Is DaVinci's Film Look Creator any good?

a couple of weeks ago Blackmagic announced the newest version of D Vinci resolve which was going to introduce a whole bunch of new color grading tools which looked really cool one of which was a new film look Creator tool now as someone who's been using film emulation and their color grading workflow for years now I got really excited about this to test it out and see what all it could do and whether it was going to be different from my workflow whether it was going to be better than third party plugins and all that good stuff so after downloading da Vinci resolve 19 and doing some tests and comparisons with my current workflow a third party plugin and then the new film look Creator tool I have some stuff to share now I understand that resolve 19 is still in the beta testing phase um so obviously this stuff is all subject to change in the coming months but I just wanted to go ahead and take a look at what's available right now the film look Creator tool isn't really bringing anything new to Da Vinci that it didn't already have it's kind of just taking a bunch of the old stuff that they already had in their color grading suite and then squishing it into one node and calling it film look Creator which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it is kind of weird cuz like the whole point of having a node tree is having different settings on each one so you can like tweak everything individually but that doesn't mean it's a bad tool it's just kind of odd so when when you look at the film Creator um you move over to your panel here and you have this preset tab here um you can see I've got it set to custom because I'm doing a color space override right now and I'll explain that here in a second um so you can switch between um these looks I guess is what You' say and this is the closest thing it has to like film print emulation which was really disappointing to see um because obviously this this isn't Kodak this isn't Fujifilm this isn't like actual film prints this is Instagram filters like this isn't really um what I would call like a true film emulation so as you can see I have it set to custom I did a color space override um I shot this on my A7 S3 so I've got my Sony conversion here um output y point is d55 because that is the L that I have enabled over here so Da Vinci has a bunch of L spild in um scroll down to film looks and then you can see all of these uh prints here they only have like three four different options I guess um cuz all these are just different white balances of the same print essentially um so I've got Kodak uh I believe this is Vision uh I'm pretty sure and then that's what I have my uh output white Point set to here as you guys can see so is what they allow you to do basically is is you don't have to do the color space override you can just go with one of these preset looks here I did not like how any of those looked um so I kind of just uh did the override and then put the L over it and this is what I mean by saying that none of these tools are new it's just Consolidated is um go over here to this clip um so this is a clip where I color graded it uh with no plugins it's just da Vinci built-in um film tools essentially as you can see I've got my primaries white balance uh exposure contrast all that good stuff and then here I have a plain old color space transform node converting it to cineon film log and then this is my L right functionally this is doing all of the same exact things as the film look Creator and yet they look a little bit different don't they i' I've done my best to match them um it's really difficult to match them and if we look over here this is a shot that I did outside with my wife um again this is film look Creator and then this is uh my normal workflow doing film emulation in Da Vinci and you can see there is a little bit of a difference here um and I don't get cuz I'm using the same L right so I don't get where that difference is coming from but I have to say like I just like the old way I did it better than this new film look Creator tool I don't get what it's doing cuz I've looked at all these different settings I've disabled most of them except for the bloom inhalation I have those going um and same here I have a halian node yeah there's my halian node so I'm replicating pretty much the same exact thing that you'd be getting in the filet Creator um so I don't get what it's doing I don't like that I can't control it really and overall I just like doing this workflow that I have going um and this is what I've been using for the past two years I think that I've been in Da Vinci I love it I've been using it for a long time uh I think it looks great and I think it looks better than the film look Creator um but that's just my opinion so here I'm using dehancer Pro um I'm not super familiar with the hanser I've been using it for about a month now they reached out and asked if I would like to make a video about their plug-in um and being that I had been using film emulation for a long time I thought it might be cool to give it a try um they're not paying me any money all they're doing is giving me a free license and an affiliate link which you guys can find down below if you have any interest in checking out dehancer for yourself now if we look over at dehancer you can see I have codak Vision 3 selected um with the 50d uh white balance or temperature I guess it'd be this is dehancer film look Creator and then uh basic film emulation in Da Vinci honestly my favorite out of these three looks is just the native plain old film emulation that I've been doing in Da Vinci for years out of all three of these even compared to the hanser but I will say deaner has something really cool going for it and that's if we go over here to film and click on this look at all of these prints like look at all these they have all of these different prints to choose from just the fact that it gives you so much flexibility um it's really really cool and you can change again just like with film look Creator you can change your exposure temperature um you've got your blacko white Point film grain halation Bloom um this color head here um this is where you can like change the ACT ual like colors in different parts of the image which is really cool just so much flexibility I found the video from a guy named topic Ruben I'll be sure to include a link to it down below and it was a fantastic video super helpful um got me up and running into hanser in no time this was shot during golden hour so we have deaner film look Creator and then standard again I have to be honest I just like the way that this last one looks just the standard color space transform uh end Vinci resolve no other fancy stuff I think that this looks great I'd say the dehancer is my second favorite and I think that it looks really good now as I said earlier in the video I don't know what the future holds for the film look Creator tool hopefully Da Vinci does some other stuff with it and maybe we get some film print options or something cool like that but at the moment it's just really unimpressive um honestly I would just stick to what I'm already what I've already been doing in Da Vinci um or I would use dehancer another thing that dehancer asked me to mention was their iPhone app um basically they have their own version of like light room mobile and it has a bunch of film presets has some great controls some great offerings um and it looks really good and honestly I love it and if you want to check that out I'll include a link to that down below as well I don't know what the future holds for the film look Creator tool um I hope that it continues to get bigger and better and offer different options as time goes on but in the meantime dehancer is the king of film emulation and I really love the standard built-in color space transform film emulation into Vinci outside of the film look Creator it's definitely a good option especially if you're on more of a budget but still want to get that film look but it just doesn't offer for nearly as many options as to answer does all right guys thanks so much for watching I will see you all next time [Music]

Channel: Brad Crone

Views: 1,533

Keywords: Davinci resolve 19, Davinci film look creator, dehancer review, dehancer vs film look creator, best film emulation, best film emulation Davinci Resolve

Id: c8VxCtDthFI

Length: 9min 13sec (553 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2024