If you're new to color grading or just DaVinci Resolve in general you might Have come across something called a Color space transform or even heard of Something called color managed workflows It might sound a little bit daunting you Just want to put your footage in there Move some things around get a great look And Export it I know the pain but don't Worry I'm here to demystify it a little Bit my name is Tom Graham for envato Tuts plus and in this video I'm going to Show you exactly how when and why to use A color space transform at the node Level and then also what a color managed Workflow looks like at a project level So without further Ado let's jump in to DaVinci Resolve so here we are in DaVinci Resolve we're in the color page And if you're not familiar with DaVinci Resolve that's okay Um check out the envato tuts plus YouTube channel just click through to The channel search resolve I've got a Couple of tutorials up there focused on Grading and editing for beginners uh it Gives you an entire overview of the the Program but I'm going to assume you know Kind of what you're talking about and You've done a little bit of color Grading in DaVinci Resolve and you've Heard of this thing called color space Transform and you've also heard of color Managed workflows in DaVinci Resolve but
You're not quite sure where to start Okay so I've got a couple of Clips here These are just from music video that I'm Working on at the moment so what we'll Do is we'll take this clip here to start With this is from a Sony fx30 now if we Were going through a color managed Workflow what we could do is we could go Down to the settings down here in the Right hand corner bottom right hand Corner and go to our color management Now at the moment I've got color science Set to DaVinci yrgb I've got the Timeline color space set to rec 709 Gamma 2.4 and the outline color space Direct 709 gamma 2.4 This is a non-managed workflow if I go Into DaVinci y RGB color managed that's When we get into obviously as it says There the color managed workflow now What does this mean I'll show you exactly what to do in Those settings in a second but for the Most part a color managed workflow means That you can set up your color space and Output gamut at a project level now Let's say I'm working with only fx30 Footage or only pocket 6K footage well Then I would go through and I would set My color management up at the project Level so that big program knows that all Of the footage that's looking at is from A specific camera and we want it in a Specific color space and Gamma but in
This instance I've got fx30 footage I've Got pocket 6K footage and I've got some Footage here that already is effectively Graded from a Panasonic GH4 doesn't Shoot log or this version of my camera Firmware doesn't shoot lock So that's where color space transforms Come in color space transforms are Effectively color management at the node Level so what does that mean we'll get Into it right now So if I go back to our color management Tab here I'm on DaVinci y RGB I've got Timeline color space set to rec 709 Gamma 2.4 but I actually don't want that Because the rec 709 is a small color Space and it's our uh kind of it's our Final color space it's our delivery Color space so I'm going to change the Timeline color space here to DaVinci Wide gamut which is up in the D's DaVinci wide gamut intermediate and so What that means is that if you're Familiar with color space uh Theory uh DaVinci y gamma is a huge color space Compared to rec 709 and I'll show you This on the Scopes very shortly so then We set our output color spaces for x709 Gamma 2.4 and that's what we're Monitoring in I'll show you this Actually as well I'll bring up my Display properties here on my system and You can see here if I go to displays you Can see this is the display that I'm
Currently working on this is my grading Monitor now don't get me wrong this is Not some high-end grading monitor you Can see here it's just a pretty basic 4K So of it LG run-of-the-mill monitor it Is pretty good from a color accuracy Perspective and what I really do like About it and this is one of the reasons Why I picked it uh over an actual like 30 000 reference monitor uh the color Profile here you can actually change so I'm looking at Rec 709 gamma 2.4 That's what I'm monitoring in uh and That's for the most part what I will be Delivering in all the time so that's why I set this to rec 709 gamma 2.4 so Rec 709 is the color space gamma 2.4 is the Gamma now gamma 2.4 is your broadcast Focused gamma you've got 2.2 which is Web focused look 2.4 works for web and Broadcast 2.4 is kind of the standard And my monitor only shows me 2.4 so I Stay in 2.4 and then you go up to 2.6 Which is Cinema but for the most part at This level let's just stick with Rec 709 Gamma 2.4 Okay so now we've got our timeline color Space set up on our Apple color space Setup we're going to hit save Nothing's happened that's fine we don't Want it to change uh what I will show You down here just before we get into it Is that if I go to my cie Scopes here You can see Rec 709 is this little
Triangle here and this is The DaVinci White gamut much larger than our rec 709 So that's kind of what I was talking About before all right so then if we're Going to do our color management at the Node level what do we need to do well we Need to go into our effects and we need To find our color space transform which Is just here you can search it or Usually it sits somewhere near the top So we're just going to drag that onto Our First node here we've only got one node At the moment so we'll go through kind Of where the color space transform needs To sit uh but for now we're just going To look at what it does so over here on Color space transform uh in the effects Section which is just here off and on if You need it nothing's happened as you Can see with our reference image here Nothing's happened because we haven't Changed anything yet so before I change Stuff I'm going to go back down into our Color management settings and instead of Looking at DaVinci y RGB let's go to the Color manage section and see what Options we get So we've got our automatic color Management there if we want our Processing mode SDR or Apple color space But if we turn off automatic color Management here and if we also check use Separate color space in gamma we can
Look at our color processing mode which Would be SDR is what we're working in And we can look at our color space so Rec 709 and Gamma 2.4 but we can change Those individually and that's Effectively what we're going to be doing Over here in the color space transform But remember like I said this is Globally so what you would do is if you Had mostly uh Sony fx30 footage you Could set it to your settings for Sony And s-log 3 and then if you only had a Few clips for the pocket 6K then you Would need to manually determine those Uh color spaces and Gammas for the Pocket 6K so that's why when you've got Multiple clips from different cameras And you need to do color management That's why I believe it's better to do It at the node level doing a color space Transform as you're kind of part of your Grade so we'll get back into DaVinci y RGB here not color managed uh just Making sure or that uh we'll set this Back to what we had before which was Da Vinci and just hitting the D on the Keyboard there just to get to that place And then here as well Rec 709 and we Want that gamma 2.4 so Apple color space Rec 709 gamma 2.4 timeline color space DaVinci wide gamut and the reason why We're doing uh the timeline color space DaVinci wire gamut instead of Rec 709 Will become very clear very soon
So now that we've got our color space Transforming what we need to do is we Need to set some things so the input Color space so that is uh for this Camera this is the Sony fx30 so we're Going to find Sony here Sony S gamut3. Cine and you do need to know what uh Camera settings you had I fortunately do Because I shot this and for the most Part if you're color grading footage From a DP or if a direct is given it to You or whoever you've gotten it from you Will be able to find out this Information uh that's another thing I Will just go quickly back to the color Managed workflow it works really well if You've got a lot of raw footage as well Because it can pull all that metadata And if you're if you're just working With FX 30 footage or pocket 6K footage Uh that's all good and well and you can Set it at a global level but if you've Got a bunch of raw footage area raw red Raw uh Blackmagic raw you can set your Color managed workflow up and it will Automatically detect per clip what uh Color space and gamut you need so again We're not working with we're all here We're working with your basic log Footages and we're doing this at the Node level so we're going to move on Away from that color managed workflow Now to this individual node-based color Managed workflow using the color space
Transform There's a lot to get through here this Is a beginner tutorial but there is a Lot to get through So the input gamma space here is s-log 3 Which we worked in so Sony slog3 and you Can see immediately that changes but now Our image doesn't look very nice at all Uh this should be back to a balanced Image here uh if we put our color space In our input gamut there but what it's Now referencing is the output color Space and at the moment remember we Changed our output color space to The DaVinci wired gamut not rack 709 so we Need now to set that so we're going to Set that to rec 709 here and output Gamma we're going to use a gamma 2.4 as We had just before so now that's looking A lot better that's looking like more of A balanced image So that's how you get Um at a node level back into your color Spaces here Now quickly just to Demonstrate this over on the pocket 6K Footage I'm going to right click here And grab still just to grab that node Effectively and I'll go over here into Our pocket 6K and I'll just apply uh This grade to this node here and it's Done a pretty good job but at the moment It's referencing the wrong color space And input gamma because it's referencing It from this clip the fx30 so we need to
Change that and we'll just see how it Differs between the different cameras And the different flavors of s-log log Footage so we're going to go here DaVinci or Blackmagic design sorry and We want uh pocket 4K film Gen 4 and then We want to go to I'm just trying to Remember what we actually shot it in so Pocket 6K film Gen 4 here so there we go So that's uh bringing our image kind of Back if I go here command d off and on Back to kind of a balanced space to Start our grade from now I say start our Grade because this has got us into the Ballpark so this is effectively doing What a color correction Lut would do but With a lot more detail here so if I just Create another node here I'm just going To turn this node off with our color Space transform and I'll go over into Our Lut section I'm going to find Blackmagic design because again we're Working in this one and I'll just find Here we want Blackmagic 4K film to rec 709 let's bring that in And there you go you can see it's done The same thing Basically the same thing but what we've Got here is the ability to change things So we can change the gamma and we can Change the output color space depending On what we need to do so I'll just Delete that node there Now let's say we want to degrade this
Piece of footage well pretty simple we Can hit option s a couple of times to Add a few serial nodes and start our Grade you might want to label things and We can do this either color space Transform here and then you might think The next thing we need to do is start Tweaking this image so you know Obviously naturally we need to bring the Highlights up a little bit and we Probably want to bring the Shadows down A little bit here Um or sorry the the mids and then we Want to bring the Shadows up give it a Little bit of that milky kind of like Faded film look add a bit of contrast Let's get a bit more balance back into Here and just add a little bit of color Boost and and there we go we might want To start doing it that way But that's that's where the color space Transform uh Upstream here and You know there's there's no one way to Do this there's different schools of Thoughts but what works best is probably Having the color space transform further Downstream and and then grading Everything underneath that so with the Color space transform uh in the first Node and we've done our tweaks in that Middle node here let's just see what's Actually happening and we'll pop our Scopes out here so we can best see this So again color space transform in the
First node we're going to take our Second node here and we're just going to Grab the offset and move up and down and You can see here it just crushes at the Bottom and crushes through the top there Just moving all the way up into that top Level and crushing everything off or Clipping everything off there so uh We'll move that back down to where we Had it and let's move the color space Transform into our third node instead of Our first node and you can do that Easily by holding command and dragging This and just swaps those nodes over and Now you can see that's also brightened Up the image but let's see what's Actually happening when we push this up Now instead of crushing through the top In a uniform way we're now squishing so It's kind of a weird way to think about It but you want to squish you don't want To crush it uh very technical so what That's doing is actually giving us some Nice softer roll off when we come to our Extremes in our grade And the reason for this is because we Are now grading at the Timeline level in Terms of the timeline color space in This node I'll pop these Scopes away so We can see In this node here this middle node we Are taking our input which is our Footage and again let's just check our Color settings here timeline color
Management DaVinci wired gamut Intermediate what we're seeing here is If we look at our cie Scopes again this Area here before the color space Transform is playing in The DaVinci wide Gamut so we've got all of this room to Move this color space transform is Moving us into the rec 709 color space And you can see that border is a lot Smaller so therefore having the CST at The far end means that everything we do On this side is working within the wide Gamut color space uh The DaVinci Resolve Live gamut intermediate color space much Bigger than our rec 709 then once we get To the CST we're now in Rec 709 gamma 2.4 so that's how that's how you can use It to start your grades so the way I Would see it is you kind of want to Bring your CST on a third node this is a Basic way to do it but we can do a CST On the third node uh we'll reset this Node label here Um we've got CST on the third node here And if you turn off and on you can see What it's doing on the middle node here I would label this as a balance And on this first node here let's just Call it like levels or something like That so let's uh take our first node Here and let's just bring the levels up So um I think overall we need obviously A bit more um gain in this so I'm just Going to bring it up to a roundabout
Here bring our Lift back down a little bit And bring our mids down a little bit There I kind of like that it's a little Bit Moody Um and then on our balance we can just Cool this off a little bit because it's Pretty warm I kind of like that there add up just a Little bit more contrast here Tiny little bit of highlight And just pull the Shadows down a bit and That sort of balance the image there and Then we've got our CST pulling that into A Rec 709 gamma 2.4 color space and then After your CST you can use a whole bunch Of different effects and finishing Elements that you um that you might want To use like halation or glow or anything Like that that do perform better on a Rec 709 output versus on something like The DaVinci wired gamut Now if you do want like a film look or Something like that instead of having Your CST here pointing to rec 709 gamma 2.4 what you can do is you can point it To the cineon color space because the uh Film looks here in DaVinci Resolve they Work better or they're looking for a Cineon Um output to then add that kind of their Lut over so let's see what that looks Like just pausing the video quickly to Talk about Luts because we're about to
Talk about the film looks and Luts with Individual resolve but if you want to Get some custom ones head over onto Envato elements search Luts on there and You'll get a whole host of Luts that you Can download and you can use in your Projects right away and also while You're there you'll get to look at all Of the great stock footage video Templates photos fonts there's so much On there for all of your projects envato Elements check it out today there's a Link in the description below but right Now we're going to get back to the video And we're going to talk about finishing These grades off with the color space Transform and then some of the looks That are built into DaVinci Resolve all Right back to it so let's uh just add Another serial node after this CST and Let's add this Kodak film look here and You can see there it's kind of crushed Everything down doesn't look nice Um you know it's very contrasty and Maybe that's the look that you're going For but that's not really how to use This light so let's go back into our CST Here and I'll just turn this light off For a second let's go back into our CST Here and change this from output color Space Rec 709 we want to change that to Uh the one that we're currently working In our timeline view which is DaVinci Wide gamut and then our output gamut we
Want to find cineon film log so let's Add that there and what that's done is Effectively taken uh what we had as an Output of Rex 709 gamma 2.4 and brought That into a different flavor of log that This Lut is then looking for and if we Turn that on this is what that film Light is supposed to be emulating so you Can see we've now not got that really Crazy contrast but not got that crazy Saturation contrast as well and then we Can go back into our balance and start To bring those things up so I think Contrast wise things are good here but Maybe I'd add just a little bit more Saturation in the image maybe a bit of Color boost and things like that just to Bring that back up but now you've got That kind of nice film look and you can Add other things like I said before like Let's just add some halation and we'll Add that after and there you go we can Bring that down because it's pretty Hectic And there we go now we're starting to Get that kind of film look with just a Little bit of uh you know extra elements On top so I'll just play that through And see what that looks like and yeah Nice so another way that we can use the Color space transform that's obviously The grading process that we've just Looked at there but what happens if we Want to kind of match this that uh this
That we've graded to this that's kind of You know our in-camera shot that we Don't really have that much control over How do we get that into a color space That we want to work with here to then Kind of try and emulate this shot you Can see here this stereo in the Background is the same stereo here so We're going to try and match that shot We want this to look like it can Actually feasibly be from the same Camera so we can use color space Transform to do that so what we first Need to do is we need to get this shot Similar to our starting point for this So remember this is Blackmagic so let's Go in here we'll drag a color space Transform onto this and our input color Space is Rec 709 our input gamma is Gamma 2.4 our output color space here is DaVinci Reserve And we started with the pocket 4K film Gen 4 and then our output gamma is the 6K film gen 4. so that's got us back to Where this footage kind of started now We want to add another color space Transform so I'm just going to add a Couple of nodes here and I'm actually Going to drag this one here into the Middle node and then add a color space Transform Third node now we want to take the DaVinci Resolve footage into that cineon That we had earlier so that's this one
Here Blackmagic to DaVinci Resolve wire Gamut sitting on film log so I'm just Going to copy this node and I'm going to Paste this node here and then I'm going To add a Serial node by hitting control Sorry option s and then I'm going to Grab that Lut that we used before and Drag that on the top and as you can see It's gone pretty contrasty here but we Are doing things slightly differently Remember this footage came from the Panasonic GH4 and we're trying to match This footage here so we need to do some Work with our levels and our balance on This side so let's do that again add our Levels and our balance over here so Let's just play with our levels a bit We're going to bring down the highlights So that they're not kind of like Clipping too much here bring up our mids Quite a lot drop some highlights Again Play it with our shadows and we can Match this a little bit better shortly And then on our balance here it's Feeling a little bit cool so just going To warm it up a little bit and add a Little bit of color boost in here and Just the tiniest amount of saturation Again playing with the temp And where Let's say roughly there for now uh so That's our levels and our balance and Then what have we got past the end here We've got our uh halation here so let's
Copy this over and add our relation Excuse me add our halation on another Node there another serial node at the End So that's roughly in the right spot but How can we actually match it exactly Right click here grab still bring our Gallery open make sure that still is uh Selected and then we'll go back to our GH4 footage get the frame wipe going Here and so now we can kind of match These shadows and and different things Like that So the warmth is looking pretty good Here if anything I think this needs to Cool off just a little so we can do that Back over in our balance That's looking okay there I'm kind of Looking here and here at this point uh And then what's something else we can uh Examine we can kind of look at the Levels here of our shadows so you can See down in the scope here the Shadows On the original image that we're trying To match are a little bit lower so I'm Just going to bring those levels down a Little bit here To try and match and let's play a little Bit with That there that looks pretty good and Again how are we feeling about the color I think it's all matching pretty well Here just looking at the highlights There I think it looks pretty good so
Let's turn that off and on there and There we go that's uh kind of match Those two images using Color space transforms and a number of Color space transforms as well so there We go a little bit in depth but I hoped That has kind of clarified how to use Color space transforms why to use color Space transforms and how you can use it To your advantage when working with Footage that really maybe doesn't feel Like it's completely gradable like Remember this uh if I turn all of this Off that was like directly out of the Panasonic there and we wanted to match It to our pocket 6K footage and we've Created a complete grade here from Scratch using that color space transform Which again like we said at the very Start is color management at the node Level So there we go that's a bunch of Information that hopefully is going to Help you get on your way with learning About color space transforms Intervention resolve as well as some Color managed workflows when to use Color space transforms why do you use Them where to use them ultimately there Should be part of your color grading Workflow especially if you're working With long footage now if you do want to Learn a little bit more about DaVinci Resolve either as a colorist or as an
Editor make sure to go over to the Envato touch plus Youtube channel search Resolve you'll see my shining little Face there all I'm trying to do is help Get new colorists and editors up to Speed as quickly as possible in DaVinci Resolve it's a great program fantastic Free offering and the more people using It the better the product's going to get So let me know down in the comments if You've got any other questions about Color space transforms or DaVinci Resolve in general and until next time Happy grading Foreign [Music] [Music]
