DaVinci Resolve is a system editing software made by Black Magic Design that you can use for editing all of the components of graphic design. Today, we’re going to go into detail about how to color grade and finish in DaVinci Resolve.
Here is a helpful video tutorial for you to check out: https://youtu.be/XPF4ESuvub4
You will need to download Blackmagic design’s DaVinci Resolve onto your computer from Black Magic Design. Once you have downloaded DaVinci Resolve, you can use it for editing all of your graphic design content.
The first step in DaVinci Resolve is to create a new project. To do this, you will open DaVinci Resolve and click “New Project”. This will bring you to a blank project that you can add content to and begin editing.
From here, there are different toolbars, editors, and color palettes you can access for picture and video editing within the program.
Becoming Familiar with DaVinci Resolve
Before you begin, you should familiarize yourself with the DaVinci Resolve software. It can be a little overwhelming, especially if you’re new to content creation and graphic design. We’ll go over all of the key features that you can access in the software to help you with video editing, color grading, and finishing your designs in DaVinci Resolve.
Each feature is called a panel, and we’ll explain the panels in detail below so that you become more familiar with the software.
The Gallery
In the top left corner of DaVinci Resolve, you’ll find the gallery. The gallery is where you will store all of your media clips or stills. The gallery will also store all of the grades you save on your clips or stills, so this is an important area of the software that you need to become familiar with.
The Viewer
In the top center is the viewer tool. The viewer tells you where your video has stopped during the clip. It is essentially a screengrab of the video at that moment. The viewer also shows you how the clip or still looks with the current edits.
The Node Editor
In the top right corner is the node editor tool. The node editor is where you have the most control over the image or clip in which you are editing. You can split the content into separate nodes for easy and fine-tune image or video editing.
The Timeline
There are two different areas of the timeline that you can view and use to make changes to your frame rate. The first is the thumbnail timeline which shows you a thumbnail of all of your motion graphics within the project. The second is the timeline ruler which allows access to editing the duration of each clip and the transitional visual effects between the clips.
Color Palettes
There are three sets of color palettes on the bottom of the dashboard. You have the left palettes, the central palettes, and the keyframes and scopes palettes.
How to Perform Color Correction and Grade in DaVinci Resolve
If you need to hide any of the panels in DaVinci Resolve that are irrelevant to your project, you can do so. Just simply hide the panels that you won’t be using by going to the interface toolbar at the top of the dashboard. You can choose which panels to reveal and which panels to hide.
Now that you are familiar with the different panels in DaVinci Resolve, it’s time to start grading.
Primary color grading can be done at any time during editing. Primary grading is typically done using the color wheel or the scopes and it affects the entire media as a whole.
There are four different color wheels you can choose from when grading and performing color correction in DaVinci Resolve. The four different color wheels include lift, gamma, gain, and offset. Each of these color wheels performs its own respective grading, such as highlights, shadows, and mid-tones of the media.
Each wheel allows you to change the color of the image, so you will need to play around with each wheel to make the color correction you desire.
Color grading is not a fast process and shouldn’t be completed quickly. Becoming a good colorist takes time and patience. You should use all of the color wheels to fine-tune all of the visual effects in the media you are editing.
Each grade can be saved for you to use and apply to any of the clips or raw footage in your gallery. You can also right-click on the color grade you have created and click “export.” This will allow you to save the grade both in DaVinci Resolve as well as on your desktop computer as a template for you to use at a later time on another project.
How to Finish in DaVinci Resolve
When you have finished making all of your edits to your project or video footage in DaVinci Resolve, you will need to finish it. Before you finish your project, make sure that you have all of the settings applied to your project.
Once you have double-checked your project and approve the settings, you will need to click “Add to Rendered Queue” on the Render Settings tool. Once you have agreed to add the project to the rendered queue, it will place the job in the Render Queue panel on the dashboard.
You will then click “Render All” at the bottom of the Render Queue panel. The video footage will then begin to process, and you can watch the progress of the video as it renders. It will also give you an estimate of how much time is remaining as it renders.
After the job has finished rendering, you can access your file on your computer to send or upload to the platform of your choice.
Conclusion
Grading is an important part of editing because it fine-tunes the media you are working on to make them look exactly how you need and intended.
Check out the many youtube videos we have about all of our DaVinci Resolve tutorials. Not only will our videos help you with learning how to color grade and finish, but you can also learn to apply many of the other visual effects and any new feature that DaVinci Resolve has to offer.
