ColorSlice: Deconstructing DaVinci Resolve’s New Secondary Tool

July 25, 2024

Learn to use Resolve’s new subtractive saturation tool, ColorSlice, to create more nuanced color grades. Colorist Jason Bowdach deconstructs.


Learning To Control The ColorSlice Tool Plus Workflow Tips

In DaVinci Resolve 19, Blackmagic introduced a new secondary hue and saturation tool called ColorSlice. This tool adds native subtraction saturation and density controls that are normally only found in third-party DCTL plugins.

In this Insight, we’ll explore how the new tool works and discuss what this means for the currently available tools.

ColorSlice and Subtractive Saturation

Blackmagic Design witnessed the popularity of subtractive tools like Steve Yedlin, ASC’s Tetra, PixelTools Hue Shift, and Mononodes Color Shift and decided to add a similar tool to Resolve.

ColorSlice fits (and sits in the software) between the Hue/Sat vs. Curves and the Color Warper in your grading toolset. It doesn’t replace these tools but is a creative addition to them.

Digital video uses additive RGB colors, but subtractive color saturation emulates a film-like CMY color matrix. Subtractive saturation allows you to add greater depth of color (saturation) to your image without simultaneously making it (unnaturally) bright.

This often creates a more pleasing, film-like way to add saturation to your images, especially compared to the saturation control in the Primaries—Color Wheels palette.

Key takeaways from this Insight

By the end of this Insight, you should understand how to:

  • How to use ColorSlice, with a detailed understanding of each of its controls.
  • How to keep an individual hue vector in highlight mode
  • Understand how to manipulate the hue “vector” relationship for more targeted selections, such as skin tone selection.
  • Tetra—Steve Yedlin ASC described the Tetra transformation, which Calvinsilly originally implemented for Nuke, ported to Fusion by EmberLightVFX, and presented here as a DCTL for the ResolveFX DCTL plug-in.
  • Pixel Tools Hue Shift – A Mixing Light Contributor favorite Subtractive Saturation DCTL for DaVinci Resolve
  • Mononodes Color Shift – The “Hue Shift” DCTL allows for shifting any of the six main colors toward their neighboring colors.

Questions or Comments?

What do you think of the ColorSlice tool? Will it replace your use of third-party DCTL’s? How have you used it creatively in a recent node tree? Do you still have questions about how to make the most of ColorSlice? Hit the comments below!

– Jason

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