Deconstructing Color Boost in DaVinci Resolve – Part 1

I like to use it in situations I bring some heavy overall color to an image and on the same node I use color boost to bring back up the original skintones without have to mask them. And then just do a little balancing between the color boost and color wheels.

Thanks for sharing your workflow! For those reading this, Color Boost is the first operation of the Primary Tools within a node. So when you apply heavy Saturation and in the same node adjust Color Boost? You’re applying it before Saturation, which is a very clean way of working.

Avery Peck did an interesting video on color boost vs saturation. Saturation works by multiplying color and color boost works by adding color. So if you have an image with the most saturated part at 50 sat. and the least saturated part at 10 sat. and you bring saturation up to 100, you are multiplying it by 2 and ending up with 100 saturation in the most saturated part and 20 in the least saturated part. If you take the same image and add +50 color boost you end up with the most saturated parts at 100 sat. and the least saturated parts at 60 sat.

Playing around with saturation and color boost within the same node can help to increase or reduce saturation on the different saturation levels, similar to what you can achieve with the sat vs sat curve, just as you were doing in the last part of this video.

Maybe he’s right. But there’s additional weirdness in the Saturation controls that his simple math doesn’t account for. I’ll do another round of testing and see if I can replicate his results. If I need to I’ll follow up with a Part 2. FYI – I haven’t found his video that covers this.

From the same online discussion, I wrote a note that is shared here: https://www.ediwalger.com.ar/en/blog/saturated

Thanks for the insight.

At the current time of this writing, the video doesn’t work, at least on my office computer, MacBook Pro/Mid 2015/16GB RAM/High Sierra 10.13. However, it works from the iPhone.

Below is Avery Peck’s video about the use of Saturation, Color Boost, and the Custom Curve.
His theory about Saturation vs Color Boost is that saturation is a multiplier while Color Boost is an added function. Similar to Color Boost, the Saturations Curve can be used to select and manipulate low color values.

Kevin Shawn from Icolorist also has a video explaining the order of operations of the different saturation controls available in Resolve, and their different results.

I’m surprised about how many possibilities of saturation results the Custom Curve offers.
His video also covers Color Boost: https://vimeo.com/274745201

Please feel free to remove the first paragraph of my post when the video playback gets solved.

Willian – For the record, I am NOT a fan of the first video you posted. There’s a ton of misinformation in there. (I’ve tried to edit the link out of your post, but Disqus is keeping it, for a reason I can’t solve).

Kevin Shaw is terrific. And there are several fantastic techniques he demos in that video. But they don’t get the central question of Sat vs Color Boost.

I’ve recorded a Part 2 to this Insight that digs deeper. It’s interesting. It’s a busy week of prep for NAB 2019, so it’ll take a few days before it’s edited and posted.

I love the math. But as a colorist, I have trouble turning math into a visual of how the image responds to my controls. So I’ve recorded a part 2 that digs deeper into this. And, I think, provides a more visual answer of the difference between Color Boost and Saturation controls.

Patrick – Thanks for letting us know about your thoughts on Avery Peck’s video misinformation.
I can not wait for your next insight to get deeper into this interesting subject.
Definitely, it’s going to be helpful to find out here about the truth of Color Boost vs the other saturation controllers available in Resolve.

I’m sorry to hear about the impossibility to get riff off of the video.
Also, I was trying to edit a misspelling on my first post, but the site says I can not do it because the Administrator has already edited it.

Mixing Light’s video is not working yet in my computer.

Good luck at NAB this year. I wish I’ll meet you guys there. Your agenda sounds super interesting. Perhaps next year.

yes but you know, people with good sight “feels” that Col Boost work
like Vibrance and this is totally wrong. and the user manual collaborate
with this missconception and “false feeling”. Col Boost “push”, and Saturation “scale”. But
Vibrance “lift” chromacities.

To be clear, I’m not offering the mathematical ‘truth’ of Color Boost. Just how to use it, why, and what to look out for on any Saturation operation in Resolve.

Can you log into the website using Incognito or Private mode and see if that video plays?

To be fair to the User Manual, it specifically says “sometimes referred to as a vibrance operation.” The key word is ‘sometimes’. It doesn’t definitively call it a vibrance operation but provides some context to how Photoshop-type people feel like it works. I’ve heard many Photoshop users agree with that definition of how the control ‘seems’ to work.

But I will agree the manual is misleading in that Color Boost does *much* more than just lift regions of low saturation.

The video is playing back on my computer system normally now.
Interesting, it’s featuring English captions by default.
I didn’t do any extra effort. It just plays normal.

The playback issue has been solved without extra effort at my end.

Finally had a chance to take a look at this, and I think Patrick should be saluted for delving into an area of Resolve that I think very few people really understand. He’s right: Saturation and Color Boost and Sat vs. Sat are all very different, and there are places where one works better than another. (And in some cases, qualifying a soft key on low-chroma areas or high-chroma areas to control them is another method that works well.) This is not a super-glamorous part of color-correction, but it’s the “surgical scalpel” approach that helps distinguish really good work from merely “OK” color.