Pros Approach to Creating the Complementary Color Grade | DaVinci Resolve 17 Tutorial

        What’s going on everyone and welcome to yet another epic tutorial. In today’s tutorial we are going to be showing you the pro approach to creating the complementary color grade. Not only will this feel extremely cinematic, but it is also free. It’s something that can be done in the studio or free version of resolve. Now as complicated as this grade looks, we are going to get there with the least amount of nodes and the look DNA can be effortlessly applied to an entire project.

        Before we jump into the complementary color grading, we are going to go over some examples and how to spot it. To do that, here are some stills.

It’s even shown in the vectorscope here. You can see it’s a teal and orange look, with more of an emphasis on the warmer tones. Let’s look at another example.

Here you can see the skin is pushed a bit more towards orange, and then the complementary color is put in with the cyan in the sky. Another example is this shot.

Similar thing is going on. This is just a play on that. There is a bit more cyan than blue/teal. Then you have probably the poster child when it comes to teal and orange, Mad Max.

Here again is another great example.

        Now let’s go ahead and dive right into our shot. The first thing you want to do is to get to the image the DP saw on set. Since they didn’t use any custom LUTs on set, we can do a normal log to rec.709 conversion using a color space transform. We know it was shot on Alexa, so we are going to change our settings.

This will be your base grade or starting off point. You can see that it is living in the top left quadrant, which is all warm tones.

        Now we are ready to start our split tone treatment. What we are going to do is create a serial node before our CST. What I am going to do in this node is keep taking out some of that warmth, almost a white balance.

        Now the next few steps are crucial, so pay attention. I don’t actually need the CST right now, so I am going to reset that node. I only needed it to balance out the image. Since we are creating a complementary colors film look, I will be using one of DaVinci Resolve’s free film luts. Now you know I am not about luts, but not all luts are created equal. The reason I use these film luts, is that a lot of the Hollywood blockbuster movies were printed on these film stocks, specifically the Kodak Vision 2383.

This is why we are going to be using it as our look DNA. Now the caveat to using this lut is that most people don’t understand how to properly use it. If I were to just take it and apply it, all of a sudden our exposure drops and our image is crushed and people freak out and either dismiss luts, or think these luts suck. But here is the truth. You need to do one more step before applying this lut. Why? Because Resolve’s Kodak 2383 were built to be used with film scan. So what do we need to do? We need to use a CST and convert our camera from it’s log to a Cineon Film Log.

Why did we use rec.709? Because it is a rec.709 conversion film lut.

        Now we are going to create another node after the CST and add on our film lut.

And just look at that complementary color scheme already happening in our shot.

        Now let’s get a node tree built out.

        Now this contrast is a bit pushed, due to the way it was shot. So to level that out, I am going to be using my HDR palette. It’s a very powerful, but complicated tool to use. Now what I am going to do first is click the three dots in the top right, and change my color space and gamma to match Arri Log.

Nothing happens when I do that, but now these wheels and sliders will behave almost like camera RAW. Now we are going to first take my shadows and bring them up a bit. But look at how natural it is when we do this. It’s almost like we added more fill light. Then I am going to bring down the global offset to emphasize his skin. This offset wheel is like the exposure on our camera. So -1 or +1 is adding a full stop.

        Now moving to my look adjustment, I am going to make my last few adjustments. I am going to start in my hue vs saturation and bring my yellow and red down a bit.

Then moving to saturation vs saturation, I am going to grab it from the highlights and pull it down. This usually cleans off the highlights.

Now one last thing to do is to go into our log wheels and pull down on our high range, then I want to add a bit of magenta.

        Now why do I have my grain node at the beginning? It’s because of how this node tree is structured, I’m not using any qualifiers so I don’t need to worry about it messing with my qualification. Also, if you were to shoot this on an actual film camera, the grain would be printed on the film itself. So I am going to drop my grain onto the node and use the 35mm 400T for this one.

The other thing to note is that where the grain is placed on the node tree, can really determine the look and feel of the image.

        Now look at what we created and how simple it was. We went from this

To this

Just look how gorgeous this image is and you can see the complementary colors at work. So there you have it guys. I know this tutorial was pretty dense, but you can go back through this tutorial to get it down.

---

MORE LIKE THIS