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Issue DCXX: The Blackwell Edition |
The Color Grading Newsletter
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News, reviews, thoughts, career advice, and
humor for professional Video / Film
Colorists & Finishers. Delivered Sundays.
Curated by a professional color grader and
the CEO of MixingLight.com.
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This week’s Newsletter is a FREE PREVIEW
edition.
It is being sent to
everyone on the Mixing Light mailing list. I invite you
to forward this email to anyone who might find it
interesting. Mixing Light Newsletter subscribers,
Discover+, and Premium members get this Newsletter
shipped to their Inbox (and access on the website) 40+
Sundays a year. Launched in 2010 and shipping
continuously since then. It’s designed to keep
you informed about the most interesting articles,
podcasts, and videos I’ve found online. Weekly. I curate
trustworthy sources offering helpful information and
insights. If you enjoy what you’re
reading, consider purchasing
an annual Newsletter
subscription.
Your support of this publication will advance
your career and enhance your understanding of this
corner of our industry. This Newsletter is also
bundled with
Mixing Light Discover+ and Premium
memberships.Enough with the pitch, let’s
get to point of this email! I’ll see you next Sunday.
Happy Grading!
Sincerely, Pat
Inhofer
Chief Photon Wrangler,
Publisher MixingLight.com PS
– If you find an item you think should be in this
newsletter, email me a
quick note. PPS – As a
Newsletter subscriber, comment on these articles at
Mixing Light after logging in.
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Featuring the work of creative craftsmen, the
theory of color, and industry news. Learn practical
workflows, useful theories, and actionable insights
from existing (and emerging) leaders and teachers in
our industry.
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(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’.”
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“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.”
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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.”
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“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.”
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“A new king reigns in TV land.” It was
just a matter of time.
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“Pixar said it will continue mastering
future movies in DCI HDR for Samsung
Onyx displays, which are the first
DCI-certified cinema LED displays.”
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“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.
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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?”
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These are recent Insights published on Mixing
Light.
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(video) “What specification should you
use to build a custom PC that can handle
demanding color grading workflows? Puget
Systems has the answer…”
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(video) “With these effective techniques,
quickly build motion graphics animations
from layered Photoshop files in the
DaVinci Resolve Edit page.”
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(video) “How do you become a successful
director? Do 10,000 hours of hard work.
Director Michael McCourt shares insights
from his career journey.”
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(video) “What do you need to build a
professional color grading suite from
scratch? Post Professional Sam Lowe
shares his in-depth design secrets.”
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Our craft keeps changing. And growing. Learn about
updates to your favorite software. Discover new
tools to help you work faster or more creatively.
Build your toolchest with new techniques and
approaches.
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(video) Stefan Ringelschwandtner of
Mononodes: “I demonstrate how human skin
spans a wide range of hues, from red to
yellow, depending on lighting and scene
context. Yet the skin slider in
ColorSlice only affects a narrow slice
of the hue spectrum, often missing key
areas of the face. Even gentle
adjustments can lead to segmentation,
unnatural transitions, and loss of
coherence across skin tones.”
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If you work in cloud databases, this
will help you have peace of mind.
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(video) From Cullen Kelly’s channel:
“Why doesn’t Resolve handle ProRes Raw
on its own? The answer is irritating,
but there’s a tool that uses Apple’s
official ProRes RAW SDK that you can use
to make ProRes Raw work in Resolve
(without risking a bad transcode —
which you might get with other
options).”
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(video) “Follow Renee Robyn in a
detailed walkthrough of Mask ML, the
powerful AI-driven masking tool in Boris
FX Optics.
Learn how to quickly generate accurate
subject masks using machine learning,
making it easier than ever to isolate
people, objects, and backgrounds with
minimal effort. This tutorial is perfect
for streamlining your workflow and
unlocking smarter, faster selections in
your photo and composite work.”
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(video) “Key new features include the
Highlight Visualizer, which shows
exactly what parts of the image are
affected by your adjustments, and the
Deep Slider, allowing you to isolate
density and hue changes to shadows and
midtones while protecting highlights.”
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“Get faster renders with Neat Video 6.
Learn how to use Auto and Fast
Processing modes for efficient noise and
flicker reduction.”
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“With Peakto and its private AI, any
team member can prepare a pre-edited
version by searching through the entire
archive using descriptions, dialogue, or
reference images. A major
time-saver—with no compromise on data
privacy.”
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(video) Your mission, should you choose
to accept, is to find ways to adapt this
to your practice: “Done right, gradient
colors offer flexibility and creative
freedom beyond standard color
adjustments. Here’s a creative way to
make them in Photoshop.”
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Stay updated on the latest hardware that’s shipping
– because the craft of color grading isn’t just
about software. Plus, keep an eye on future
equipment trends and hardware odds-and-ends.
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“NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series
GPU-equipped PCs and laptops support
4:2:2 encode and decode, advanced video
editing and AI workflows.”
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“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.”
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“Although announced about two months
ago, the rollout of this family of GPUs
has been slow, which is traditional for
professional-class cards. In this
article, we will be reviewing the
flagship model of this product family:
the NVIDIA RTX PRO™ 6000 Blackwell
Workstation Edition.”
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“You won’t get more or higher-end ports
than on the latest model of the iconic
CalDigit Thunderbolt Station.”
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(video) “The Sony BRAVIA 8 II OLED is
the 2025 successor to the Sony A95L
OLED. It technically sits above the Sony
BRAVIA 8 OLED, which has been carried
over from 2024. It uses a new QD-OLED
panel, which is the same as the one
found in the Samsung S95F OLED. It has
everything to be a top-notch 2025 OLED,
but is it worth its expensive price
tag?”
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(video) “In our recent reviews, we’ve
been talking a lot about the firmware
issues we found in the LG G5 and C5,
specifically the HDR10 contouring issues
and unusually high input lag when
gaming. LG has since rolled out a major
firmware update on June 11, 2025 that
promised to eliminate the issue. … In
practice, the update delivers on many of
those promises in Filmmaker Mode.
However, it also exposes a new
compromise for C5 owners who game…”
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Random thoughts, tidbits, and fun stuff catching my
attention this week. Maybe it’s color grading
related. Maybe not. Ya gotta read to the end of the
Newsletter to find out.
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(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.”
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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.”
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Th- th- th- that’s all folks! I’ll see you next
Sunday. |
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