Color Warper Tips Part 2 – Migrating Off Curves in DaVinci Resolve

How changing my approach to the Color Warper made it more useful

In my previous Insight in this Series (renamed as Part 1), I shared a concept I call ‘pin patterns’ for some quick and easy adjustments in the Color Warper. Pin Patterns have helped me reduce mouse clicks for a few very common operations I’ve really come to rely upon in my fixed node trees.

But a few comments, emails, and conversations with Mixing Light members made it clear that many colorists haven’t figured out how to integrate the Color Warper into their day-to-day work.

I spent a little time contemplating why I was having success where others were struggling? I realized I didn’t properly share how I changed my mental model of using the Color Warper.

Changing my mental model of the Color Warper allowed me to integrate it more fully into my practice

In this Insight, I share how I use the Color Warper today – and how my usage has changed from when I first started using it. In sum: I no longer click-and-drag in the viewer when using the Color Warper. Instead, I prefer to use the range tool and then make adjustments using the Hue, Sat, and Lum controls.

If find that this approach unifies all the ‘Lum vs.’, ‘Sat vs.’, and ‘Hue vs.’ curves into the single interface of the Color Warper. This approach also opened up the concept of ‘Pin Patterns’, which I’ve made a part of my standard fixed node tree and I covered in an earlier Insight.

Questions, comments, or observations?

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Enjoy!

-pi