As a beginning colorist, I don’t know what I don’t know. As always Cullen, you show us what we don’t know but explain the why or science behind why do it this particular way. I was just a knob turner when I first started but watching your videos has made me think About the overall process in a new way. Outstanding video Cullen, outstanding
I work at a post house alongside colorists and your videos really help me feel educated and up to speed when talking with them. The difference between your industry knowledge and dinky youtube grading tutorials can not be overstated. You're one of the rare ones who creates content which isn't just the blind leading the blind. Keep it up!!!
You can actually solve this issue with Chromatic Adaptation in which going from 5500 to 3500 doesn't yield the same result visually as going from 6500 to 4500. The issue occurs because Kelvin is not a linear unit, but a logarithmic one. But you can convert Kelvin to Mired, which is a linear unit. All you have to do is divide 1 million over the Kelvin number. So, for example, 5500 Kelvin is equivalent to 182 mired, and 3500 Kelvin is equivalent to 286 mired. That'ts a difference of 104 mired. Now, if you run the same math with 6500 and 4500 Kelvin what you get is that they are equivalent to 154 and 222 mired respectively, which is a difference of only 68 mired. That explains why the change when you do the chromatic adaptation from 6500 to 4500 looks visually less significant that from 5500 to 3500. What this means is that, although Cullen is absolutely right and Chromatic Adaptation is not a very useful tool if you don't know the actual color temperatures of the illuminant on set, you would get the exact same visual results if you have the same delta in mired (i.e. 100 mired) regardless of what source and target color temperature you choose, as long as the difference between said color temperatures is the same once converted to mired. It's math and I doubt it would be very practical to do these divisions all the time, but maybe this info can be helpful to someone at some point.
Man, tour de force. I can't believe you spoke so clearly, uninterrupted, for so long, without so much as a single stray "um" LOL Excellent perspective. 4yr FCP editor here. Thank you!
instant subscribe. This is the type of super granular vocabulary and deep dive peering into the way tools like this operate respective to their design, working space, etc. that im looking for. I'm no seasoned colorist, but I've been editing for ~12 years now, and I learned a lot just from this one video. Looking forward to going through your catalog!
I knew linear was the move the whole time, but couldn’t help but watch the entire video. You put extremely complex concepts into very neat thoughts that I just loved to hear put into words that I can never find 😂
I’m very happy Cullen continues to share his knowledge and experience. The information he shares has radically improved my skills as a colorist, and helped me have the confidence I need to do the work. Gratitude.
My Favorite New Method: 9:11. My Second Favorite New Method: 14:02 I don't care about having two adjustments... save them as presets and it's just one. I noticed this also does not butcher the colors like the temp and tint sliders, this almost keeps the image perse' "non destructible" in terms of color temps and didn't produce weird circular color moire around the subject. The second method is just more detailed. If you know the (Dark-Shadow-Light_Highlight) wheels, you know what to look for, just image your curve left to right having 4 wheels from dark to light. Damn this guy is great and I never thought about none of these methods in more detail. NOW I see why my footages no longer suck now. Thanks bro!
I learned the same way! Interestingly, once I started using linear gain, a lot of the need for bouncing between gamma, offset, lift, etc actually went away, because the first adjustment was finally pure and even up and down the tonescale.
Hi, thanks for the awesome video! For grading my videos and adjusting WB I usually use HDR pallete and "Global" wheel. Your metod looks simply and well working. I will definitelly give it a try! You earned my subscription.
I appreciate the thorough video follow-up to my (and I’m sure others’) comments. I guess I’m not usually too worried about exact kelvin corrections when I work with temp sliders, and I was aware of the logarithmic nature of kelvin temperature, but I do see how your method applied to one wheel would be faster and more consistent in a full-time colorist environment. Thanks!
I tried this method recently and I found that you can actually achieve even better results perceptually (at least to my eyes :D) by working on the LOG wheels instead of the normal color wheels within the same setup.
The way I learned it in the past was basically that I was told that Color Correction and Color Grading are two seperate things. Color Correction being the process of adjusting footage in a way that makes it "correct" from a technical standpoint such as adjusting the WB Temp to being 5000K in case it was shot at 3800K, if the light source lighting the scene is actually 5000K. This sounds very reasonable to me. Color Grading (as I was told) is the process of adjusting correct input color in a certain way to convey or emphasize a specific feeling even if that makes the image not exactly "correct" because it exaggerates certain colors or wipes them out or adjusts the brightness of a scene to intentionally become "too dark" because info gets lost in the blacks and skintones are well below the respective IRE amount they "should" usually be at.
Thanks Cullen, very helpful. On some of your previous videos, you have used Offset to correct colour balance. Please could you explain why you are using Linear Gain instead in this tutorial.
Great question! Adjusting gain in linear is essentially the same as adjusting offset in log, only better! Over the last few years I've switched to using linear gain as my preferred method.
You have mentioned multiple times: "TLDR is that adjusting gain in linear is essentially the same as adjusting offset in log, only better." Could you make a video explaining The differences between the Color wheels - log vs linear Primaries vs HDR. What happens under the hood? I think this is a very complicated concept that most people incl me do not properly understand.
I can't believe what I'm seeing. I've been watching your last couple of videos that had to do with Linear Gain and my god I've never had this much color and exposure accuracy in my footage. These techniques alone have made my HDR grades accurate. I can't thank you enough!
Nicely put together. Don't think you mentioned this but primaries temp/tint could still be used if preferred on a linear gamma node since their operation is the same as gain. But the gain wheel is obviously more intuitive and a single adjustment. Something that is missing here however, and I can't recall if you covered that in the other video about white balance, but you should be careful with linear gain if the working space is different from the camera space. If certain values in the image fall outside the working space you end up multiplying negative values which degrades your image. So in some cases it may actually be preferred to do balancing in the raw tab, or switch the node to the camera primaries as well as linear gamma.
Thanks for the video, I am happy to see I was already using the gain knob for adjusting the white balance. I just don’t trust my eyes. When something looks great on my OLED on my notebook it looks shit on my BenQ PD2706U, and vice versa. And then when I reset it it looks better than either one of my great grades and back to square one. I am happy it is not my job to colour videos.
temp and tint is only one white point change at a time. in a real image, you have several wb points. blacks, shadows, midtones, highlights and white. all these can be accessed through a curve set to transfer mode 'color'. You can even use this method to obtain older D55 film white points and even type in actual rgb values with brownian conversion websites. The histogram is probably the easiest to match grade in.
Even tho chromatic adaptation is a good tool to change WB on non RAW files temp and tint are the best tools resolve offer to make slight adjustments. I also noticed in the OFX tab of chromatic adaptation you didn’t specify the color space you are working in, this might be because you are using a timeline color managed workflow with a CST on the project level, but since this is a tutorial it should be specified in your explanation of the tool. Regarding how temp and tint work, from what I’m aware they work really similar to the offset, just in “two directions”. This makes them a really good tool to work on logarithmic images since multiplying a logarithmic function it’s similar to the power of the base. They certainly have a range which they work best cause it s not perfect math but even when you start seeing color cast in the shadows or highs it s really easy to pull it back with the log wheels. I would like to hear your thoughts on this, to me chromatic adaptation it s a clumsy way of adjusting WB and should be used only in specific cases when the WB it s really far off from what I needed to be and maybe I have a scene where offsets don’t work as well (ex. Night scene it’s a good use case).
I think it's important to note that the HDR global wheel appers to use the same math as the HDR temp/tint. So while not as nice to use (IMO) you can actually easily use white balance with the same math. That said, that math seems a bit weird if you compare it to actual CAT02 etc. chromatic adaptation or RGB offset/linear gain, so I'd still rather use one of those. Also though, for the non-HDR temp/tint if your'e in ACEScc or ACEScct the white balance behaves differently, it is actaully color managed there. Again who knows what actual math is, but it definitely appears to be doing some kind of proper chromatic adapation, or at the very least linear gain.
Is there a reason why you’d balance using the gamma control as opposed to offset? My thought process is always to affect the image globally and then go into different luminosity ranges. Is this an incorrect mentality?
With gamma set to linear, gain is typically all I need to get a great balance. Sometimes with a particularly tricky shot with mixed lighting or a mis-rated camera, I'll create an additional node and tweak lift or gamma, but not often.
Thanks for posting this Cullen as it answers a question I posed recently on another of your tutorials. To me as a few people have mentioned here Mired Shift seems the answer to the problem with the Chromatic Adaptation tool and it seems like it would be easy for Resolve to add that to the menu choices. Personally I would love that as a DP because I think in terms of the gels I have used all my life : 1/8 CTO, 1/2 CTO, 1/4 CTB etc and indeed those are calibrated in mired shift values though gel manufacturers all favor different interpretations of those values. However I have more questions about your tutorial. 1- If ultimately you' just using your eyes for these adjustments , why not still go back to primaries tint and temp. Are there specific problems that you think result? Rabbit holes you've fallen into? 2 - I always wonder what part of the image these tools are manipulating . Do temp and tint or the gain wheel in these various menus affect gain , gamma and shadow equally or is there a bigger change in just say the gain . What's the ratio? 3. Likewise how does that apply to your chosen method. Since you're just eyeballing anyway why bother to set the gain wheel to linear at all? Thanks , look forward to your thoughts as always, Lenny
The reason to use the actual raw tab with raw files is you will be working with the manufacturer's color science, as different illuminants will need different matrices to correctly transform to the target color space, and that is different between every different camera sensor.
Definitely agree that'd be the reason to use the Camera Raw tab, I just don't think it's a very good one, especially when you consider the costs of doing so that I describe in this video....
I want to redact my previous statement. Today I noticed something odd which I didn't notice a week before. When grading RAW footage in Davinci Wide Gamut for HDR delivery, the Linear Gain and HDR wheel exposure knob both don't have access to the entire dynamic range of the footage,only what the RAW tab feeds the node tree. The exposure might raise up linearly like the RAW tab, but the blacks are cut off and so raising the exposure will lift the blacks aswell but make them look oddly creamy as if there's a "rolloff" in the blacks and shadows. It happens with both linear gain and HDR wheels. I might have use for this in Rec.709 since it looks pleasing in SDR, but for HDR, the loss of dynamic range in the shadows is unacceptable So for now, to get mathematically accurate exposure changes that translate well into HDR , the RAW tab will suffice.
You need MIRED SHIFT: I used to have a mechanical slide rule that had color temps on it and would tell you what the MIRED shift was for any color temp conversion. I used it to perfectly balance the negative throughout the day as the color temp shifted by using the right 81 or 82 series filter based on the required shift.....and also to maintain the right ratio of warm to cool in gelling lights. I think it was made by ROSCO. It was more critical with a photochemical finish before Digital Intermediates were a thing. It allowed me to set printer lights for printed dailies and maintain a very consistent look. Now the 81 and 82 filters sit collecting dust in the garage. Haha. BUT yeah a tool that would change the MIRED shift value would be cool and that number would have actual meaning although it's better to just grade by how it looks anyway....
Love this. Very helpful. How would you compare linear gain to using the HDR global ball? I'm teaching this to students and the linear gain thing is probably too technical for them. Would love to know also how you do your gamma adjustments these days.
Offset is addition. Gain is multiplication. In log (DWG), addition is a form of multiplication in linear changing exposure of colors in a photometric way. 2^(log2(x)+1)= 2x. In DWG, there’s a toe at the bottom (to fit all the values) causing it to be inaccurate at the fringes. Linear doesn’t have this problem.
Balancing using offset in linear will have most of the response in the blacks and shadows which can be useful for shots that have heavy tints from ND filters or other reasons.
Question: Was your timeline Color Space set to the Log Color Space that the footage was in? Because you're operating before the transformation, right? So it would be a log image, and I noticed you didn't change the both color space of the HDR tab, nor from the Chromatic Adaptation effect. I've been using linear to balance my shots lately, it truly is faster and very good, thanks for the tips!
Great explanation of the limitations of these tools but, I usually work in a CST driven workflow. In the case of setting an empty node to 'Linear', can that be implemented in a CST environment? Or, does it only work in a color-managed environment which, I'm assuming you are doing?
Great video bro, first one that I watched and already subbed. Don’t wanna sound like a jerk, but Kelvin is a type of measurement that has no degrees. I know that you still got your point across, and that specific thing didn’t interfere, I’m just saying thou.
Sounds great, I am just a little confused about where to put that white balance node (which has been switched to linear gamma) inside my node tree. I often work with CSTs and Arri Log-C gammas…
Thanks for great video, I have one question - why gain and not offset? I’m balancing with offset ball and if someone had asked me I’d say it’s because I saw it in your videos :) or did I see something wrong in other videos
Just rewatched it. His question is warranted. Yes, Cullen has recently talked about using the Gain wheel in Linear Color Space. He didn't elaborate on his motivation though.
Hi, I am new to the channel and beginner in color grading. Question. Have you any video about Skin Line/Magenta Line method of color balancing? If yes could you please drop link, if not could you go deeper in this aspect. Thanking in advance.
Interestingly enough, i was always a fan when software allows for RGB whitebalancing, because i know how to work my way around tinting the image with RGB and CMY respectively. I always found it a little less intuitive to use temperature and tint. So when i started using resolve, i immidiately gravitated towards the offset or the linear gamma gain to do whitebalancing instead of temperature tint. For me in the video realm, working with RGB adjustments just seems more natural. But when i'm editing RAW photos in raw therapee, i do prefer to use the temperature tint sliders, perhaps they work better for RAW as you have described, but i couldn't say for sure.
This method is so cool, nice and concise… You showed this method in a previous video I think as part of resolve con if I remember correctly. In that video, you suggested as I remember, turning off channels one and three along with converting the node to linear. Should we do that?
Hmm, the turning off channels 1 and 3 was likely related to making a saturation adjustment in HSV...turning those off in this scenario would essentially set you up so that you're only balancing your green channel (which actually could be an interesting way of getting your own tint adjustment).
I think you are wrong on this one. I wanted to understand the difference for myself and set up a quick test. I recorded clog3 footage, purposely set to wrong White Balance and loaded it into a Davinci Wide Gamut Intermediate colormanaged timeline. When you set up two layer nodes and set the mixers composite mode to "difference", you can check whether they perfectly match. It is easily possible to match the HDR Temp and Tint method with your preferred gain in linear method. Only addition is that you have to raise the exposure a tiny bit (0.16) on the second one. When compared visually they look absolutely identical. No color shifts in blacks or whites or in between. I can´t get the waveforms to be 100% the same, but close to 99.9%. The rest I would attribute to lacking accuracy in matching by hand. To me this looks like there is the same thing happening under the hood. Am I making any dumb mistakes here? To be clear I am not a professional in this field and I actually am quite new to resolve , so I dont claim to have found a definitive answer. But i think it is an interesting test. I dont see a visual benefit yet, so I think I will stick to HDR Temp and Tint for now, since that is the way I think about white balance anyways coming from a photography background. I love your videos and learn a lot from them, but I would wish for more side by side comparisons and in depth tests when claims are made that A is better than B. Cheers
Thanks for sharing this! Your results are what I'd expect, and I think they actually make a great case for using linear gain. By doing so, you can get the same results as an HDR temp/tint adjustment, but without the upper and lower boundaries, or the false confidence that you're truly adjusting temperature.
Hi Cullen, I use a similar method, I color balance in linear but using temp and tint. It gives me the exactly same results as using only the gain Wheel. Have you tried that?
Thanks for the informative video! Just a question though, why not use the HDR offset wheel (mapped to the color science of the camera) to make the necessary adjustments?
Sure thing! And great question: I prefer to adjust balance using linear gain rather than the HDR Global trackball, as the latter can produce some odd results and is conceptually more complicated than it needs to be.
Im curious to know why this wouldn't/ doesnt work in camera raw? Since usually white balance would amount to a series of multipliers to be applied to a matrix whilst in linear XYZ? Does this method then break the encoding that follows?
I've heard of you talking about Linear Gamma Gain. I'll be honest I don't really understand. Could you please point me towards one of your Tutorials that explains this process please? At the moment my preferred weapon of choice is the HDR Global wheel. In fact the HDR tools are becoming my fave "go-to" tools for balancing my projects. When running and gunning, I mostly set my camera to 5600k unless I remember to change things when in the field. Back in front of my computer, then, I worry about the consequences in post production. I also question my decision to fall down the rabbit hole of colour correction and grading.
You might want to learn about how camera sensors capture light in the analog domain before being digitized. And you also want to learn about the how the human perception works. Otherwise you won't understand at all.
@@shueibdahir I understand how a camera captures light, and its limitations compared to what my eye can see which is why I shoot with a non-linear log colour space to capture as much information as possible within those limitations.
@@frankinblackpool Well the HDR wheels and the linear gain work In the same way, manipulating brightness linearly instead of logarithmically. I like shooting linear raw for the exact reason that it perfectly replicates the light values of the scene which in very awesome when grading for HDR delivery (Rec.2020 ST2084). Once you shoot linear, you'll have a hard time going back. Log compresses the highlights and the deep shadows too much for my liking
@@shueibdahir You are welcome to shoot RAW and have all that data which takes up massive amounts of space, along with the extra hurdles required during post production. I am a happy amateur that makes you-tube episodes for a handful of people to watch. I used to shoot Pro-Res HQ 4:2:2 until I discovered that H.265 produces 4:2:2 footage that is of comparable quality for my wants and needs. My computer can handle H.265 flawlessly and the file sizes are considerably smaller than Pro-Res and far more manageable than RAW footage file sizes. There really isn't enough of a difference for me to pixel peep or work with RAW footage or even Pro-Res footage to worry about what lurk's in the shadows of my footage. If I was a professional then I would consider other codecs however I am sufficiently aware of the different codecs and their intended purposes to know the difference between acquisition and deliverable codecs. Today's computers with their number crunching power has now allowed H.265 to become both an acquisition and deliverable codec for amateurs such as me. In fact, many pro's are moving away from Pro-Res for H.265 because of the convenience and virtually no loss of quality compared to Pro-Res LT/HQ. I know quite a bit about my camera and how it captures light, and I know that Logarithmic codecs are tried and tested and proven their worth. Initially I only asked about where I could learn about Linear Gamma Gain within Cullen's library of Tutorials. You are more than welcome to weigh in and point me towards a suitable episode. BTW, I can shoot RAW. Its just that I just choose not to because there is no upside, just extra steps to take along with extra expense of storage to capture RAW footage.
Awesome video Cullen, thank you for sharing my question is irrelevant but, could you tell us when is the grade school? i remember first it was Friday and then turns out to Monday. and these days i always check community note and channel but no news about grade school :(
I think Chomratic Adaptation is the best tool here. You should always know the cameras WB and from there the slider will work like the Temp slider was intended to work, no?
Hi Cullen, there is a slight gamma shift going on, when you switch into full screen mode ~11:27. I have seen this with some other creators as well. Maybe you can have a look at that and find out how to fix this? My first guess would be Apple color management. Maybe it's related to your screen-capturing software. Let's see. Anyway thanks for the tutorial :)
As a beginning colorist, I don’t know what I don’t know. As always Cullen, you show us what we don’t know but explain the why or science behind why do it this particular way. I was just a knob turner when I first started but watching your videos has made me think About the overall process in a new way. Outstanding video Cullen, outstanding
I work at a post house alongside colorists and your videos really help me feel educated and up to speed when talking with them. The difference between your industry knowledge and dinky youtube grading tutorials can not be overstated. You're one of the rare ones who creates content which isn't just the blind leading the blind. Keep it up!!!
You can actually solve this issue with Chromatic Adaptation in which going from 5500 to 3500 doesn't yield the same result visually as going from 6500 to 4500. The issue occurs because Kelvin is not a linear unit, but a logarithmic one. But you can convert Kelvin to Mired, which is a linear unit. All you have to do is divide 1 million over the Kelvin number. So, for example, 5500 Kelvin is equivalent to 182 mired, and 3500 Kelvin is equivalent to 286 mired. That'ts a difference of 104 mired. Now, if you run the same math with 6500 and 4500 Kelvin what you get is that they are equivalent to 154 and 222 mired respectively, which is a difference of only 68 mired. That explains why the change when you do the chromatic adaptation from 6500 to 4500 looks visually less significant that from 5500 to 3500. What this means is that, although Cullen is absolutely right and Chromatic Adaptation is not a very useful tool if you don't know the actual color temperatures of the illuminant on set, you would get the exact same visual results if you have the same delta in mired (i.e. 100 mired) regardless of what source and target color temperature you choose, as long as the difference between said color temperatures is the same once converted to mired.
It's math and I doubt it would be very practical to do these divisions all the time, but maybe this info can be helpful to someone at some point.
Thank you very much. Will surely go down that rabbit whole. This sounds like a promising concept!
Would there be use for a resolve plugin that works with Mired instead?
Too much maff.
@@camivipla ja it would be complicatezt but it would be noce if blackmagic would implement a feature to.changemlfrom calvin to.the other one
@@camivipla thanks, I had developed that notion intuitively -adjusting lights, and when grading: but it’s very useful to now know the math.
Man, tour de force. I can't believe you spoke so clearly, uninterrupted, for so long, without so much as a single stray "um" LOL Excellent perspective. 4yr FCP editor here. Thank you!
The Gamma, linear and gain way of balancing wb has blown my mind. Just tried it out... this will be the way I do it going forward. Thank you.
It's one of my favorite ways to do it, too. I'm glad he showed it.
@@custommadename yeah welcome (back) to grading in rec709...
instant subscribe. This is the type of super granular vocabulary and deep dive peering into the way tools like this operate respective to their design, working space, etc. that im looking for. I'm no seasoned colorist, but I've been editing for ~12 years now, and I learned a lot just from this one video. Looking forward to going through your catalog!
I knew linear was the move the whole time, but couldn’t help but watch the entire video. You put extremely complex concepts into very neat thoughts that I just loved to hear put into words that I can never find 😂
This one method has literally transformed my color correction method to the next level while still being simple.. thanks so much!!
I’m very happy Cullen continues to share his knowledge and experience. The information he shares has radically improved my skills as a colorist, and helped me have the confidence I need to do the work. Gratitude.
My Favorite New Method: 9:11.
My Second Favorite New Method: 14:02
I don't care about having two adjustments... save them as presets and it's just one. I noticed this also does not butcher the colors like the temp and tint sliders, this almost keeps the image perse' "non destructible" in terms of color temps and didn't produce weird circular color moire around the subject. The second method is just more detailed. If you know the (Dark-Shadow-Light_Highlight) wheels, you know what to look for, just image your curve left to right having 4 wheels from dark to light. Damn this guy is great and I never thought about none of these methods in more detail. NOW I see why my footages no longer suck now. Thanks bro!
Learning to use Gamma, offset, and following the vector scope to help me out is what really did it for me. Helped drastically
I learned the same way! Interestingly, once I started using linear gain, a lot of the need for bouncing between gamma, offset, lift, etc actually went away, because the first adjustment was finally pure and even up and down the tonescale.
"What could the beef be"
legend
Hi, thanks for the awesome video! For grading my videos and adjusting WB I usually use HDR pallete and "Global" wheel. Your metod looks simply and well working. I will definitelly give it a try! You earned my subscription.
Thank you, Cullen! 🙂
I appreciate the thorough video follow-up to my (and I’m sure others’) comments. I guess I’m not usually too worried about exact kelvin corrections when I work with temp sliders, and I was aware of the logarithmic nature of kelvin temperature, but I do see how your method applied to one wheel would be faster and more consistent in a full-time colorist environment. Thanks!
Thanks CK for another good video! Trying to implement your tips and tricks in my videos!
I tried this method recently and I found that you can actually achieve even better results perceptually (at least to my eyes :D) by working on the LOG wheels instead of the normal color wheels within the same setup.
One of the great important video of all time, thank you sir
The way I learned it in the past was basically that I was told that Color Correction and Color Grading are two seperate things.
Color Correction being the process of adjusting footage in a way that makes it "correct" from a technical standpoint such as adjusting the WB Temp to being 5000K in case it was shot at 3800K, if the light source lighting the scene is actually 5000K. This sounds very reasonable to me. Color Grading (as I was told) is the process of adjusting correct input color in a certain way to convey or emphasize a specific feeling even if that makes the image not exactly "correct" because it exaggerates certain colors or wipes them out or adjusts the brightness of a scene to intentionally become "too dark" because info gets lost in the blacks and skintones are well below the respective IRE amount they "should" usually be at.
you sir, are the GOAT! love watching your videos mate! thank you for the time and effort you put into that!
Phenomenal breakdown, thank you for such a thorough and thoughtful discussion on this subject :-)
This video was EXCELLENT. Thanks for sharing it.
Amazing video thank you, watched this because of your other video ;)
Thanks Cullen, very helpful. On some of your previous videos, you have used Offset to correct colour balance. Please could you explain why you are using Linear Gain instead in this tutorial.
Great question! Adjusting gain in linear is essentially the same as adjusting offset in log, only better! Over the last few years I've switched to using linear gain as my preferred method.
@@CullenKelly thanks. If it's good enough for you, then I'm sure it will be good enough for me!
You have mentioned multiple times: "TLDR is that adjusting gain in linear is essentially the same as adjusting offset in log, only better."
Could you make a video explaining The differences between the Color wheels - log vs linear Primaries vs HDR. What happens under the hood? I think this is a very complicated concept that most people incl me do not properly understand.
Yes, great idea, this is coming soon!
This was a great summary of those controls and their limitations. Cheers!
You keep blowing my mind 😭 these videos are so incredibly helpful.
I can't believe what I'm seeing. I've been watching your last couple of videos that had to do with Linear Gain and my god I've never had this much color and exposure accuracy in my footage. These techniques alone have made my HDR grades accurate.
I can't thank you enough!
Which ones are those videos? Thanks!
I learn a lot from watching ur videoes, thank you for making them constantly and providing us valuable infromation!
from a compositing artist perspective: we mostly move the gain on R, G and B until they are at the same level on neutral areas (black, grey, white)
Thanks for a very well-made and informative video, but what I was missing is how you implement it, I mean where it goes in your node structure.
You can check out my standard node tree and grading workflow here: ua-cam.com/video/mF8lyTyPkHE/v-deo.htmlsi=fm-ED8V-T7HS4pw5
Awesome video Cullen! I wish BMD would update some of these tools. It's been years since some of them are in that imperfect state....
Thank you Cullen for tutorials, it really helps.
Nicely put together. Don't think you mentioned this but primaries temp/tint could still be used if preferred on a linear gamma node since their operation is the same as gain. But the gain wheel is obviously more intuitive and a single adjustment. Something that is missing here however, and I can't recall if you covered that in the other video about white balance, but you should be careful with linear gain if the working space is different from the camera space. If certain values in the image fall outside the working space you end up multiplying negative values which degrades your image. So in some cases it may actually be preferred to do balancing in the raw tab, or switch the node to the camera primaries as well as linear gamma.
you pack so much info that I need to watch your vids at 2x, thank you so much!
Cullen Sensei; that episode with VERY GOOD!!!
Great stuff! Love this viewpoint
brilliant mate, as always.
9:06 is where the magic happens!!!
14:10
Question. Why the Gain? Isn't "gain" the highlights of the image? Why not the offset?
Interesting, Temp and Tint are like using Etch A Sketch knobs.
Thanks for the video, I am happy to see I was already using the gain knob for adjusting the white balance. I just don’t trust my eyes. When something looks great on my OLED on my notebook it looks shit on my BenQ PD2706U, and vice versa. And then when I reset it it looks better than either one of my great grades and back to square one. I am happy it is not my job to colour videos.
Amazing thinking way of it
This content is both painful and well needed. Thanks.
You lost me at "Spectral Locus" 😂 Just kidding, this was super helpful!
temp and tint is only one white point change at a time. in a real image, you have several wb points. blacks, shadows, midtones, highlights and white. all these can be accessed through a curve set to transfer mode 'color'. You can even use this method to obtain older D55 film white points and even type in actual rgb values with brownian conversion websites. The histogram is probably the easiest to match grade in.
Even tho chromatic adaptation is a good tool to change WB on non RAW files temp and tint are the best tools resolve offer to make slight adjustments. I also noticed in the OFX tab of chromatic adaptation you didn’t specify the color space you are working in, this might be because you are using a timeline color managed workflow with a CST on the project level, but since this is a tutorial it should be specified in your explanation of the tool. Regarding how temp and tint work, from what I’m aware they work really similar to the offset, just in “two directions”. This makes them a really good tool to work on logarithmic images since multiplying a logarithmic function it’s similar to the power of the base. They certainly have a range which they work best cause it s not perfect math but even when you start seeing color cast in the shadows or highs it s really easy to pull it back with the log wheels.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this, to me chromatic adaptation it s a clumsy way of adjusting WB and should be used only in specific cases when the WB it s really far off from what I needed to be and maybe I have a scene where offsets don’t work as well (ex. Night scene it’s a good use case).
Great Concept and understanding...Thanks..
Wow. Great Content. Thank you so much
In the video you only altered gain for white balance, do you alter lift or gamma ever? Thanks for another great video!
Great question! For refining balance I'll sometimes adjust lift or gamma, though not very often, and not in linear.
I think it's important to note that the HDR global wheel appers to use the same math as the HDR temp/tint. So while not as nice to use (IMO) you can actually easily use white balance with the same math. That said, that math seems a bit weird if you compare it to actual CAT02 etc. chromatic adaptation or RGB offset/linear gain, so I'd still rather use one of those.
Also though, for the non-HDR temp/tint if your'e in ACEScc or ACEScct the white balance behaves differently, it is actaully color managed there. Again who knows what actual math is, but it definitely appears to be doing some kind of proper chromatic adapation, or at the very least linear gain.
Is there a reason why you’d balance using the gamma control as opposed to offset? My thought process is always to affect the image globally and then go into different luminosity ranges. Is this an incorrect mentality?
Thank you for another very interesting video.
@CullenKelly Chapter mistake I think: '14:00 What to the 90% of the time you can't use "the best" tool' You probably meant "What if"
Great video! But why do you use Gain wheel? Why not or when to use Lift and/or Gamma? Thank you!
With gamma set to linear, gain is typically all I need to get a great balance. Sometimes with a particularly tricky shot with mixed lighting or a mis-rated camera, I'll create an additional node and tweak lift or gamma, but not often.
@@CullenKelly Thank you for the reply. This could be a great follow-up video!
Thanks for posting this Cullen as it answers a question I posed recently on another of your tutorials. To me as a few people have mentioned here Mired Shift seems the answer to the problem with the Chromatic Adaptation tool and it seems like it would be easy for Resolve to add that to the menu choices. Personally I would love that as a DP because I think in terms of the gels I have used all my life : 1/8 CTO, 1/2 CTO, 1/4 CTB etc and indeed those are calibrated in mired shift values though gel manufacturers all favor different interpretations of those values. However I have more questions about your tutorial.
1- If ultimately you' just using your eyes for these adjustments , why not still go back to primaries tint and temp. Are there specific problems that you think result? Rabbit holes you've fallen into?
2 - I always wonder what part of the image these tools are manipulating . Do temp and tint or the gain wheel in these various menus affect gain , gamma and shadow equally or is there a bigger change in just say the gain . What's the ratio?
3. Likewise how does that apply to your chosen method. Since you're just eyeballing anyway why bother to set the gain wheel to linear at all?
Thanks , look forward to your thoughts as always, Lenny
The reason to use the actual raw tab with raw files is you will be working with the manufacturer's color science, as different illuminants will need different matrices to correctly transform to the target color space, and that is different between every different camera sensor.
Definitely agree that'd be the reason to use the Camera Raw tab, I just don't think it's a very good one, especially when you consider the costs of doing so that I describe in this video....
I want to redact my previous statement. Today I noticed something odd which I didn't notice a week before. When grading RAW footage in Davinci Wide Gamut for HDR delivery, the Linear Gain and HDR wheel exposure knob both don't have access to the entire dynamic range of the footage,only what the RAW tab feeds the node tree. The exposure might raise up linearly like the RAW tab, but the blacks are cut off and so raising the exposure will lift the blacks aswell but make them look oddly creamy as if there's a "rolloff" in the blacks and shadows. It happens with both linear gain and HDR wheels. I might have use for this in Rec.709 since it looks pleasing in SDR, but for HDR, the loss of dynamic range in the shadows is unacceptable
So for now, to get mathematically accurate exposure changes that translate well into HDR , the RAW tab will suffice.
Thank u sir♥
Why not use offset in the HDR tool? With the color spaces set right, it does the best job I have seen at moving all the colors around accurately..
I like using RGB mixer for extreme color shift. It has a wider adjustment range and it won't mess up the footage even if the footage is 8 bit.
Good call, this can definitely work well!
You need MIRED SHIFT: I used to have a mechanical slide rule that had color temps on it and would tell you what the MIRED shift was for any color temp conversion. I used it to perfectly balance the negative throughout the day as the color temp shifted by using the right 81 or 82 series filter based on the required shift.....and also to maintain the right ratio of warm to cool in gelling lights. I think it was made by ROSCO. It was more critical with a photochemical finish before Digital Intermediates were a thing. It allowed me to set printer lights for printed dailies and maintain a very consistent look. Now the 81 and 82 filters sit collecting dust in the garage. Haha. BUT yeah a tool that would change the MIRED shift value would be cool and that number would have actual meaning although it's better to just grade by how it looks anyway....
Love this. Very helpful. How would you compare linear gain to using the HDR global ball? I'm teaching this to students and the linear gain thing is probably too technical for them. Would love to know also how you do your gamma adjustments these days.
I definitely prefer linear gain to the HDR global ball, but depending on how big an adjustment you're making, you'll often get pretty similar results.
Why not the offset wheel when working in linear mode? What difference does gain do? I thought offset was all wheels combined.
I have the same question.
Offset is addition. Gain is multiplication. In log (DWG), addition is a form of multiplication in linear changing exposure of colors in a photometric way. 2^(log2(x)+1)= 2x. In DWG, there’s a toe at the bottom (to fit all the values) causing it to be inaccurate at the fringes. Linear doesn’t have this problem.
Great question! Adjusting gain in lienar produces essentially the same results as adjusting offset in log, only better.
Balancing using offset in linear will have most of the response in the blacks and shadows which can be useful for shots that have heavy tints from ND filters or other reasons.
Question: Was your timeline Color Space set to the Log Color Space that the footage was in? Because you're operating before the transformation, right? So it would be a log image, and I noticed you didn't change the both color space of the HDR tab, nor from the Chromatic Adaptation effect.
I've been using linear to balance my shots lately, it truly is faster and very good, thanks for the tips!
amazing info! thank you!
killer tip
Great explanation of the limitations of these tools but, I usually work in a CST driven workflow. In the case of setting an empty node to 'Linear', can that be implemented in a CST environment? Or, does it only work in a color-managed environment which, I'm assuming you are doing?
Quick question: Why would you use gain rather than offset for the final technique of adjusting in this video. Cheers
Great video bro, first one that I watched and already subbed.
Don’t wanna sound like a jerk, but Kelvin is a type of measurement that has no degrees.
I know that you still got your point across, and that specific thing didn’t interfere, I’m just saying thou.
Brilliant
Sounds great, I am just a little confused about where to put that white balance node (which has been switched to linear gamma) inside my node tree. I often work with CSTs and Arri Log-C gammas…
New video coming soon on my latest template node tree and where I place the balance node!
@@CullenKelly Great, thanks a lot 👊😃
Great video, Cullen!
great explanation, thx
Thanks for great video, I have one question - why gain and not offset? I’m balancing with offset ball and if someone had asked me I’d say it’s because I saw it in your videos :) or did I see something wrong in other videos
Great question! Adjusting gain in linear is essentially the same thing as adjusting offset in log, only better!
Thank you very much
Very intersting man. Thanks.
Starts at 13:58
Starts at 0:00 😂
thank you
great video, Thanks
Great video, as always! Just curious - when working on a linear node, why is Gain the go-to tool, and not the other wheels?
He just did a video on that! Check out his last few videos on this, it’s great!
Just rewatched it.
His question is warranted.
Yes, Cullen has recently talked about using the Gain wheel in Linear Color Space. He didn't elaborate on his motivation though.
Hi, I am new to the channel and beginner in color grading. Question. Have you any video about Skin Line/Magenta Line method of color balancing? If yes could you please drop link, if not could you go deeper in this aspect. Thanking in advance.
Interestingly enough, i was always a fan when software allows for RGB whitebalancing, because i know how to work my way around tinting the image with RGB and CMY respectively. I always found it a little less intuitive to use temperature and tint. So when i started using resolve, i immidiately gravitated towards the offset or the linear gamma gain to do whitebalancing instead of temperature tint. For me in the video realm, working with RGB adjustments just seems more natural. But when i'm editing RAW photos in raw therapee, i do prefer to use the temperature tint sliders, perhaps they work better for RAW as you have described, but i couldn't say for sure.
So good!
This method is so cool, nice and concise… You showed this method in a previous video I think as part of resolve con if I remember correctly. In that video, you suggested as I remember, turning off channels one and three along with converting the node to linear. Should we do that?
Hmm, the turning off channels 1 and 3 was likely related to making a saturation adjustment in HSV...turning those off in this scenario would essentially set you up so that you're only balancing your green channel (which actually could be an interesting way of getting your own tint adjustment).
@@CullenKelly thanks for clearing that up really appreciate how you share your knowledge
I think you are wrong on this one. I wanted to understand the difference for myself and set up a quick test. I recorded clog3 footage, purposely set to wrong White Balance and loaded it into a Davinci Wide Gamut Intermediate colormanaged timeline. When you set up two layer nodes and set the mixers composite mode to "difference", you can check whether they perfectly match. It is easily possible to match the HDR Temp and Tint method with your preferred gain in linear method. Only addition is that you have to raise the exposure a tiny bit (0.16) on the second one. When compared visually they look absolutely identical. No color shifts in blacks or whites or in between. I can´t get the waveforms to be 100% the same, but close to 99.9%. The rest I would attribute to lacking accuracy in matching by hand. To me this looks like there is the same thing happening under the hood. Am I making any dumb mistakes here?
To be clear I am not a professional in this field and I actually am quite new to resolve , so I dont claim to have found a definitive answer. But i think it is an interesting test. I dont see a visual benefit yet, so I think I will stick to HDR Temp and Tint for now, since that is the way I think about white balance anyways coming from a photography background.
I love your videos and learn a lot from them, but I would wish for more side by side comparisons and in depth tests when claims are made that A is better than B.
Cheers
Thanks for sharing this! Your results are what I'd expect, and I think they actually make a great case for using linear gain. By doing so, you can get the same results as an HDR temp/tint adjustment, but without the upper and lower boundaries, or the false confidence that you're truly adjusting temperature.
Hi Kelly, how are you? Do you have any video tutorials where you're working on an S-Log 3 profile? A7SIII
Hi Cullen,
I use a similar method, I color balance in linear but using temp and tint. It gives me the exactly same results as using only the gain Wheel.
Have you tried that?
Are you talking about Primaries temp and tint or HDR temp and tint?
Yes curious if this works the same
@@CullenKelly Would The HDR temp and tint work if in linear?
Thanks for the informative video! Just a question though, why not use the HDR offset wheel (mapped to the color science of the camera) to make the necessary adjustments?
Sure thing! And great question: I prefer to adjust balance using linear gain rather than the HDR Global trackball, as the latter can produce some odd results and is conceptually more complicated than it needs to be.
Im curious to know why this wouldn't/ doesnt work in camera raw? Since usually white balance would amount to a series of multipliers to be applied to a matrix whilst in linear XYZ? Does this method then break the encoding that follows?
great info. unfortunately still felt long winded at 2x speed
Great!!! but WWAAAAAYYYY too many adds!!!
Pay for premium or use an ad blocker. Ads aren't Cullen's fault
I've heard of you talking about Linear Gamma Gain. I'll be honest I don't really understand. Could you please point me towards one of your Tutorials that explains this process please?
At the moment my preferred weapon of choice is the HDR Global wheel. In fact the HDR tools are becoming my fave "go-to" tools for balancing my projects.
When running and gunning, I mostly set my camera to 5600k unless I remember to change things when in the field. Back in front of my computer, then, I worry about the consequences in post production.
I also question my decision to fall down the rabbit hole of colour correction and grading.
You might want to learn about how camera sensors capture light in the analog domain before being digitized. And you also want to learn about the how the human perception works. Otherwise you won't understand at all.
@@shueibdahir I understand how a camera captures light, and its limitations compared to what my eye can see which is why I shoot with a non-linear log colour space to capture as much information as possible within those limitations.
@@frankinblackpool Well the HDR wheels and the linear gain work In the same way, manipulating brightness linearly instead of logarithmically.
I like shooting linear raw for the exact reason that it perfectly replicates the light values of the scene which in very awesome when grading for HDR delivery (Rec.2020 ST2084). Once you shoot linear, you'll have a hard time going back. Log compresses the highlights and the deep shadows too much for my liking
@@shueibdahir You are welcome to shoot RAW and have all that data which takes up massive amounts of space, along with the extra hurdles required during post production.
I am a happy amateur that makes you-tube episodes for a handful of people to watch.
I used to shoot Pro-Res HQ 4:2:2 until I discovered that H.265 produces 4:2:2 footage that is of comparable quality for my wants and needs. My computer can handle H.265 flawlessly and the file sizes are considerably smaller than Pro-Res and far more manageable than RAW footage file sizes.
There really isn't enough of a difference for me to pixel peep or work with RAW footage or even Pro-Res footage to worry about what lurk's in the shadows of my footage.
If I was a professional then I would consider other codecs however I am sufficiently aware of the different codecs and their intended purposes to know the difference between acquisition and deliverable codecs. Today's computers with their number crunching power has now allowed H.265 to become both an acquisition and deliverable codec for amateurs such as me. In fact, many pro's are moving away from Pro-Res for H.265 because of the convenience and virtually no loss of quality compared to Pro-Res LT/HQ.
I know quite a bit about my camera and how it captures light, and I know that Logarithmic codecs are tried and tested and proven their worth.
Initially I only asked about where I could learn about Linear Gamma Gain within Cullen's library of Tutorials. You are more than welcome to weigh in and point me towards a suitable episode.
BTW, I can shoot RAW. Its just that I just choose not to because there is no upside, just extra steps to take along with extra expense of storage to capture RAW footage.
Awesome video Cullen, thank you for sharing
my question is irrelevant but, could you tell us when is the grade school? i remember first it was Friday and then turns out to Monday.
and these days i always check community note and channel but no news about grade school :(
I think Chomratic Adaptation is the best tool here. You should always know the cameras WB and from there the slider will work like the Temp slider was intended to work, no?
It's a great tool in terms of accuracy, but it's slower, and the camera white balance and temperature of key light are often unknowns.
Cool ! Whats best way to de saturate images ?
Kind of off topic but Cullen is really professional with his voice and presentation. How do you not botch some lines here and there?
My man here never heard of editing
Thanks! I I don't script these videos out, so there's not much pressure to nail anything as long as I can get the point across.
Very helpful, especially at 1.75 speed lol
You are my UA-cam bestie !!! just saying...
Hi Cullen, there is a slight gamma shift going on, when you switch into full screen mode ~11:27. I have seen this with some other creators as well. Maybe you can have a look at that and find out how to fix this? My first guess would be Apple color management. Maybe it's related to your screen-capturing software. Let's see.
Anyway thanks for the tutorial :)
Good catch, that one's on me, comes down to a geeky detail I didn't set up properly when recording this video.
@@CullenKelly can you talk about this in a future video or a live stream, so we don't run into the same problem? thanks Cullen