Cullen Kelly
Los Angeles, California
Selected Skills
What I Do
Cullen Kelly is a Los Angeles-based senior colorist with credits spanning film, television, and commercials, for clients and outlets, including Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Microsoft, American Airlines, and Apple. With a background in image science and the arts, he’s passionate about the intersection of the creative and technical and its role in great visual storytelling.
In addition to his grading work, Cullen teaches and writes about color for Blackmagic Design, Frame.io, and several universities in the LA area. He’s also the creator of Colloid, a custom suite of Resolve plug-ins for working colorists.
Tutorials by Cullen Kelly
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‘Smearing Shadows’ For More Pleasing High-Contrast Looks
Colorist Cullen Kelly explores a technique for sculpting rich, soft, and filmic shadows on high-contrast looks for a more pleasing effect.
Learn How To Build Your Custom Film Print ODT
Cullen Kelly shows you how to build a custom transform by combining a film print LUT with basic color science - to add style to images.
How To Install And Evaluate The Upcoming ACES 2.0 ODT
Cullen Kelly shows how you can explore the candidate ACES 2.0 output transforms. Learn the differences compared to the current ACES release.
Substituting ACES ADX for Cineon Film Log With Film Looks LUTs
Explore how to get better results from Resolve’s Film Looks LUTs by leveraging the ACES ADX standard — even if you're not grading in ACES!
The Do’s And Don’ts of Color Correcting with Hue-vs-Sat Curves
Colorist Cullen Kelly explores his favorite uses of the Sat vs Lum curve in Resolve and best practices for consistently great results.
Comparing ARRI’s LogC4 LUTs To Resolve Color Management
Learn to customize the built-in color management workflow of Resolve with quality external LUTs. This series begins with ARRI's LogC4 LUT.
Using Custom Curves To Emulate Fill-Light Adjustments
Sometimes you want to 'open up' the shadows as if you added a bounce card or fill light to the scene. Custom curves make this easy.
Learning to Color Balance More Quickly With Fewer Adjustments
In the final episode of his 'Flexing Fundamentals' series, Cullen Kelly shows how to color balance more efficiently by thinking differently.
How do ‘Motivated Vignettes’ improve your color grading?
Colorist Cullen Kelly explores vignettes: What they do, when they’re appropriate, & how to deploy them in a motivated and photographic manner?
Contrast Adjustments: Which Is The Right Tool For You?
In Part 3 of Cullen Kelly's 'Flexing Fundamentals' series, learn how to think about organizing contrast adjustments to improve your results.
How To Upgrade Your Contrast, Pivot, Lift, and Gain Adjustments
Learn why colorist Cullen Kelly loves Contrast-Pivot for his contrast adjustments - and how you can upgrade them for more nuanced control.
Flexing Fundamentals: The Hidden Power of the Offset Wheel
In a new series on Primary color corrections, Cullen Kelly explores the hidden strength of the Offset Wheel - when working color-managed.
How To Build Your Own ‘RGB Crosstalk Curves’ Node Matrix
In Part 7 of Cullen Kelly's 'Visual Math' series, rebuild Resolve’s RGB Mixer with splitter/combiner nodes to control with Custom Curves.
How To ‘Trace’ a LUT’s Contrast Curve By Hand
Learn how to use Layer Mixer nodes to recreate a LUT's contrast curve for further creative manipulation in Part 6 of the Visual Math series.
Building Custom 'Lum vs Sat' Curves In HSL Using Resolve's Node Tree
In Part 5 of our 'Visual Math' series, learn how 'vs. Curves' work from within Resolve's node graph by building your own in HSL space.
Extracting Only The Hue Or Saturation of a LUT using DaVinci Resolve
Learn how to extract the hue and/or saturation shifts of a 3D LUT, without getting stuck with the LUT's accompanying contrast adjustment.
How To Extract A LUT's Split-Tone Component Using DaVinci Resolve
Learn how to isolate the color impact of a LUT from its luma component to craft the image to your preferences, all within DaVinci Resolve.
Build Your Own Qualifier In HSL Color Space Using Curves (In Resolve)
Learn an alternate method for creating masks limiting adjustments to particular luminance regions, using Curves and Splitter/Combiner nodes.
Building A Subtractive Saturation Node Tree In DaVinci Resolve
'Subtractive saturation' is a hot topic with colorists. Learn how to manually build this tool in DaVinci Resolve for more natural results.
Live Call - Coding DCTLs Wrap-Up Discussion with Cullen Kelly
Cullen Kelly wraps his 10-part intro series about Coding DCTL. It's a live Q&A session answering questions, while Cullen learns something new!
Creative Coding with DCTL Part 9 – Adding A Visual Curve Overlay
Colorist Cullen Kelly finishes off coding a split-toning Resolve DCTL plugin with a visual overlay showing how the RGB channels are modified.