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Where can I adjust the range for lift, gamma and gain? They overlap way too much.
OK, so my guy working on our first resolve seat is complaining about difficulties getting used to how resolve handles colors and more specifically the range for the different controls lift, gamma and gain.
He tells me that compared to colorista, they overlap way more. After some testing I am quite surprised over the fact that the different controls clearly much much more compared to Colorista.
If I adjust the gamma/midtones, if affects pretty much the whole image… Sure, the midtones are more affected but still I can see adjustments on the RGB parade all the way down to very dark shadows and up to the highlights.
If I adjust the highlights, it affects the midtones too and I can see adjustments all the way down to the shadows…
And if I adjust the shadows, it also affects pretty much the whole image up to highlights. More effect on the darker parts of the image, sure, but it still affects way high up on the highlights.
I´m thinking there must be somewhere that I can set the range for these controls, I just haven´t found it yet. So I can make them overlap less. I want to shorten the range for all three controls.
As it is now, it gets very difficult to get good results when all the controls affect the colors across pretty much the whole image!
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19 Replies
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lol, seriously ?
Colorista is the new standard ?
Well, tell him to make a luma selection of just what he thinks midtones are.
Mid of the color scale ?
Or mid of the image in question ?
In a log or in a lin image ?
On the source image or on a downstream node ?I think technically the Lift gamma gain controls do exactly as they should, but yes, one has to offset “midtones” to the footage.
Thats part of the job and a good thing, so a plugin cant replace me tomorrow 🙂A slice of color…
DaVinci 8.0.1 OSX 10.7
MacPro 5.1 2×2,4 24GB
RAID0 8TB eSata 6TB
GTX 470 / GT 120
Extreme 3D+ WAVE -
[Sascha Haber] “lol, seriously ?
Yes, lol, seriously.
[Sascha Haber]Colorista is the new standard ?
Is it? Who told you that?
[Sascha Haber]mid of the image in question ?
Well it is pretty obvious that “mid” in the “midtones” is referring to stuff not in the highlights nor in the shadows but… in the MIDtones. You know, not darker colortones nor brighter colortones?
[Sascha Haber]one has to offset “midtones” to the footage.”
Like in the secondaries? Isn´t that just when you want to affect certain colors, like turn a red car to a green car?
Shadows are always shadows and highlights are always highlights. Then the question is what is to be considered as highlights, how far down should the highlight control affect the image? And that is what I want to find a adjustment for.
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Kent,
I havent had any noticeable range difference in RGB lift, gamma, gain with the Resolve compared to say a 2K or a telecine primary. They all interact with each other. That way you can stretch out the entire image by lifting the gain as opposed to pulling the brightest 33% of the picture up. Of course if you want something like that their are numerous ways to qualify a luminance value and affect that independently.
You can also use the chroma lift, gamma and gain controls to in essence stretch the luminance channel independently.
I did notice on a job I did on Scratch that the gamma was a huge influence on the picture with lift and gain much less so. Took a few minutes to adjust to that and then off you go. So the differences between Colorista and Resolve may be like that. I guess I am accustomed to the Resolve because it acts a lot like the hardware systems I have graded with.Dave Pickett
Colorist
Jam Edit – Atlanta
http://www.jamedit.com
http://www.davepickett.com -
Ok, to illustrate what I meant…
This is an image with a lot of light :
The midtones will pick the roof and windows which are actually the darkest parts.
and here we have a pretty dark one :
The midtones will pick the highlights.
My point was its kinda impossible to look at Gamma as midtones..it isnt.
it just affects the light level around 50% most and not so much the 0 or 100 % range.
But if an image only has 90 to 650 , like LOG normally comes in, the standard gamma is quite useless and you have to make a keyer for it.A slice of color…
DaVinci 8.0.1 OSX 10.7
MacPro 5.1 2×2,4 24GB
RAID0 8TB eSata 6TB
GTX 470 / GT 120
Extreme 3D+ WAVE -
[Dave Pickett] “They all interact with each other. That way you can stretch out the entire image by lifting the gain as opposed to pulling the brightest 33% of the picture up.”
Yes… But I would prefer for the highlight adjustment to affect the highlights only (well, some streching down towards the midtones of course, but not all the way through the whole image down to the shadows). And I would prefer for the midtones to affect “mostly the midtones” with some stretch towards high/low, and the shadows would of course then affect the darker parts of the image mostly, with some stretch up to midtones, but not all the way up to the highlights.
[Dave Pickett] “So the differences between Colorista and Resolve may be like that. “
Yeah, but not only is it more difficult to get used to… I am not sure we can use it as it is now. It is very difficult to work with, when you have set the shadows (like taken out any colortint in the blacks) and then go on adjusting the highlights you mess up the blacks again, because the highlightcontrol affects the shadows too! Seems very weird…
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I would love to see this function added – perhaps as set of bezier curves in the curves tab that allowed you to adjust the luma ranges for the highlights, mids, and shadows controls… the second shot Sascha posted is exactly why, when you run into a shot like that, you could define highlights as 40%+, mids around 20% and shadows below 10%, easier than pulling three keys… and could be used for operator preference for the overall project or projects…
I always liked this function on the Avid DS system (which also had a handy three-tone preview, black gray white to tell you what in your current image falls into which categories, roughly).
KC
prehistoricdigital.com
hardworkingpixels.com -
[Sascha Haber] “Ok, to illustrate what I meant…
This is an image with a lot of light :
The midtones will pick the roof and windows which are actually the darkest parts.”Yes, this image doesen´t have any real rak parts, so the “shadows-control” would obviously not be used here. You´d use the highlight and midtones to affect this image.
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[Sascha Haber] “and here we have a pretty dark one :
The midtones will pick the highlights.
“Yes, this image doesen´t have any real highlights. so you´d use the shadow and midtones to adjust this image.
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[Sascha Haber] “My point was its kinda impossible to look at Gamma as midtones..it isnt.
it just affects the light level around 50% most and not so much the 0 or 100 % range.Well they are labeled as “shadows”, “midtones” and “highlights” on colorista, so why not use these terms when we talk about the controls? But of course it is as you write, the midtones affect colors around 50% light level, highlights affect more around 100% light level, and so on.
The problem is that the highlight control adjusts the image all the way from 100 down to 0 if we look at the image “as light measured from 0 to 100”. It would be better if it affected something like…
Shadows affect 0 to 50
Midtones affect 25 to 75
Highlights affect 50-100(of course, shadows should affect mostly around 0 and smoothly less and less the closer to 50 you get. These numbers are very rough, but I hope you understand what I mean)
With smooth minor overlapping between hightlight to midtones, midtones should slightly overlap both hightlights and shadows, and of course shadows should overlap up to midtones, but not all the way up to the highlights.
We do very specific/special colorcorrections, we transfer old films and colorcorrect the footage. These old films sometimes have a slight colorcast, so the image is tinted towards red. Sometimes it is tinted towards blue. Sometimes the shadows are tinted one way and the highlights, or the rest of the footage, is tinted towards something else!
Using colorista one would correct the shadows (if the image had any real shadows) would be corrected with the shadows and then when you adjust the rest of the footage, like highlight, the shadows would remain set. Of course, if you need to tweak the midtones a lot perhaps you needed to touch up the shadows again…
But basically the three controls affected, mostly, different light-level-parts of the image. It was very easy to use.
Now, in Resolve, the midtones affect the whole image, a lot. If you set the shadows so that the parts that are supposed to be black are black, the midtones will screw this adjustment almost immediately, because it affects the image all the way up and down from shadow to highlights. And even the highlight control affects the shadows almost immediately… Weird. Very weird.
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“Well they are labeled as “shadows”, “midtones” and “highlights” on colorista, so why not use these terms when we talk about the controls? “
Lift, Gamma and Gain can be different to Shadows Midtones And Highlight controls.
Dan Moran
DaVinci Application Specialist
Blackmagic Design EMEA -
[Dan Moran] “Lift, Gamma and Gain can be different to Shadows Midtones And Highlight controls.”
Yeah, yeah, but on Resolve they are labeled “Lift – Shadows” and “Gamma – Midtones” and “Gain – Highlights”. Right next to the colorwheels on the new “colorwheel tab”. At least on this tab, they seem to be the same. 😉
And I can´t understand why the highlight control affects all the way down to the shadows… Weird. Makes it very hard to target either the highlihgts or the shadows specifically, and the midtones affect the whole image… Makes the tools very “indistinct”, if you ask me.
Sliders that adjust how far each control will affect the image, and perhaps controls for how long the smooth overlap of the different controls should be… Definetly needed here. And make them permanent in a preferences page, and perhaps add the possibility to make custom adjustments on a lcip-basis or on a project basis. But it should definetly be a user-adjusteable permanent preference.
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[Kevin Cannon] “I always liked this function on the Avid DS system (which also had a handy three-tone preview, black gray white to tell you what in your current image falls into which categories, roughly). “
This is also available on Premiere Pro 3-way colorcorrector. Both the ability to adjust what should be considered as shadow/mid/high, and the ability to see a preview with black/gray/white to show what parts of the image are affected by the different controls.
This is badly needed in Resolve… because at least according to me, they overlap way too much. I will add it to my wishlist, and send to it Blackmagic next week or something.
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