The Blackwell Edition – Sunday Morning Weekly Color Grading Newsletter

(video) From the FXPodcast channel, “We dive deep into the future of color management with one of the leading figures in the development of ACES 2.0, Alex Fry, with the ACES update that’s redefining the color pipelines of modern visual effects and feature production.

Alex is a senior color and imaging engineer at ILM Sydney, known more informally among his peers as their resident ‘color nerd’.”

“Everyone seems to have a hot take on whether AI is going to radically transform the film industry, or is just flashy vapourware … So I thought it would be useful to go through them and share with you the breadth and depth of what’s out there.”

I was unaware of this ongoing strike: “The agreement’s AI protections could reshape how studios approach digital double creation, voice synthesis, and performance capture across film, television, and interactive media.”

“The company is calling the current video workflow “Image-to-Video,” meaning that you still make images in Midjourney but now you can press an “Animate” button to turn them into video clips.”

“A new king reigns in TV land.” It was just a matter of time.

“Pixar said it will continue mastering future movies in DCI HDR for Samsung Onyx displays, which are the first DCI-certified cinema LED displays.”

“Samsung Electronics launched its latest Onyx Cinema-LED (ICD model) for North America at CinemaCon 2025 in Las Vegas and at CineEurope 2025 in Barcelona. The new Onyx supports frame rates of up to 120Hz at 4K resolution. The screen delivers HDR visuals with peak brightness levels of 300 nits (87.6fL), true black levels and precise color accuracy.”

No mention of how they’re overcoming the challenge of speakers behind the main screen.

Being in the business of supporting content creators, I always find it interesting to follow trademark disputes. In that spirit: “Mondelez has sued Aldi for using similar packaging, causing confusion, mistake and deception. What can packaging printers learn from this?”

(video) “What specification should you use to build a custom PC that can handle demanding color grading workflows? Puget Systems has the answer…”

(video) “With these effective techniques, quickly build motion graphics animations from layered Photoshop files in the DaVinci Resolve Edit page.”

(video) “How do you become a successful director? Do 10,000 hours of hard work. Director Michael McCourt shares insights from his career journey.”

(video) “What do you need to build a professional color grading suite from scratch? Post Professional Sam Lowe shares his in-depth design secrets.”

“Discover how Neat Video 6, paired with GPUs like RTX 5090, improves noise reduction, render speed, and playback in pro editing workflows. Neat Video 6 is now outperforming Resolve not only in denoising, but also in render speed.”

(video) If you’re an F1 fan, definitely fun. There are two embedded videos. “In a speed test, an F1 car starts 40 seconds after a Mercedes sports car and 25 seconds after a V8 Supercar (essentially an Australian NASCAR) and still catches them by the end of the first lap.”

Not funny, just fun: “At the heart of the Rubin observatory is the largest digital camera in the world, a supercooled grid with hundreds of high-resolution sensors.”