Simple Trick to Nail Contrast Everytime (DaVinci Resolve)

contrast pivot one more contrast pivot this will take the guesswork out of your color grading and it will make your life much easier it's like a time machine hi i am alex jordan from long color grading and film simplified dot com while color grading have you ever asked yourself any of these questions did i add too much contrast to the image is the image too yellow should i dial it down a bit and the most important question is were the colors better before the last two changes i made why do we have trouble deciding whether the last two or three changes we made improved the image or did they make it worse well our eyes get used to color over time like just think of any visual trick you know the visual tricks that you usually find online they all depend on your eyes getting used to colors so in order to answer these questions we need a way to compare the current colors of the image with the colors of the same image but from three minutes ago for example like before the last five or ten changes if we can do that we will be able to determine whether our last changes actually improved the look of the image or did they make it worse this can be done and resolve using the versioning system please keep in mind that the versioning system and resolve was not designed for this but this is a cool hack that a lot of colorists use in order to get more accurate colors but before we start let's understand the absolute basics of the versioning system and resolve for example let's take a look at this image i will start by changing the colors of this image to make it really blue so this will be version one now let's add a new version i will right click on the thumbnail go to local versions and click on create a new version i'll simply hit ok on the box here and notice that once we created a new version what happened is that resolve now moved to the new version so all the color changes we will be making from this point on will be applied to version two instead of one note that we can assign a shortcut button on the keyboard to add a new version it doesn't matter what keyboard shortcut i'm using personally just pick a keyboard shortcut that you're comfortable with and now i will change the colors of the image i'll switch to colors to become really red the question is how do we know what version are we loading now notice that to the bottom of each thumbnail we have some text it's currently showing some extra information about the thumbnail however if we double click on this text we can change what information is being displayed and notice after double clicking a couple of times note that this clip is currently loading version number two so it's telling us what version is being loaded now speaking of resolve if you're a beginner and you're interested in learning how to use resolve you'll love our free crash course that will teach you the basics of every tab and resolve simply go to filmsimplified.com and sign up for free now that we understand how to create a new version of our colors let's see how can we compare the colors from different versions in this video we're not going to be getting in depth into the split screen functionality but we're going to understand the basics in a way that allows us to compare different versions of our color grade so all you need to know now is that if i click this button to the top left of the monitor this drop down menu will appear to the right all i need to do now is to select versions now i can see all the color versions i have in one view now this is great but how would this allow us to judge the colors of our images over time let's start with a new image this one for example now let's do something simple i'll simply increase contrast adjust the pivot point a bit and increase saturation so far i like the colors of the image so at this point i'm not going to be adding any more adjustments i'm simply going to create a new version and continue my color work on the new version i can do that by simply hitting the keyboard shortcut i assigned and again notice that a new color grading version was created and it was automatically loaded into the monitor the most important thing here is that the new version that we just created copied all the colors and nodes of the original this would allow us to build on top of the colors we already created before so i will add a new node so color nodes add the serial node and i will increase the contrast a bit more and change the pivot one more time notice that in order to see the images in a better way i can simply go into cinema mode and now i can see both images side by side this allows me to determine whether the last changes i made did actually improve the image or did they make it worse i think in this case they improved the image so i'm going to get out of full screen mode and again i'm going to add a new version now and change the image to become a bit more yellow reduce the saturation a bit and reduce gamma then i will continue working from there i will add another node and in this node actually i'll use contrast for example a bit i'm just trying to come up with anything now and maybe reduce saturation and push the lift a bit towards blue again let's go to cinema mode and we can see the progression of the colors we created so this was the first iteration then we moved to this one this one and finally this one note something very important here if i was looking at the last iteration that i made of the colors it wouldn't be clear to me whether i actually did improve the image images colors or no because i have no reference but now with this progression of colors i can totally see that i do not like the last changes how did i decide that by simply comparing the colors to the iteration right before it for example or maybe i would like the colors from this image for example however i currently like the colors from this one so i'm going to delete the last one i created doing that is pretty simple i can right click on the thumbnail hover over the menu that represents the version that i want to delete and here i have an option for delete i'll hit delete confirm my decision and nothing happened why is that notice that you cannot delete the color grading version uh that you're currently working on you need to switch to another one and then delete the one you don't want so how do we select a different version of our color grade it's very simple you double click on the one with the colors you like so i can double click here and notice that i have this white border around it which means that this is the one that's currently selected so again to delete number four i will right click on the thumbnail go to version four and select delete confirm my decision and now we just removed that one and now we can continue working on our colors so i will add a new one now and this one maybe i'll reduce saturation pull gamma a bit towards orange add another one let's hide the clips this will make it much easier for us to see our images now and maybe i'll reduce saturation even more add another one and this one maybe i will reduce contrast maybe change offset in one way or another and i can just continue working on my colors i'm not going to really grade this one now i'm just going to add different color grading versions and maybe change the colors here and now let's go to full screen mode and this will allow us to clearly see the progression of our colors so we started here then we moved to this one this one and so on and by looking at the color progression over time i can tell that this is the one i actually like so all i need to do now is to double click on it and it's just selected and now it's the one that's currently active so if i get out of cinema mode and click this button to disable split screen now i know that these are the colors i like now this might not be earth shattering but when you start working on your images you'll always run into this issue where everybody runs into it you change the colors in one way or another and then you add another note and you change the colors and maybe you add this effect or that effect and over time you lose uh you lose perspective you don't know like are the colors now better or were they better like five minutes ago what what about the like 10 minutes ago uh did i made the image worse over time and usually it's very hard you have to hit undo and just go check the history of your work this will make it much easier and faster to see the progression of your image over time like for example let's take a look at this image and decide how much contrast do you want to add let's only edit contrast so i will activate split screen make sure i'm in the correct option here and i'm going to add a bit of contrast maybe and move pivot to this point then i'm going to add another version add a bit more contrast and maybe move the pivot again add one more contrast pivot one more contrast pivot and for beginners this will make your life much easier because now with one click you can see four different level of contrast and pivot adjustments and you can decide which one do you like you can simply keep on moving forward so i'll add another one maybe reduce contrast but change the pivot a bit more maybe to recover the highlights add another one maybe reduce contrast a bit and change the pivot one more time and again once i go into cinema mode or a full screen mode i'll be able to pick which contrast level i like exactly this will take the guesswork out of your color grading and it will make your life much easier it's like a time machine so i hope you like this if you like it please visit us at filmsimplify.com where you can join our free da vinci's off crash course that is designed for the absolute beginner and will take you through every tab in resolve thank you filmsimplified.com

Channel: Learn Color Grading

Views: 64,958

Keywords: davinci resolve, color grading

Id: lQcK9rJrixA

Length: 9min 19sec (559 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 21 2021