White Balancing Shots – Understanding Temp and Tint Controls

How do you know when to reach for your Temp or Tint controls?

In this Insight, I’m circling back to my White Balancing series after a Mixing Light member asked me, “Where’s Part 3?” Specifically, when I recorded that series I promised to do a detailed breakdown of Resolve’s Temp and Tint controls, introduced in the v12.5 update of that app.

Learn how you can evaluate the Temp and Tint controls of ANY software

New Mixing Light members may not be familiar with how I breakdown color correction toolsets. In this Insight, you’ll learn my basic technique for figuring out what any color corrector is doing to your images. At the same time, you’ll get a primer/refresher on using scopes to help you decide, “Should I reach for the Temp / Tint controls on this shot, or not?”

Becoming fast at color correction requires you to evaluate images quickly and instantly know which of wheels/sliders/curves/bars you should reach for first to complete your task. In this Insight, you’ll see two shots, one that’s perfect for the Temp / Tint controls and another, not so much. And you’ll learn my thinking that lets me know what will work best, before making a single adjustment.

But Wait… There’s a Download!

I’m showing you how to evaluate the toolset in DaVinci Resolve. But you can perform the exact same evaluation and experimentation in Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X or any other image processing software. And Premium members of Mixing Light can download the three shots you see me using. You can practice what I’m doing, using the same footage I am. If you’re a Premium member and logged in, the download button is below the video.

Coming up in Part 4

A question was asked in the comments of Part 2, “how do we white balance if the cinematographer is using gels on their lights?” I think I found some footage that can help answer that question… and that’ll be the next installment of this Series.