How to Create a Free Halation Effect in DaVinci Resolve

Halation is a subtle glow or halo effect around  bright objects or highlights. It's used to mimic   the characteristics of traditional film cameras  where light would scatter and create this   atmospheric type glow. This technique adds a sense  of realism and cinematic quality to the video,   resembling the look and feel of classic films.  DaVinci Resolve includes a halation effect but   some users feel that it's not that great. Not  only that, the halation effect is only available   in the studio version. There are other ways  to create a halation effect using basic tools   inside of resolve so let's create a simple and  free halation effect in one node. I've created   this look using my Kodak 2383 PowerGrade. I'm  not going to go over how to create this look.   Just how to create the halation effect. You can  make these same adjustments in any node where   you want to add halation. If you are interested  in this PowerGrade, there's a link to it in the   description of this video. If you would like to  see a tutorial on this look, comment down below   and let me know. So here we have the PowerGrade  and I have this halation node here. I'm going   to turn it on and off so you can see the halation  effect that we're getting and this is the halation   effect that we're going to create. So I'm going  to reset this node. First, in a Serial node, set   the composite mode to "Screen". Next, go to the  Blur panel and increase the Radius all the way.   Now go to the Gain wheel and  push to a warm orange color. Now, go to the custom curve. Making sure  that all the curves are linked together,   create an anchor in the middle of the curve and  drag it down all the way and push the right until   you are only affecting the brightest parts of  your image. And that's basically how to create   this halation effect. This bottom anchor here will  work as a threshold and it will determine when the   effect starts to take place. This top anchor here  will work as the intensity of this effect. You can   also use the radius as a spread control. You can  lower the radius to make the halation less soft   and tighter around the edges of light sources.  Work with these three controls to achieve the   look that you like if you're not sure what your  halation should look like, you can search online   for movie stills that have similar lighting  conditions to your footage. Bring those Stills   into Resolve and try and match that halation as  much as possible with these controls. Typically,   with halation less is more but don't let that  stop you from getting creative. You might discover   something that looks really cool and something  that you like for your own style. One more   thing. When using this effect, you might encounter  this issue where you're getting halation in area   that you don't like. For example, in this shot  we're getting some of this effect here in the   close of our subject. To fix this, adjust the  bottom anchor and the curve as much as possible   to limit the effect of only the brightest parts of  the shot and then go into the gain wheel and lower   the amount of color being added. A combination  of these two adjustments should solve this issue. If after using this halation method you've  introduced a little bit of color into your   white point and you want to clean that up  just use the Highlight log wheel in any node   after your halation node to clean up that white  point. I'll do this in the Look Adjustment node   of my Kodak PowerGrade. I'll also go to the  vectorscope and make it show me my highlights   so I can clearly see where my white point is  at. If you keep the effects subtle you won't   color your white point as much but if you do  introduce a lot of halation you'll see that   this white point gets a little warm. If that's  happening you can just use the Highlight wheel   to bring this back closer to the center and  that will clean up your highlights. As always,   thank you for watching. Like, comment and  subscribe for more tutorials like these

Channel: George.Colorist

Views: 37,250

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Id: 7QhA6MWgefM

Length: 3min 31sec (211 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 26 2023