Color Grading Made EASY | DaVinci Resolve 16 Tutorial

     This time, I wanted to make color grading simple and effective. I am coming from the point of view of someone who might be jumping into this for the first time. You can create these looks in just minutes. How you can create looks so quickly.

        Alright, let’s get started with the first look. We first want to find our hero frame.

Now, let’s start by building out our node tree. We are going to keep it simple for now, but add on if we need to.

        Starting in our last node, we are going to pump in some contrast and move our pivot up.

When you do this dance with the contrast, it gives it a nice “S” curve which helps with a film look. Just look at what we did with our contrast and pivot.

Moving back to our second node, we are going to be relying on our temp/tint. I am going to start by taking our temp more towards our cool color. Then I am going to move my tint a slight bit towards magenta.

        Now I am going to add a layer mixer (right click on the node, go to add node, and add layer) so that I can pull out her jacket and make sure the node above does not affect her jacket. Then I am going to qualify her jacket.

Now I am going to take my offset towards yellow, and then, using editable splines in our RGB curves (click on the three dots at the top and scroll down), I am going to then take the top and pop it.

And look at how easily we were able to pull out and emphasize the color.

There we go. That’s our horror image.

        Now let’s create our second look. We are going for the blade runner look.

        Now starting on our grade, keep the node tree the same but reset the second node. Now, add that temperature hard into the warmth space, then make the tint more green.

        Now this is our second look. However, it looks a bit too soft and needs to be pushed more. So go into our last node and add just a bit of contrast.

Boom, we created our drama look.

        Now going into our last look, we are going to create a third version and again, reset the second node but keep everything as is. We are going to start pulling our temperature again towards the warmth, but then we are going to push our tint towards green.

        If skin is a worry, you can qualify the skin on another layer node and add some warmth in our gamma.

        Now, let’s go ahead and check out all the looks we created.

These were all created so quickly, and so easily. Color grading doesn’t have to be difficult as we just saw.

Just look at the diversity of looks we created.

        I hope this tutorial taught you all a lot. I hope it makes you see how easily things can be done with the tools in resolve. Keep an eye out for more tutorials!

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