Colourlab AI

Blackmagic should buy ColourLab AI and integrate it into DaVinci Resolve.

Yes I agree, it is a very usefull tool that can get you 80% of the way when it comes to colour grading, definitely recommend to anyone who hasn't tried it to give the free trial a go!

Colourlab AI 3 just released and during NAB, the special NAB price for a 1 year subscription is $99. It’s a great deal. I just hope they were not a subscription model. That’s why I hope BM will just buy this small LA based company and integrate it with DVR Studio. I won’t even mind if with this integrated, the price of DVR studio goes up to $349 for their perpetual license.

I just got my copy of Colourlab AI 3.0. I downloaded references from ShotDeck and imported it to Colourlab to match a look on a clip I brought in from Resolve. OMG, it was spot on. Now, caveat that my original clip was well balanced Rec709. Then I pushed it back to Resolve and it had the entire node tree in the color page. I exported the DRP and clips to a computer that didn’t have Colourlab and I was able to bring it up except that the colors were off. Contacting Colourlab, I was told that I needed to include the LUTs that came with Colourlab. I got the LUTs and added them to DVR and that worked. I wonder if that’s how they will let the licensor of the software distribute their LUTs and at what cost. But it is a dam good software for the promo $99 the 1st year. That’s the bad side of it - it’s a subscription based software.

I also wonder if BMD has the capability to deliver such software since Resolve is/was the premier and leader when it comes to color grading

EDIT: I heard back from their support group and the LUTs are the one that I generated using Colourlab so I can distribute it with my project.

After using it for the day, I found some quirks and bugs but was able to navigate around it. It's a new version and I hope they are as responsive to provide updates with fixes. It's very useful for now, especially when I have multiple buns going in a single oven; it helps speed things up.

Here's some before/after screenshots of the seamless roundtrip color I did using a sample clip.

1. Original clip w/o grade in Resolve color page.

r1_before.JPG (548.23 KiB) Viewed 1332 times

2. Fetch clip from Resolve active project into Colourlab AI before any work done on it.

c1_before.JPG (491.64 KiB) Viewed 1332 times

3. Match with reference shot in just 2 clicks, first BALANCE then SHOT MATCH to selected reference.

c1_after.JPG (475.73 KiB) Viewed 1332 times

4. Pushed changes back to Resolve and I can continue doing whatever else I want in Resolve color page. Notice it included the node tree. See next post since this post only allows up to 3 attachments at a time.

Con't from previous post...

4. Pushed changes back to Resolve and I can continue doing whatever else I want in Resolve color page. Notice it included the node tree.

r1_after.JPG (567.66 KiB) Viewed 1332 times

This will save me a lot of time. Of course, there is still work to be done fine tuning things.

I have been using this app for the last several years. It's a great head start on your final look and tons of ability to tweak it out.