Hi everyone. Welcome to my channel. My name is Marieta and today
we're going to be talking about one of my favorite techniques
in color grading. I'll walk you through three of my preferred methods for creating split
toning in DaVinci Resolve. And at the end, we're going to review
the final look we were able to achieve. But before we dive in, let's start
with a question of what split toning actually is. Put simply, split
toning is introducing different colors into the highlight
and shadow areas of the image. And if we go through stills
from popular films, we are going to see this is a recurring theme
when it comes to the color palette. Let's take John Wick, for example. if we split up this still in two luminance
ranges, we are going to see that the shadows have a teal tint
and the highlights a warm. And we can verify this
by checking our scopes. This is a classic example
of a complementary color scheme. A lot of it is achieved through
lighting and set design. However, it can be replicated
through color grading as well. Let's see how we can achieve it
in Resolve. Method number one. RGB curves. So if you come from Photoshop
or Lightroom, you most certainly are familiar
with the YRGB curves. Y stands for Luma and RGB
for red, green, and blue channels. By default, the curve stretches
diagonally in a linear fashion. The lower part of the curve affects
the shadows. The middle section affects the midtones,
and the top of the curve affects the highlights. In my timeline, I've imported a clip from Red Komodo
and a couple of test charts from Arri. I've set up my color management
on a node level, so within my project settings, the only thing I've adjusted is
my timeline color space to be Arri LogC3 as this is my preferred working color
space On the clip level of my node tree, I have applied a color space transform
to the RED clip. Going from RedWideGamutRGB Log3G10
to Arri LogC3. This ensures everything on our timeline
is in the same color space, so we get the same response
when we're making our adjustments. I've already gone ahead
and applied some initial balancing and contrast in grade version two. All the shots are added to a single group,
so when we make any adjustments in the group post clip level,
everything is getting affected. On the timeline level,
I have applied Arri's technical LUT, which takes us from Arri LogC3
to Rec 709, Gamma 2.4, because this is what my reference monitor
is calibrated to. Now let's start tweaking our RGB curves. First, I'm going to ungang all four channels
so we can adjust each one individually. Let's say we want to add some coolness
in the shadows of our image. can do so if we reduce the red
in the lower part of the curve. Since I don't want this correction
to affect my mid-tones, I'm going to use the 18%
gray patch to lock of my mid-tones. Next, I'm going to introduce some blue to the shadows
by pulling up the blue curve. If we wanted to make the tint more green, we can pull up the green curve
slightly too. Now let's warm up the highlights. I'm going to pull down on the blue curve
as this subtracts blue and it adds yellow. We can also introduce warmth
by adding red. if we enable and disable the node. We can see how much this has affected
the grayscale ramp. But let's see
what's happening to our footage. If you're not happy with how much the adjustments
are affecting your black and white points, you can restrict the split
toning by adding additional points. Hold down alt on your keyboard
and adjust the positioning of the point to clean up the blacks. In this instance, I like how the highlights are looking,
so I'm going to leave those as it is. Method number two. Subtractive color. So far we've been working in the RGB color model, which is the default model
DaVinci operates in. In the subtractive color model. The primary colors are cyan, magenta,
and yellow. Without going into too much theory. What's important to remember
is that by increasing the intensity of each channel,
we making the image darker. Let's try it out. I'm going to create a new serial node
and label it Null. So I know
it's just an empty connection node. Then I'm going to create a splitter
combiner node. As a result, we get three separate notes
for the red, green and blue channels. Let's keep them empty
so the node tree makes visual sense. I'm going to create
three new serial notes. Now we know the corresponding
primaries in subtractive are cyan, magenta, and yellow. But how do we get into subtractive? Let's search for an effect called Invert
Color and apply it to the new nodes. In the first note,
I'm going to invert red. In the second note,
I'm going to invert green, and in the third one I'm going to do the same for blue. The visual result
we get is crazy, but bear with me. Let's create a new serial note
after the splitter combiner and add a new invert color OFX. Now our image is back to square one. And we can confirm this
by selecting all the nodes. If we enable and disable them
we're going to see that nothing is happening at the minute. Now let's go back to these three nodes
and label them. This is our cyan channel magenta
and yellow. I'm going to create three new serial nodes
for the corrections that we're going to be making. Let's start
affecting our cyan channel first. We no longer need to keep the YRGB curves
unlinked down here, because the splitter combiner
has already separated the channels for us. When working with custom curves
in subtractive. The luminance ranges are flipped. So when we tweak the upper part of the curve,
we are actually affecting the shadows. And when we adjust the lower
part of the curve, we are affecting the highlights. With this in mind, let's introduce
some cyan in the shadows. I'm going to pull up the curve here. I'm holding down alt
and adding a new point next to this one, so that the curve
at the bottom doesn't bend. Now let's add
some yellow to the highlights. I'm going to jump to our Y node
and bring up the curve here. I want to add some blue
to our shadows as well. So I'm going to bring down the curve here. Let's see how this is affecting our image
and tweak if necessary. If you want to dial back the intensity
instead of tweaking the curves, what you can do
is simply reduce the key output gain. Method number three Hue S-Curve Split
Tone DCT by Kaur Hendrickson. I'm going to start off
by saying that I think Kaur is a fantastic DCTL developer,
and if you haven't tried his tools before. Make sure to check out his store
and his YouTube channel as well. I'm in no way associated with him
and these are just my genuine thoughts. So the Hue
Curve Split Tone DCTL costs 59.99, which I think is a bargain
for what it does. I've installed the version of the DCTL
that comes in with emojis, just because I think they very quickly
tell me what each control does. So first I'm going to change the transfer
function to Arri LogC3. Because this is my timeline color space. And I'm going to turn on show patches
and show Curve so we can see how it works. I think this too is so intuitive,
because you don't actually mix channels to get to a specific tint. Instead, you set the hues
you're aiming to introduce in your shadows and highlights by adjusting
the colors of the patches here. So let's say we want an orange cast
in the highlight area and a cyan tint in the shadows. Let's move to the shift high and low areas of the DCTL
and start increasing the values. We can see how the separate RGB
channels of the curve are mixing together as we increase
the intensity of the effect. What's really cool about this
tool is the sub and add section down here. By pulling the sliders the left. We're making the operation subtractive, so the hues and luminosity
are getting darker. And if we pull up the slider to the right,
we are doing the opposite. If you think that the adjustments are affecting your black points
and your white points too much, you can easily clean them up
by tweaking the neutrals down here. And you can do the same for the pivot point,
which is set to .391, which is 18% gray in our log C3. Let's see how this affects
our clip of the runner and make any tweaks if necessary. I went ahead and applied some additional tweaks to the clip
to make the look feel finished. In the clip level
I added some saturation in HSV using the custom curves And in the group post clip level,
I went with the RGB curves method for the split
toning and custom curves for the contrast. I tweaked the HSL curves to make the trees
in the background greener and darker, and to rotate the hue of the sky
towards a more pleasing teal tone. I also used color warper in HSV mode to
make the skin tones a bit more saturated. And finally, for the texture
I used scanned grain combined with Resolve’s internal grain. 16 millimeter archival grain is my favorite preset,
and I use it on almost anything. The blending mode is set to soft light as I feel this produces
much more organic results. I've added some lens blur
around the edges of the frame. Some texture pop and contrast pop So
quite a lot of steps, but the essence of the look is done by the split
toning combined with the HSL curves. You can see how we've achieved
a great complementary split, which can be confirmed by the Vectorscope. Here is the Rec.
709 and the finished look. Here is how it affects our test images
as well. It's not too pushed,
but I like to save presets like these as power grades
and use them as a starting point the next time I'm asked
for a complementary split. I'd love to hear which
one of these methods you've tried out. And do you have any of the go-to
techniques for split toning? Let me know in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video,
please don't forget to, like, subscribe to the channel
if you want to keep seeing more content like this,
and I'll see you in the next one.
