5 Tips & Tricks For 10X MORE CINEMATIC Color Grading in Davinci Resolve 19

0:00 here are five quick tips and tricks to bring your color grading in Davinci Resolve to the next level just a few things you can do to add a little bit of extra atmosphere some more punch and pop or just some extra oomph you know what I mean so instead of cinematic we want to make it look super cinematic now what does that mean exactly well honestly it means whatever you want it to mean but you see the thing is the YouTube algorithm really likes the word cinematic in the title of a video so yeah there you go transparency here we go first of all a tip that I saw in one of waqas qazi's videos not sure if I'm pronouncing his name correctly but doesn't matter after watching this video go check out his channel if you want more specialized and advanced color grading info he's an expert and so what he says you should do is

0:47 create a reference Gallery with Stills screenshots basically of different movies series music videos different looks that you like and just keep them all here in your gallery in the color page now now how does it work well just create a new Stills album and then drop a screenshot on your timeline go to the color page and with the Stills album selected right click in the image here and then grab still and automatically a still will be added to the selected album and of course you can organize them however you want by movie genre by color by looks whatever you want now why is it important that you create a Stills album like that well that's because when you activate a still while you're color grading you not only see the images side by side but you also have the waveform

1:34 information of that screenshot of that movie still also Vector scope information parade so it'll be a lot easier for you to achieve a similar look because you're not just guessing you have all the information right there how clean the Shadows look where the highlights are how contrasty it is but also let's say you finished color grading one clip of your video and you want to match all the other Clips well Stills are super useful so I've been playing around a lot with this new feature color slice right because I think it's really cool and also a lot more versatile than you might think at first glance for example over the past few weeks I shot a lot of footage of morning Skies but of course the damn Sky never looks as good as it did in real life when you start importing

2:24 all the clips it always looks a bit more dull and so normally I start playing around with the color wheels and maybe the curves to get some more color and punch in the highlights in the sky and that works especially if you combine it with power windows for example but I've noticed that using the color slice Feature A lot of times is a lot faster and it gives me better more natural looking results look if I just add some more saturation to well in this case all the warm colors and then make them a bit more dense with the density slider look look how how much better it looks how it brings out those colors without everything looking unnatural or over the top so color slice start using it start experimenting with it because it's super [Music] cool okay so

3:15 this is a super important one and I discovered it by just color gring a lot and getting frustrated a lot so a lot of times when you're trying to achieve a specific look from a movie or a series and you're almost there but it's still doesn't look quite the same and you can't figure out what it is because you know whatever color or contrast adjustment you do it doesn't seem to work well then it's probably not the colors you should be adjusting but start looking at the effects especially if you're trying to achieve a film look or maybe a Sci-Fi look something specific you know effects like prism blur halation glow film grain also will not only add that effect but they will also make your call grade instantly feel and look different and more often than not

4:02 it's one of those effects that will complete your look your color grade and you know talking about effects D Vin resolve has a bunch of effects built in super cool effects but what if it's not what you're looking for well in that case maybe you should check out motion VFX the sponsor of this video they have Motion Graphics animated titles transitions Creator toolboxes but also effects and you know one of those effects might just be the element you need to complete your grade everything is drag and drop super easy to use and customize even installing the plugins is the easiest thing ever because they have an app for that and right now they also have black weeks deals which means you get 30% off of a whole bunch of Dent resolve templates titles Motion Graphics and plugins

4:47 perfect time to give motion VFX a try the link is in the description and the deals last until December 4th so don't wait too long just go check it out after watching this video okay and now next [Music] tip okay I think this is one of the basic classic color grading tips right when we're talking about cinematic color grading but still if you're a beginner it might be difficult to spot this you might not notice it when just looking at a movie or an image so usually the highlights in a movie are never 100% brightness or 100% Pure White and the Shadows are never 0% brightness or 100% black of course it depends on how contrasty you want the image and it's not a rule and also you

5:37 know these days people are complaining a lot that movies look so dark like the highlights almost look like middle gray and I agree sometimes but the thing is I just tend to stick with this guideline brightest highlights never higher than around 90 to 95% wait I'll set my waveform here to percentages then it's easier to see there so never above 90 to 95% for the highlights and the Shadows never below what is that 2% let's say I mean just look at some of these movie Stills see here this looks like it might be 100% white right 100% brightness but it's not it's 95% and here these dark areas there's pretty much no detail in there it looks like it's completely

6:24 black but it's not 100% black it doesn't go below 2% here and 0% is of course black black black so I always start by bringing the highlights down to 90 95% with gain for example and the Shadows up a little bit above that 2% and then I go from there but if it's an early morning shot I might bring down the highlights even more see this one was recorded like this but that's also not what it looked like in real life so I bring it all the way down and if I want a more stylized look maybe a super contrasty look then I might go a bit lower with the Shadows also create a deeper contrast but I'll never crush the Shadows because I don't like that see everything that disappears here under this line means that the information is gone crushed shadows and for the highlights the same of

7:14 course and you know even if your highlights were clipped during recording so if there's no detail in the highlights in a movie it will usually still be brought down to like 90 95% it will never be 100% bright briess even if it's like completely white so just pay attention to shadows and highlights next time you watch a [Music] movie this is actually a trick that I started using what is it 20 years ago when I was studying photography I learned this in Photoshop class yeah and so I used it for my photography but it also works for video no problem so how does it work well just create a new node and set that node's composite mode to soft light and instantly it will add more more contrast and you know it will saturate your colors a little bit more now if it's too much if

8:04 your original image already had some contrast of course you can tone it down a bit just by playing around with the colar wheels lift the Shadows a little bit or I mean there's different ways to tone it down to tone the contrast down again but then what you can also do and this is super cool go to the blur panel and add blur to that node the node that you set to soft light and see it adds this glowy dreamy blurry effect without making it look blurry or out of focus look it doesn't matter how much blur you add it will still look sharp in a way now you can go super crazy if you want but of course usually it's best to keep it subtle and the cool thing is that you can experiment with all these composite modes here maybe you'll find an effect that's super cool that no one has ever

8:54 used and that's it for today guys um it's Friday today I'm going to play some poker tonight tonight drink some beers I hope you also have something fun planned if not just watch some more of my videos I'll keep you company while I'm losing or winning money I hope it's going to be winning money we'll see thank you so much for watching and see you in the next one Sal and to the v in them