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a new Input Tone Mapping option (Input DRT) that makes it easier to mix media formats for SDR and HDR grading, improved Timeline to Output Tone Mapping (Output DRT) that offers improved shadow and highlight handling, and select color space-aware grading palettes that make controls feel and perform well no matter what you’re grading.
How Is DaVinci Resolve Color Management Different from ACES?
This is a common question, but the answer is pretty simple. Resolve Color Management (RCM) and ACES are both Scene Referred color management schemes designed to solve the same problem. However, if you’re not in a specific ACES-driven cinema workflow, DaVinci Resolve Color Management can be simpler to use, and will give you all of the benefits of color management, while approximating the “feel” that the DaVinci Resolve Color page controls have always had.
How Is DaVinci Resolve Color Management Different from ACES?
This is a common question, but the answer is pretty simple. Resolve Color Management (RCM) and ACES are both Scene Referred color management schemes designed to solve the same problem. However, if you’re not in a specific ACES-driven cinema workflow, DaVinci Resolve Color Management can be simpler to use, and will give you all of the benefits of color management, while approximating the “feel” that the DaVinci Resolve Color page controls have always had.
How Is DaVinci Resolve Color Management Different from ACES?
This is a common question, but the answer is pretty simple. Resolve Color Management (RCM) and ACES are both Scene Referred color management schemes designed to solve the same problem. However, if you’re not in a specific ACES-driven cinema workflow, DaVinci Resolve Color Management can be simpler to use, and will give you all of the benefits of color management, while approximating the “feel” that the DaVinci Resolve Color page controls have always had.
This updated Resolve Color Management has the same name as the previous version. However, older projects using the previous version of RCM will have Color science set to Legacy, to preserve the older color management settings and color transformations effect on your work. For more information on how the previous generation of RCM works, see the September 2020 version of the DaVinci Resolve 16 Manual.
Resolve Color Management for Editors
RCM isn’t just for Colorists. RCM can be easier for editors to use in situations where the source material is log-encoded. Log-encoded media preserves highlight and shadow detail, which is great for grading and finishing, but it looks flat and unpleasant, which is terrible for editing.
Even if you have no idea how to do color correction, it’s simple to turn RCM on in the Color Management panel of the Project Settings, and then use the Media Pool to assign the particular Input Color Space that corresponds to the source clips from each camera. Once that’s done, each log- encoded clip is automatically normalized to the default Timeline Color Space of Rec. 709 Gamma 2.4. So, without even having to open the Color page, editors can be working with pleasantly normalized clips in the Edit page.
The Input, Timeline, and Output Color Space
The foundation of Resolve Color Management rests on three core settings. Not only do you have the ability to either automatically or manually identify the color science of each individual source clip (the Input Color Space), but you also have explicit control over the working color space within which all color adjustments and operations are made (the Timeline Color Space), and you have separate control over the Output Color Space that defines how your graded image will be monitored and output.
This means that, basically, Resolve Color Management consists of two color transforms working together, converting each source clip via its Input Color Space definition into the Timeline Color Space in which you work, and then converting the adjusted image from the Timeline Color Space to whatever Output Color Space you require to deliver the project.
Input Color Space
Input Color Space
Input Color Space
Timeline Color Space
Timeline Color Space
Timeline Color Space
Output Color Space
Output Color Space
Output Color Space
Resolve Color Management consists of three color transforms working together.
This means that, as a colorist, you can set the Timeline Color Space that you’re working in to whatever you prefer. If you prefer grading wide-gamut log media because you like the way the grading controls behave in that color space, you can set the Timeline Color Space in the Color Management panel of the Project Settings to DaVinci Wide Gamut (more on this below), or any of the available log formats, including ARRI Log C, REDWideGamutRGB/Log3G10, and Cineon Film Log. If you instead prefer grading in the Rec. 709 color space because you’re mastering a standard dynamic range (SDR) program to Rec. 709 and you’re more comfortable with how the controls in DaVinci Resolve have
always felt in that color space, you can choose that instead. Whatever Timeline Color Space you assign is what all source clips will be transformed to for purposes of making grading adjustments in the Color page, so you can make this choice using a single setting.
A key benefit of the color space conversions that RCM applies is that no image data is ever clipped during the Input to Timeline color space conversion. For example, even if your source is log-encoded or in a camera raw format, grading with a Rec. 709 Timeline Color Space does nothing to clip or otherwise limit the image data available to the RCM image processing pipeline. All image values greater than 1.0 or less than 0.0 are preserved and made available to the next stage of RCM processing, the Timeline to Output color space conversion.
TIP: If you want to use Resolve Color Management, but you want the Input and Output Color Spaces to match whatever you set the Timeline Color Space to, you can choose “Bypass” in the “Input Colorspace” and “Output Colorspace” drop-down menus.
TIP: If you want to use Resolve Color Management, but you want the Input and Output Color Spaces to match whatever you set the Timeline Color Space to, you can choose “Bypass” in the “Input Colorspace” and “Output Colorspace” drop-down menus.
TIP: If you want to use Resolve Color Management, but you want the Input and Output Color Spaces to match whatever you set the Timeline Color Space to, you can choose “Bypass” in the “Input Colorspace” and “Output Colorspace” drop-down menus.
Consequently, if you’re grading in a color space other than the one you need to output to, you don’t have to worry about data loss during the color transformation back to the color space you actually want to output to. The Output Color Space setting gives you the freedom to work using whatever Timeline Color Space you like while grading, with Resolve automatically converting your output to the specific color space you want to monitor with and deliver to. And thanks to the precision of the image processing in DaVinci Resolve, you can convert from a larger color space to a smaller one and back again without clipping or a loss of quality. Of course, if you apply a LUT or use Soft Clip within a grade, then clipping will occur, but that’s a consequence of using those particular operations.