Turn your Apple monitor into a color accurate display in DaVinci Resolve

in today's video I'm going to show you a simple workflow and equip you with a brand new tool that when combined are going to allow you to use your Apple display as a reference monitor with a trustworthy and accurate image now couple things before we dive in number one what we're going to be talking about today is not going to be a One-Stop TurnKey solution to the so-called gamma shift issue that we see where we get one version of our image inside of resolve and then it looks different when we export or we watch it on the web it turns out that issue actually has multiple causes and solving it has multiple steps however the first step in solving that issue is to have an image that you can trust so you can say that we are establishing the foundation of solving that gamma shift issue with what we're covering today because whether you are looking at a reference monitor like I have over here on my right or you are repurposing an Apple display to make sure that you are getting a trustworthy image out of it that's the foundation without which you can't even begin to solve the gamma shift issue because you can't trust any version of the image that you are seeing okay that's number one number two everything that we're going to be talking about today is unique to Mac OS and to Apple displays I hope I've got a solution for you guys in the future for Windows systems and for those variables but for everything we're talking about today this is unique to an Apple system and an Apple monitor okay now before we dive in let's talk about what exactly we're doing here what magic trick is Cullen pulling off how is it that I'm making an accurate display more accurate with some workflow or magic L that I've put together well I'm not doing that at all the truth is that most Apple displays out of the box are actually fairly accurate we just need to make sure that we are using them correctly and that's what we're going to be focusing on today and then we're going to implement this L this tool that I keep referencing that's going to get us the last 10 15% toward a more accurate image and when combined we're going to end up with a very trustworthy image that we can use to grade our images with confidence okay so that's kind of the basis of everything that we're going to be talking about today and that's going to be what we go through to address today is to make sure that we are targeting the right color space with our Apple display and that we are targeting the right color space in our color management and that those things are talking to each other in the appropriate way so that we are getting an accurate reproduction of our image okay let's dive in lots of fun stuff to cover here so number one first thing I need to do is actually going to take place outside of resolve completely I'm going to go over here to my system preferences where I've already gone into displays and we're going to look at our display settings here and I basically want to select the preset down here that is native to my display in the case of my uh Studio display that I have here Apple display is the name of that preset but essentially I'm looking for something with the word P3 in it because I want to be targeting the P3 d65 color space I can tell you from having measured now several different uh Apple displays MacBooks MacBook Pros Apple Studio displays that they are actually quite accurate to the P3 d65 color space so if we target that color space we can be sure that at the end of the pipeline if we are sending the proper image data we are going to get a proper reproduction so it's kind of the first piece of the puzzle falling into place that we're setting up here in our system preferences okay now that we've got this in place we're going to jump into resolve and we're going to get going here we're going to get things set up so next thing that I want to call out here we're going to be doing color management here in resolve like we always do that's actually especially important when we're trying to get an accurate image and get our Target color space to agree with our destination color space you have to be color managing in order to make any of that work but today we're going to be color managing not in Project settings the way that we normally do here on the channel but rather with nodes we're going to get the same result but we're going to have a little bit more control that we need in order to make this workflow work okay so I'm going to quickly go through this and if I'm going through this too quickly for you I encourage you to check out uh some of the other content we have here on the channel uh that will get you more up to speed on color management what it means how it works all that good stuff for now I'm just going to do an input transform from my camera color space into my working color space of Da Vinci wi gamut intermediate like so and now I'm going to do an output transform to get out to re 709 now in this case I want to go out to re 709 gamma 22 instead of gamma 24 now why am I doing that well because in this case there's not even a reference monitor that we're really factoring into this workflow I'm assuming that if you are interested in this process you probably don't have a reference monitor otherwise you would just be trusting your reference monitor right this is all about how you can get a trustworthy image even if you're not ready to invest in a reference monitor so in this case the p3d 65 color space that we are ultimately going to try to hit that this Apple display handles really nicely that's already in gamma 22 and our output where do we want want to go where is this end going to end up for most web devices for iPhones and laptops and iPads and things like that those have a native gamma response that is closer to 22 than it is to 24 which is the more typical sort of standard color space recommendation for working with a reference monitor but because we're not working with a traditional reference monitor at all today we can kind of ignore gamma 24 altogether and just focus on gamma 22 okay so I'm outputting to Rex 79 gamma 22 and I'm just going to set up my tone mapping in the manner that I like gamut mapping same thing and I've now got my color management set up and if I wanted to I could go in and do my grading in between my in and my out I could set up my look I could do all the normal kind of stuff that we talk about that we have fun with here on the channel but today we are focused on making sure that this image in the state that it's in after this output transform right here is actually being properly reproduced on this Apple Studio display there's a couple more things that we need to do to make sure that we are getting the most accurate reproduction that we can without actually calibrating this display and we're going to talk more about that in just a minute here okay number one we're going to go into Da Vinci resolve and go to our preferences and I'm going to go down here to General and I'm going to turn this use Mac display color profiles for viewers option on now you may have heard of this option before you may have turned it on and off in the past you may have heard people say you have to turn turn it on or you should never turn it on but in this workflow today we going to turn it on because what that's really doing is activating Mac os's color sync system which is set up to navigate the journey in between the color space We've Ended up with here in node number four and the color space that we have selected for our monitor over there in our system preferences because remember right now we have a mismatch our output color space here is Rec 79 gamma 22 the color space that we selected in our system preferences is P3 d65 gamma 2.2 if we don't make a transformation of our image in order to account for that discrepancy we are not going to get a proper reproduction of our image that's why we're turning this box on and it actually does a pretty good job of color managing the image and we're just going to help it along just a little bit uh in a moment here with this custom L that I've mentioned a couple times already in this video so we've got this option turned on I'm going to hit save next we need to go into our project settings I'm going to go to my file menu and go to Project settings and even though I'm color managing in nodes today so I don't need to fill out all of my color management options uh in the same way that we would if we were color managing within our project settings we still need to tag our output color space appropriately because the color sync system that I referred to a moment ago it is paying attention to what we do here that is the information that it is looking at to make the assessment of okay what is Cullen outputting from his resolve system so that I know what I should turn it into or whether I should adjust it in order to get a proper reproduction on this apple uh Studio display which is set up for P3 d65 gamma 2.2 and to prove it to you I'm going to switch this around my output color space is not re 79 gamma 24 that's what it usually is but today it's re 79 gamma 2.2 isn't it now watch what happens when I make this change look at the image when I hit save it changes right that's because color sync is paying attention and it is changing or compensating the adjustment that it is making based on what I input into that output color space field okay so already we're actually in a pretty good spot here and you'll have to take my word for it but when I look at my reference monitor on my right and when I look at my uh image here on my Apple Studio display on the left they're actually already starting to come into pretty reasonable alignment but the last thing that we are going to do to get that last kind of 10 15% of accuracy that really is going to turn the Apple Studio display or whatever your Apple display is into what I would consider to be a viable monitor for getting a reasonable reproduction of your image is this L that I've mentioned several times in our video today I'm going to find it here in my Luts folder under CKC utility and I'm going to go to CKC Mac OS viewing transform this is a free download I'll leave a link to it in the description for today's video so that you can download it and try it on for yourself but what we're going to do is after our output transform we are going to insert this L and you can see it's not making a massive change in the image but what it is doing is making an adjustment not based on something that I visually assessed but based on measuring and profiling that I've done of a number of different Apple displays that is ensuring that the end result of everything that we've done here all this color management and the hand off over to color sync to get it out to the P3 d65 gamma 2.2 color space the end result of of all of this is that this image is actually being reproduced properly on my Apple Studio display as I would want it to be so I can actually now trust and have confidence in my Apple Studio display by setting up my color management properly by using this Mac OS viewing transform that you can download for free and by making sure that my display settings under system preferences are correct and by ensuring that I have that magic checkbox for use uh Mac display color profiles for viewers okay so it's a couple boxes to tick it's some details that we have to get right but once you do get them right you can grade pretty normally from this point forward so here's going to be the workflow going forward first of all you do need to make sure that you set everything up that we've talked about right at the beginning because getting this set up and having it in place it's going to change the visual decisions that you make so you want this to be your Baseline before you do any color grading whatsoever once you've got this set up all you're going to do is go in here and grade in between your nodes set up your look do your shot level grading what whatever you want to do in the exact way that you normally would in any of the videos that uh we feature here on the channel so from that point forward everything's going to be the same with one exception there's one important exception that I want to call out when it comes time to Output what do you guess that we're going to need to do we want to go over here and turn this off because this is aimed at getting a accurate reproduction on the particular monitor that we are on and under the particular color manager agement operating system level color management I should emphasize that we are working underneath right now this transform is getting me a more accurate image under Mac OS color sync and on this Apple Studio display but it will give me a less accurate image on a display that is actually set up to reproduce Rex 79 gamma 2.2 which describes most of the devices that we are actually going to be viewing our image on they're all going to have their own error and uh drift and not be perfect either but we certainly can't uh assume that they are going to be made more accurate by this transform because this transform was fitted to the behavior of color sync plus uh an Apple display so it's really only applicable here and it's useful to us while we're grading because we are getting a more accurate image but we want to turn it off before we output and so what's going to happen a bit confusingly is we're going to turn it off and if you're watching your timeline as you render it out you might notice like oh wow my Shadows have gotten thicker and that's actually not what I was looking at when I signed off on the image that's okay because when you view that timeline that export in your web browser on your other devices you are going to have the proper reproduction on those devices by having this turned off if you left it on you would be getting an improper reproduction I know that's kind of confusing but that's the one other kind of snag with this workflow you want to get all these details right and get them right at the very beginning and then you want to make sure that you turn off this viewing transform remember it's a view viewing transform it's only for your viewing turn that off before you do your final output okay now couple things that I want to talk about uh just to round out our video today the number one question that uh naturally comes up at this point is okay cool does this mean I don't need to buy a reference monitor can I do professional color grading with this Apple Studio display or with some Apple display using the workflow and the uh tools that you've provided for me here today the short answer is no you can't because this is not as accurate as we really need to be for professional grade work and really what you need to do if you want to make the most of uh your color grading practice is have a really really tight Bullseye accuracy so ideally that would be a reference monitor but even if you're not ready to make that investment even if you are curious about color grading at a more professional level but you don't have the funds or you're not ready to pull the trigger on buying a dedicated reference monitor you can actually go further with the workflow that we talked about today by investing in a calibration solution that you can keep even after you do buy that reference Monitor and you can see here if I tab over to uh this file that I've saved here is the pre-calibration report from when I profiled this actual display now you can see if you look at all of uh the graphs and charts that I have here pay attention to the Delta e down here this basically describes how much drift how much error there is in between what the display should have done and what the display actually did these numbers are uh in units of J and D just noticeable difference so a one is a just noticeable difference and you can see that an average of 1.4 and a Max of 3.6 that's actually pretty decent but you can also see that there's some drift in terms of the balance as we go from darker to brighter things this is not a color critical reference monitor yet however if you were to take what we did today and then invest in a calibration solution and produce a calibration L you could indeed turn your Apple display into a monitor that I would be comfortable using for professional work while waiting to make my investment in a reference monitor ultimately that's one of the First Investments you're going to want to make if you're wanted to be a professional colorist or a color grade at a professional level but we all have to start somewhere and a perfectly sensible path to me would be to start by investing in your calibration solution and then upgrading to your reference monitor because that calibration solution is going to continue to serve you even at that point and if you want to learn more about any of these things or if you are interested in taking your color grading to the next level to a professional scale you want to build a business you want to grow a business as a professional colorist highly encourage you to check out my colorist career accelerator we're going to be running another round of it very soon we've got the weight list opened up for it and it's one of my favorite things that I do all year long it's one of the highlights of my year to get together in a focused environment in a 4-day intensive workshop and talk about all the things that go into a professional color grading practice hardware and gear and reference monitors and calibration those things are all important you can't be a professional without those things but they really just represent a small part of the overall pie of working as a professional colorist and making the most of your craft and of your business as a professional colorist so I encourage you to check out that weight list I'll leave a link uh in the description for today's video to the weight list as well if you're interested in learning more about the colorist career accelerator and either way I really hope that what we've covered today has helped you to get a better workflow in place for using your Apple display as a more trustworthy device when you are color grading and when you are trying to figure out where is my trustworthy image what version of my image can trust and as I also emphasized at the beginning of today's video we haven't magically solved the gamma shift issue there are many facets to the gamma shift issue I actually hope to cover each one of those facets in the coming months here on the channel but we've got the right foundation that's the number one thing that I emphasize to anyone who asks me about that gamma shift issue is that well if you don't have at least one accurate reproduction of the color space that you are targeting in this case re 709 gamma 22 you have no Compass bearing you have nowhere to go you don't have a prayer of solving your gamma shift issue because shift implies a shift from something and if you are shifting from someplace unreliable then it's really tough to nail down okay what does it need to look like so we're off to a really great start with that here today even if you are not already working on a reference monitor this is a great workflow uh to get you an accurate trustworthy image that you can have reasonable confidence in when you're grading and whether you're looking to solve your gamma shift issue once and for all or you're looking to start building up a professional color grading practice this is an ideal foundation for you to lay

Channel: Cullen Kelly

Views: 45,889

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Id: RBctM2c4GQI

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2023