The Button Nobody Wants To Click in Resolve...

using resolve you can turn this image into this image with one simple click the question is should you hi i'm alex jordan from long color grading and film simplify.com and today we're going to be discussing auto color and resolve now auto color or auto balance as results calls it simply tries to auto balance the image and it's extremely effective in resolve and it seems to be improving with each new version of resolve and it seems to be using ai now the question here is why do many filmmakers refuse to use auto color even though it's extremely effective and it makes their work much faster and easier well there seems to be a stigma around using auto color a lot of filmmakers unfortunately believe that if you use auto color this simply means that you are not a real true film maker well that couldn't be further from the truth and today we're going to be taking a look at auto color and the myths surrounding using auto color let's start [Music] so what is auto color in resolve it's called auto balance but i'm just going to call it auto color now however the actual name of the effect is auto balance it's a feature that allows you to correct the colors of the image with one single click it can correct many things for example if you have an image with the wrong colors or maybe if there's a lack of contrast or if like in this case you're using a log profile it can correct for that it works in a very simple way place the playhead or simply drag the image to a frame that you want resolve to base the analysis on like for example this frame here and to the bottom left of resolve you have this icon this is auto balance or auto color and simply by clicking it resolve will analyze the image on the screen and fix contrast and colors issues as we saw in the beginning i'll place the playhead here on this frame and click this button and notice how the image was corrected let's take a look at another example take a look at this image here it now lacks contrast and colors because it's using a log profile so i'll simply click the button again and notice the new image we change the colors entirely this is the original image and the new one and notice that we reached these colors with one simple click let's take a look at this image now i'll select this frame for example and again i'll click the auto balance button and notice the new colors it's unbelievably effective there are many important things to note here the most important being is that resolve analyzes the colors of the image and determines what needs to be done in order to correct the image based on the current frame you're viewing on the monitor so the frame under the playhead let's take a look at an example i'll place the playhead on this frame so this is the frame i'm working with now and i'll click the auto button and take a look at the effect then let's switch i'll move back to the first frame and i'll click the auto color again and notice that now we have a different result so we have two different results for the same clip because we selected different frames as our reference each time we applied the effect another example i'll place the playhead here now and i'll apply the effect notice the colors and now if i move to this frame click the same button again now we have a different result so it's extremely important to pick a frame that is representative of your shot and of course you can experiment with multiple frames the second most important thing to note here is that a resolve applies the auto color effect per node which means that you can apply different instances or multiple instances of auto color in your shot in different nodes for example applying the effect in the first node so i'll simply add the effect here then adding another node i'll go to color nodes add a serial node note that the new node will see the image the way it was received from the node before it and we'll analyze the colors and try to correct them based on the modified image that was received from this node so while selecting the second node i'll click auto color again and now we have different colors just keep that in mind finally a shortcut can be added so that you can apply the auto balance effect directly from the edit page without needing to visit the color page so let's switch the edit page and let's say you're editing log footage and you don't want to deal with color at the moment so you just want to focus on editing now you can simply go to the main menu keyboard shortcuts and assign a keyboard shortcut to the auto color effect and correct each shot as you're simply moving by hitting this keyboard shortcut in order to make your editing session much easier without needing to deal with color this can be very handy for when you have a client present at the editing session the results might not be exactly what you're looking for but this will help you edit much easier and in many cases this is much better than applying an overall adjustment to the entire timeline in order to correct lock footage so with auto balance being so great the question is why do many filmmakers refuse to use it as we said in the beginning there seems to be a stigma the problem here is shaming a lot of filmmakers if they ever use auto color they feel or actually they're pressured by their peers to believe that auto color is only for amateurs and you should be doing everything manually well i believe you should use the technology you have to the maximum this is exactly like saying no i'm not going to use the most advanced camera i can you know i can afford now there's nothing wrong with that a lot of people choose to use very old manual cameras in order to push you know their craft and their understanding but that's a very artistic use however if you're going to be uh working as a filmmaker you need to always to try to utilize the best tools you have you know actually use them to the maximum and pros actually use auto color with no problem um it actually makes their work much faster because even a pro will need to work maybe on a two hour film and the very effective auto balancer auto color and resolve can save them a lot of time and even after applying auto color you still have a lot of control over your image for example you can keep the same effect the way it is but just dial it down using the key tab and resolve so note that the effect is added to this node i can simply come to gain here and reduce the gate of this node and i can control the intensity of the auto color effect so if i pull the gain all the way down we're back to the original image and we can increase gain slowly applying the same effect but less powerful to the image so it's the same effect we had before but with less intensity or you could consider the first node you added to be the color correction node and then color gradient the notes that come after it so in this case you just made the color correction process much easier on yourself by simply clicking a single button so i'll perform basic color correction on the first node with one click and then i'll add a new node in order to continue working on the colors of the image so i'll simply go to color nodes add a serial node and here i can perform some basic color grading without needing to deal with color correction first please note that the auto balancer auto color effect is not the end all be all for solution for everything there are many things it cannot do the most important being is that it cannot take any artistic decisions for you so it cannot dim parts of the image that you want to dim change the focus re-light certain objects like for example controlling this part of the image all there is it just simply uses mathematical equations and ai simply to correct the image to perform the best possible color correction based on the current frame you're on and that might not be always the best solution however it's a very cool and advanced helper that will make your life much easier and your work much faster that you can use without feeling bad about it you're still a filmmaker so if you like this visit us at filmsimplified.com where you can join our free davinci resolve crash course that is designed for the absolute beginner and that will take you through every tab and result thank you filmsimplified.com

Channel: Learn Color Grading

Views: 39,866

Keywords: Davinci resolve 12, davinci resolve, color grading

Id: R7l5WyxRk_8

Length: 8min 18sec (498 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020