Color shifting when importing stills as reference in color

Hi everyone,

I work at an agency, and for color grading, I always aim to match the reference photo as closely as possible (usually taken on the same day as the video footage). However, I’m facing an issue: when I import the reference photo as stills into DaVinci Resolve, the colors shift. But when I open the same photo in Finder, the colors appear correct.

I’ve tried converting the color space of the photo to Rec. 709 Gamma 2.4, but the issue persists. I’ve searched online for solutions, but haven’t been able to find anything that works. I hope someone here can help!

I’m working with a Mac-based workflow.

Hi there,

same problem here. Pretty annoying. Did you find a solution?

Thanks in advance

I'm guessing the photo being taken was shot in sRGB gamma 2.2. That shouldn't account for a gigantic change between it and the project.

Were the stills being shot on the same kind of cinema camera being used for the actual project? If they're different cameras, I'd have them shoot a chart with a known reference (like a Calibrite ColorChecker Video):



https://calibrite.com/us/product/colorchecker-video/

Once you have a known reference, it's relatively simple to make an absolute match between the two. Without that, you have no idea if the color temperature, exposure, and other controls were set identically between the two cameras.