Perfect skin tones in Davinci Resolve 18 (vectorscope explained)

hello guys today I wanted to show you how to create perfect skin tones in DaVinci Resolve 18. we'll take a closer look at the vector scope and I will explain how to read it and as an example we'll be turning this shot into this one and I am not sure if you are aware but I am also in the process of creating a color grading course for the beginners so if you are interested sign up to my mailing list I will leave you a link to it below this video but for now let's go to the tutorial [Music] the color Tab and this is our clip it's been shot with Lumix in Vlog so we'll be converting it to rec 709 in a second and let me minimize the view as I'm working on the laptop today and here I've already created the node structure so I'll walk you through it we'll start from balancing the shot then we'll add some contrast then we'll be creating our look after that I've got two layer notes and the note below is our skin and the note on the top of it is for the background adjustments and then at the very end we'll be applying color space transform so let's click on that note and let's go here to the effects then let's search for the color space transform and let's drop it onto our note and I know that my input color space is Panasonic V gamut then my input gamma is Panasonic vlog and I'll leave the output color space in gamma as it is as the project is already set to rec 709 and this is how the clip looks before and after the conversion looks very good already and the balance is not bad at all but before working on the skin tones I like to neutralize the colors perfectly to get a nice foundation for the color grading and now I can see that the shot is a little bit too warm so I will balance it a bit and this is where we'll also take a first look at the vector scope you can open it down here you can choose from different Scopes here but today we are focusing only on the vector scope and in order to balance the shot this Trace should be perfectly in the middle this is the rule so let me close that view and let's click on the balance node then let's enhance the view again and let's use the offset to balance the shot we'll be looking at the vectorscope while doing this so I will move my offset towards teal color Just a Touch like this and this is before and after our clip looks white balanced properly now we can move to the next node where I'll be adjusting the contrast and I'll use the custom curve to do it and I'll create that characteristic as shape adding just a tiny bit of contrast to the clip like this it really doesn't need much and again before and after now let's click on the look note and although I like that blue silverish look now I want to add more teal to it to the whole clip so I'll go to my primary wheels and I will add a bit of teal using my gamma wheel something like this will work before and after I love it but also by doing this we've added some green tones to the skin so now we will start bringing the skin tones back to the point where they should be and I will show you how to do it and how to measure it using our Vector scope so let's go back and let's click on the skin node and the way layer nodes work is that this node below takes a priority over the note above it which means that if we isolate the skin here and then we'll be adding some adjustments on the adjustments notes above it those adjustments won't affect our skin tones I hope this makes sense if it doesn't you'll see how it works in a second so let's enhance the view again and let's go to the qualifier then let's highlight the skin let's turn the Highlight on here to be able to see what we are doing and we have to improve this selection so I'll start from the Hue slider and I'll bring it closer to clean the selection then the illuminance and I just play it with these sliders until we are happy then I will denoise the selection and let's just play through the clip to see how it looks not bad at all then let's turn off the highlight and let's move to the vector scope so a very helpful thing to do is to go here and to turn on show skin indicator which is this white line that show us where the skin tone should be placed in the vector scope and the vector scope will show us the amount of hue and saturation in the skin so the further the trace extends from the center of the vector scope the more saturation the skin has the saturation depends on the complexion of the skin and there are some rules to it for pale skin tones the trace should extend between 20 and 30 percent and for medium and dark skin tones from around 25 to 50 percent and in terms of the Hue the trays should lay on the skin indicator line or a bit above it these are the general rules and at the end the best way of working on the skin is to rely on your own judgment but it's good to be aware of it and it can be really helpful to make this judgment so let's move into practice let's go to the primary wheels and we'll be using the gamma wheel to improve the skin tones so I will move it towards yellow and I'll add some warmer tones back to the skin and to add more saturation as well and by doing this you can see how the trace expands on the vector scope then we can go to our curves and then Hue versus saturation curve then we can sample the skin using the qualifier and this way we'll get the right point on the curve to manipulate colors and then by moving this point down we'll take out a bit of that saturation and by moving it up we'll be adding it back I will move it down just a bit as I don't like that over saturated look and this is before and after I like it looks nice and warm so let's go back to our Note 3 and now I'll show you what's happening in case we want to add some adjustments on the adjustments node so let's click on it let's go back and let's go to the primary Wheels again and here when we move it around changing colors we can see that the skin remains untouched let's go a bit crazy here so you can see better how it works okay but let's reset it and I'm going to add a nice teal tint just like this okay and now let's just see the final result full screen [Music] thanks so much for watching my videos guys I hope that you like them if you do hit subscribe and don't forget to leave a comment below see you soon

Channel: Color Grading Insights

Views: 49,322

Keywords: color grading, color correction, film colorist, video color grading, Davinci resolve, Davinci Resolve studio, professional color grading, vfx, film editing, skin tones, video editing, film color, colorist, professional color grading services, color wheels, color curves, scopes, vectorscope, adobe premiere, adobe after effects, model, how to colorgrade, color warper, openfx, video creator, color grading course, YouTube color grading, lut, lumix, cst, color space, filmmaker, film

Id: 1NiOIakkGV8

Length: 7min 29sec (449 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 23 2022