Filmlight’s Chromogen video inspired me to take a fresh look at using Resolve’s Color Warper
FilmLight has released new tools for Baselight, one of which is called Chromogen. While the tool is interesting, what is more interesting to me is an excellent live presentation, Look Development Masterclass: Chromogen In Action. It’s available on YouTube (and embedded below).
The philosophy discussed in this video and the detailed description of some of its new tools made me want to revisit Resolve’s Color Warper to see if it could be used similarly. More specifically, this Insight explores the ‘stages’ of Chromogen as a starting point for building a similar set of tools in Resolve.
The grading and look-dev tools in Baselight seem good, but I’ve never had any real hands-on time with the system. I’m attempting to (mostly) use Resolve’s Color Warper tool to mimic certain elements of the ‘film look’ and also take inspiration from Filmlight’s look development approach.
Ideally, I’d find ways to avoid unwanted, unnatural, or unpleasant colour manipulations which may be unintentionally created in digital systems. Baselight’s Chromogen tool is a great reference for exploring the possibilities with Resolves’ Color Warper (and other tools).
Using Chromogen’s operators as a starting point, we (attempt to) mimic results using the Color Warper.
As I understand it, Chromogen has ten operators (‘stages’) that can be added and combined. I won’t attempt to define the operation of these Baselight operators and how they’re used in Baselight. I’ll leave that to other Mixing Light contributors who work on Baselight and can explain them from direct experience! There’s also this deeper Chromogen explanation on Filmlight’s Vimeo account.
Also, I’m not trying to compare Resolve to Baselight, except that the Chromogen look-dev tool looks amazing, and the controls seem effective and easy to use!
Based on my experiments, Resolve tools can have similar functions and get similar results. However, for the most part, the Resolve tools are more clunky to adjust than Chromogen tools, and they do not prevent the user from introducing unintended and unnatural manipulations and colour artefacts. Still, let’s press onward to see what’s available to Resolve colorists.
As you watch this video Insight, keep these things in mind
The Color Warper manipulates brightness and colourfulness in 3-dimensional space. It looks something like this:
Color Warper allows simultaneous adjustments across two axes: Hue/Saturation and Hue/Lightness.
Most colourists seem comfortable with the Saturation/Hue toolset. It closely mimics a vectorscope and feels like you have direct control of the vectorscope.
But for these Choromogen-style look-dev manipulations, you need to become comfortable with the Lightness/Hue controls of the Color Warper. Here’s what the Resolve User Manual has to say about the Chroma-Luma controls:
The Chroma-Luma mode lets you alter the hue and lightness of colors in the image simultaneously. This may not feel like an intuitive way of working, as the grid controls are overlaid on colors projected as different sides of an RGB cube. However, this enables some powerful adjustments once you get the hang of how multiple adjustments interact in this mode, as well as the power of locking control points to limit your adjustments to specific areas of the two grids.
DaVinci Resolve 18.5 User Manual
Understanding the Axis Angle slider for Chromogen-style manipulations
In my opinion, most colourists who aren’t using the Color Warper’s Chroma-Luma view regularly are failing to manipulate the Axis Angle slider. Most colourists assume the two halves of the colour cube in the Chroma-Luma view are fixed.
They are NOT!
They fail to adjust the ‘Axis Angle’ to set a colour of interest to neutral – which I discuss in this video, Insight.
Colourists can greatly increase the effectiveness of the Chroma-Luma tools by picking a more natural centre point than the default setting. Then it becomes easy to lock down a reference color and manipulate the rest of the image around that reference.
My Chromogen ‘Stages’ Approach in Resolve
To help you understand what I’m doing in this video Insight – here’s an index of Chromogen terms, as I understand them, from the live Filmlight Look Development presentation and the tools I’m using to implement them.
A colour grading challenge
This is a difficult challenge without using power windows or qualifiers. But try it using the ‘Chromogen’ stages outlined above and in the video Insight. Trust me, it’s a great learning experience for mastering the Color Warper.
Next, adjust the skin hues independently of the distinct red item:
Do the above without qualifiers or power windows.
Key takeaways from this Insight
By the end of this Insight, you should:
Additional Notes
Regarding DaVinci Resolve 19 and the Color Slices palette
After I recorded this Insight, Resolve 19 was released with their new Color Slices tool. I’ll revisit the Chromogen techniques to see how Color Slices might help us in these manipulations.
Special Thanks to Hot Angry Mom
The images used in this Insight are courtesy of the fun web series Hot Angry Mom.
Video Credit: Website | YouTube
Related Mixing Light Insights
Questions or Comments?
Let us know! Mixing Light is all about community discussions and we’re curious if you found this helpful, if you have something to add, or if you need more questions answered?
– Jamie
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