How to Create Looks
Look creation is both fun and satisfying. There are dozens of different techniques you can use. This is a selection of our favorite approaches to Look creation in DaVinci Resolve.
Narrative Color Grading: Practice Your Craft By Setting Time Periods
Have you ever had to build a look that helps put a shot into a certain era? Learn how to approach this challenge - and download a 6K RED Dragon shot to give it a shot and share with us.
How To Create a Dream Sequence Look: 'Heavenly Whites'
The Dream Sequence Look is commonly requested. You learn how to create a 'Heavenly White' Look for an indie feature film—and try it out on your next job. No plug-ins, just the standard tools you'll find in most software.
Sculpting Clipped Highlights - Roll-offs, Tints, Glows, and Streaks
Dealing with clipped highlights is a regular annoyance. Learn how to make these artifacts look more natural & intentional with color grading.
The 3-Band Technique for Enhancing Boring Exterior Shots
Flat boring outdoor shots are very common when color correcting. What can you do to fix it? Learn a technique based on Classical painting theory.
Using DaVinci Resolve's Curves To Deconstruct A Look
In this Insight, contributor Josh Petok shows a straight forward but very effective way to use Resolve's curves to deconstruct a look.
Double Side Technique: Getting Aggressive with Complementary Colors
Learn how the Double Side Technique can help you to create more dynamic color corrections on flat or boring shots. This simple technique can generate multitudes of stylized Looks.
Creating a Color Wash Look (feat. DaVinci Resolve)
Learn a quick and easy method to create a 2- or 3- tone color wash over a moving image very very quickly - especially if you have a very specific color palette you want to use.
Look Library - Halloween Slasher
Dan shows you how he built a Halloween Slasher Look inspired by classic 80s movies for a recent teaser commercial for Halloween.
Infrared Look - Emulating Aerochrome
Building an Infrared Look can give you some beautiful results if you have the right projects and feel adventurous!
Dirty Looks - Emulating Early Film Looks with Light Leaks
Early film looks are a very popular request from clients.They can be tricky to build quickly so Dan shares his DRX files that you can download
Emulating Film Halation in DaVinci Resolve
Learn two different methods (with different levels of control) of emualting the beauty of film halation using DaVinci Resolve.
Creating Skin Contrast With High/Low Key Techniques
In this Insight, learn how powerful shaping skin contrast around someone's face can be to make a shot more dynamic.
Look Inspiration - Red Filtered B&W
Dan shares his thoughts on how to emulate shooting black and white with a red filter on front of the lens to give an interesting look.
Inspired by Mini 2018 - How One Colorist Emulates A Vintage Look
We've all seen amazing commercials and films that inspire us, but how do we turn that into color corrections that we can use on our own projects? Dan shares his approach to being inspired by a recent award-nominated color grade.
Advanced Beauty Grading (in DaVinci Resolve)
Color grading to enhance faces and skin tones is a very big part of color correction workflows. Here are a range of tutorials in our Insights Library on this important topic.
The Fundamentals of Color Correcting for Beauty
Have you ever needed to improve how an actor 'looks' in a video? Learn the basics of how the pros do it in this Beauty Grading 101 video.
Skin Tone Essentials
In this Insight, Dan guides you through key aspects of getting proper skin tone in your grade.
From The Mailbag EP 19 Skin Corrections & The Film Look
In this episode of From The Mailbag, the team explores fixing blotchy skin and what goes into a film stock emulation.
Creating Skin Contrast With High/Low Key Techniques
In this Insight, learn how powerful shaping skin contrast around someone's face can be to make a shot more dynamic.
Shot Matching - Working With Skin Tone
Making people look as good is part of the dayjob for colorists. Working with skin tone can be tricky but Dan shares his tips and approach.
Advanced Beauty Grading Part One
Advanced Beauty Grading is quite a dark art in the world of color grading. Dan shows you his approach to beauty grading on a commercial.
Advanced Beauty Grading Part Two : The Fashion Look
Time to take the image into the next level with a fashion look in part two of the series on advanced beauty grading.
Advanced Beauty Grading Part Three : Smoothing Skin Tones
When working with people we always need to smooth skin tones. In this video I explore my three favorite skin smoothing tools.
Advanced Beauty Grading : Borrowing From Stills
The world of stills retouching has such an amazing standard. Dan looks at those techniques and will borrow them for the video world
Advanced Beauty Grading : Stills Techniques
In this insight I borrow my Stills Techniques and try and apply them to my video work. The standard is very high and the results are amazing
How to Protect Skin Tones While Color Grading with a Heavy Look
When working with heavy looks we sometimes forget about protecting skin tone and making our artist/actor look as good as possible
Finding (and Managing) Your Looks
As you learn to create Looks, you also want to learn how to save and organize those Looks for later projects - months (or years) later.
Build Out Your 'Colorist Toolbox' By Building A 'Look Library'
Learn why you need to save your color corrections to build your personal 'Look Library' of skin tones, skies/grass/water and for general looks and feelings.
Colorist Toolbox 2.0 - Building A Look Library 2018
The only person that is going to inspire you is yourself. A Look Library surrounds you with inspiration keeping you motivated and current.
Preparing A Color Correction Session For A Commercial Client
You can learn my tips and tricks to prepare for a client-supervised commercial color correction session. it's not just about your skill. Preparation counts.
Practice Creating Looks Based On A Creative Brief
Colorist Dan Moran has created many 'color grading challenges' through the years. It's a great way to practice the techniques explored on this Flight Path - but under the direction of someone else. This helps you get 'out of your head' and implement these techniques in the service of a client. Some of these Insights have a follow-up where Dan reviews the submissions. Be sure to click through on those!
Color Grading Challenge – Tri-X Style Black & White
Dan briefs you on a Black & White Tri-X look. If you grade to his brief and post in the comments, he'll play 'client' and offer feedback.
Grading Challenge – Modern Sci-Fi Brief
Dan plays client and dishes out a grade brief for a Modern Sci-Fi film that he'd like you to execute. Remember there are no wrong looks!
Color Grading Challenge: Recreating the 90s Pop Video Look
Dan kicks off a new grading challenge where he plays your client. It's based on a 90s pop video style color grade he recently recreated.
Grading Challenge - Beauty Grading Brief
Beauty grading is a discipline all on its own. Dan shares a typical client brief and will offer stages of feedback like a real world client
Grading Challenge - Follow My Brief
Following a brief for unattended grades can be incredibly difficult. Dan sets up a virtual client grade and will give feedback on your grade in the comments
External Resources
Humanae Tumblr Page
One of the best collections of skin tone references on the web. And it's free. Bookmark this.
The Inspiration Grid
Are you looking for photographs to help inspire a Look Creation session? Then this website is for you.
Promo News | Music Videos
An industry website listing the latest and greatest in Music Videos - to keep you current on the latest trends and Looks.
Free Download: Practice Shot
This RED Dragon 6K clip is good to practice evoking different time periods, using nothing but the visual Look of a shot.
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