resolve tutorial, davinci resolve color grading, color grading davinci resolve, davinci resolve effects, davinci resolve studio, davinci resolve free, davinci resolve 18, davinci resolve 18 color grading, resolve color grading, davinci tutorial, davinci resolve tutorial for beginners, color correction davinci resolve, davinci resolve 19, 19 beta, film, film emulation, film look tutorial, film colorist, colourist, colour grading, colour correction

Id: kATabRhkdFE

Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2024