How to Color Grade 8 - Bit Footage The Right Way | Davinci Resolve 18 Tutorial

[Music] I have used so many Sony cameras from the A7 series over the years and all of them were shooting 8bit internally that's why I know how painful it is to color grade an 8bit footage however you can get really great results with the powers of D resolve I have been asked before for this tutorial by you guys and finally I was able to do it now so today we will take a look at how to calibrate an 8bit footage whether it's s lock 2 or if it has a different kind of color space it doesn't really matter there are a couple of things we need to understand about 8bit footage it is more difficult to edit these type of footages because we do not have enough color information comparing to 10 bit or 16bit raw images is so we won't have much flexibility when we are grading for this reason if your white balance and exposure is correct when you're shooting your color grading workflow will be much easier later on so let's get into it I've got this clip of a model it's a really bright sunny day before I start adding my notes I will change my timeline color space go into your settings go into color management under timeline color space choose D white Gam intermediate and for the output color space select GMA 2.4 okay let's build our not structure first I will create seven notes then another one and then I will add two parallel noes to this and then we will have two three four more nodes let's clean up our workspace I know it's it kind of looks confusing but every note has a purpose our first note is going to be CST our 13th note is going to be another CST I will explain that why in a second my second note is going to be white balance third one is going to be for the highlights the fourth one is going to be balance fifth node is going to be contrast in this note I will write split tone seventh node is going to be my saturation these three layered nodes are going to be for the power windows you don't have to use all of them it is for the particular places on your footage that you want to enhance or make changes but again you don't have to use every one of them this note is going to be my look after the last CST are going to be for the whatever effects you want you're going to put them in these notes like a sharpen or film grain or Bloom Hali whatever you want our note structure is ready now let's start with the color space transformation the first CST is going to be I will select escam tree and this is an eslock 2 for switch then for the output color space I will select ding white gamut and output gamma is going to be dingi intermediate then we will move on to the other color space transform now we will transforming it from dingi White gamut to rec 79 and all the grading stuff is going to be in between of these two color space transform nodes so on the second CST we will select the white gamut for the input color space intermediate for the input gamma R 79 for the output color space and Gamma 2.4 for the output gamma okay I'm doing it this way because I want to take advantage for all the information that I can get let's move on after the color space Transformations I will go into my balance and I will use offset gain gamma and lift controls to just balance the footage make sure nothing is clipping and I am also looking at my Scopes I will give a little bit contrast in this note this is this is before this is after so and then I will go into the white balance and I will adjust it with the temperature and tint settings I will leave the highlights note for now and I will move on to contrast in this note I will go into my curves I will activate the editable splice then I will create an S curve with the shadows and with the highlights like this first I will go too much and then I will pull it back this is before this is after maybe a little less yeah this looks okay and actually have a separate note for the saturation but again I will increase the saturation just a little bit in this note but I'm not going to use the default saturation I will go into the HDR wheels and I will increase the global saturation this will give much better results this is before this is after let's close down this window let's move on to the split turn no now I will create a little color contrast I will push my offset into blue and then I will Contour that with my gamma wheel I will push it into more orange and red area this is before this is after this will clean up so much of that warm color but actually I don't want her skin tone to fade that much so I will go into my log wheels and then with my midtone I will push more orange into the midtones this is before this is after yeah looks a lot better let's going to do saturation now the most important thing when you are color grading a 8bit footage is that you shouldn't use qualifier tools at all because if you try to select something it will end up looking like this because you don't have enough color information instead using qualifiers you can use curves and select H versus H or H versus saturation you need to select range of colors you cannot manipulate colors through qualifiers so avoid using qualifiers as you can see it it looks kind of Blocky the selection is not going to be really good look at skin some part of his actually picking up but most of it kind of looks like blocky and this won't give you a good result so instead of doing this I will reset this note see where we are go into the saturation Noe right click on the note and go into color space and select HSV then again right click and go into the channels deactivate the channel one and channel three and then go into your color wheels into your primaries with gain and Gamma sliders you can control your saturation much easier and much more accurately this is before this is after look at it look at how much it actually gives that color back but if you did try to qualify and then give it a saturation your image would be break because it's really easy to break and 8bit footage for the power window notes I will just create a window I will give it a feather around her face like this let's give it a little bit offset just to give the attention more into her face this is before this is after and we covered some of the Shadow areas around her face I'll give a bit more saturation this looks really great even for now and we didn't even created a look let's move on to our look notes there are multiple ways to create a look and one is that you can go into your her's saturation and select different colors and with the input H slider select the specific color of your footage and give a little bit more saturation and then you can go into Hue versus Hue don't touch any color related to her skin tone because you don't want to mess with that so you can select blues or yellows and then change those values to create a different type of look so you can take your blues and make it more teal and this is before this is after it's just instantly creating a different vibe but when I do that you get so much heel in the shadows so you can Contour that by going into log Wheels this is before this is after you can do the same thing with the greens before after as a last step we have a note for the highlights so she has a really highlighted areas on her face and it's creating like really hard edges under her eyes on her nose so we can get rid of that by going into highlight note you can only use qualifiers with this because I'm not picking any color I'm just going to pick the highlighted areas just select the highlighted areas and then go into your primaries decrease your highlights like this go too much and pull it back this is before this is after it will kill the harshness of that light on her skin after this you can drop any effect that you want it's kind of blurry for my taste I will give a little bit of sharpening then let's add a film grain I will select 35 mm so you can save it as a steel and then apply to your other footages you can change anything by going into all of these settings because everything is really organized and separate let's look at it from the beginning this is our log image this is slog 2 first I added the csds and then I went into my balance and balanced the image I did my white balance then I went into my contrast settings and then I added split tone then my saturation to give more attention to her face I created a power window then I went into my look gave different kind of colors on the background if you have like a plugin like the handers you can use that as well finally I decreased the highlights then I added sharpen and film grain so now we have this okay guys I hope that was too much if you learn the basics of that note tree you can Implement that into any project of yours just try it with any footage of your own make sure to share that with me I will be really appreciated if you have any questions any comments drop it down below if you like this video give it a thumbs up thank you for watching until the next video take care

Channel: Moonbow

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Keywords: color grading in davinci resolve, davinci resolve tutorials, how to colorgrade phone footage, davinci resolve 8bit footage, davinci resolve 18, davinci resolve free course, davinci resolve fusion, davinci resolve for beginners, davinci resolve phone footage, davinci resolve, video color grading, professional color grading, color grading, color wheels, color curves, color correction, adobe after effects, adobe premiere, cinematic film look, filmmaking, filmic

Id: v1X42ubAC1U

Length: 10min 25sec (625 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 27 2024