Improvements to be made to color slicer tool

I wanted to show Resolve developers and team some things that color slicer needs improvement in that other DCTL creators are still touting and charging $200 for a single dctl.

Here is a video by someone who made colorshift dctl

maybe Resolve team can make these improvements in one of the future updates. We appreciate all the work that BMD does so much.

I wanted to show Resolve developers and team some things that color slicer needs improvement in that other DCTL creators are still touting and charging $200 for a single dctl.

Here is a video by someone who made colorshift dctl

maybe Resolve team can make these improvements in one of the future updates. We appreciate all the work that BMD does so much.

I just wanted to point out it’s not 1 single dctl for $200, but a package of several
DCTLs ..

Colorslice is in beta and I’m sure it will evolve, and users will find ways to make it work better… but at the end of the day, DCTLs will probably always remain more flexible .

I just wanted to point out it’s not 1 single dctl for $200, but a package of several
DCTLs ..

Colorslice is in beta and I’m sure it will evolve, and users will find ways to make it work better… but at the end of the day, DCTLs will probably always remain more flexible . .

No, it is from just ONE Dctls pack. This particular person sells 8 more DCTLs worth more than the cost of Resolve Studio itself. My aim with this was to bring attention of Resolve developers to this so that there's a chance that these improvements and features just become a part of Resolve itself.

I just wanted to point out it’s not 1 single dctl for $200, but a package of several
DCTLs ..

Colorslice is in beta and I’m sure it will evolve, and users will find ways to make it work better… but at the end of the day, DCTLs will probably always remain more flexible . .

No, it is from just ONE Dctls pack. This particular person sells 8 more DCTLs worth more than the cost of Resolve Studio itself. My aim with this was to bring attention of Resolve developers to this so that there's a chance that these improvements and features just become a part of Resolve itself.

A pack.. exactly .. of like a dozen DCTLs. So you are suggesting black magic should steal another developers work because you do not like the price?

Let’s be honest. Resolve is only cheap because they sell hardware to compliment it.. Additionally many tools cost far more than Resolve.. Filmbox, Omniscope, dehancer, scatter… to name a few.

It is due to the hard work of 3rd party devs that help augment DR and gives users additional choices in their tool palette.. If BMD goes around taking everyone’s work we will all suffer because of it. And those devs deserve to be paid for their time and energy also. Fwiw .

A pack.. exactly .. of like a dozen DCTLs. So you are suggesting black magic should steal another developers work because you do not like the price?

Let’s be honest. Resolve is only cheap because they sell hardware to compliment it.. Additionally many tools cost far more than Resolve.. Filmbox, Omniscope, dehancer, scatter… to name a few.

It is due to the hard work of 3rd party devs that help augment DR and gives users additional choices in their tool palette.. If BMD goes around taking everyone’s work we will all suffer because of it. And those devs deserve to be paid for their time and energy also. Fwiw .

"Steal another developers work"!? Come on. Another developers work? There were many things that were some developers work that are now standard part of many different softwares, not just resolve. "If BMD goes around taking everyone's work we will all suffer because of it". Oh please. Do you even know that THIS PERSON SOURCED IT FROM SOMEONE ELSE???? He only made incremental improvements and his own twist to someone ELSE's work. Please do research, there's a reddit thread where he admits to it.

A pack.. exactly .. of like a dozen DCTLs. So you are suggesting black magic should steal another developers work because you do not like the price?

Let’s be honest. Resolve is only cheap because they sell hardware to compliment it.. Additionally many tools cost far more than Resolve.. Filmbox, Omniscope, dehancer, scatter… to name a few.

It is due to the hard work of 3rd party devs that help augment DR and gives users additional choices in their tool palette.. If BMD goes around taking everyone’s work we will all suffer because of it. And those devs deserve to be paid for their time and energy also. Fwiw .

"Steal another developers work"!? Come on. Another developers work? There were many things that were some developers work that are now standard part of many different softwares, not just resolve. "If BMD goes around taking everyone's work we will all suffer because of it". Oh please. Do you even know that THIS PERSON SOURCED IT FROM SOMEONE ELSE???? He only made incremental improvements and his own twist to someone ELSE's work. Please do research, there's a reddit thread where he admits to it.

lol.. “Do some research”? I hardly consider the ill informed rambling opinions of a Reddit post to be “research”.. Seriously?

And why are you yelling?

Again you are misleading regarding Stefan admitting to taking another’s work… He clearly states he used some modified MIT licensed code… but wrote everything else himself.

Without asking him directly I’d assume that MIT portion is part of the Tetra Interpolation model code base.. Which in an of itself is not a “tool”, more of a framework, and by modifying it he adapted it into a new version. So again no copying here, and absolutely above board.

Tell us you have never developed anything without telling us.

Fact is I really do not need to research as I’m in discord, and friends with, the majority of the DCTL devs mentioned in that thread. If there was some “issue” I am quite certain I’d have heard by now. Generally there is a sharing of methods, mutual support, and no theft of ideas. Yes some tools may derive similar outcomes, but just because they look similar at face value, doesn’t meant they are the same under the hood.

Even Jason, the author of Pixel Tools, chimed in to help explain there were no issues, in the thread you mentioned.

However I primarily chimed in here as you started an OP with misleading and bad faith information. Suggesting BMD take the ideas and modifications of another Dev. I stand by my statements.

Do you have some bone to pick here? Or do you just like to spread hearsay?

There are two ideas in this thread that interest me. First - the color slice tool has demonstrably inferior performance to that of the DCTL tool mentioned in the OP's YouTube post. I think Stephan does a pretty good job of describing why he favours the DCTL and I agree with the OP that color slice could use some refinement. As this is a beta, hopefully BMD will tweak the tool a bit so avoid some of the pitfalls Stephan demonstrated.

Second, the idea that third party developers are harmed when BMD decides to incorporate previously third party tools into the native Resolve toolset. That's an interesting one and doesn't apply exclusively to Resolve. The market for 3rd party extensions to other products has been around for a long time. They often backfill deficiencies in the core product. Things like third party noise reduction or stabilizers or even inventory / media management. Most core products offer some aspect of all of these and we hope that the third party developers continue to push the envelope by offering superior functionality as compared to what is offered in the core product. I'm sure there will always be casualties with this product development model (ie., some plugins will become irrelevant) but we hope that most times, the 3rd party developers will rise to the occasion and push the envelope a bit harder.

For his part, Stephan released a new and improved version of his DCTL tool that competes in a very real way with the color slice tool and provides superior results (at least in the test cases he demonstrated). This seems like a positive. If BMD improves the performance of the color slice tool, there will still be advantages to using Stephan's toolset and if not, Stephan will probably release an update that is even better than the current version.

Maybe I'm preaching to the converted.

Peace

[Peter Chamberlain]

ColorSlice is designed to stop users getting into trouble with accumulated changes and hues being effected by more than two slices at a time. Some might want more free form control but we are comfortable with the initial release.

I also note that ColorSlice allows adjusting of the center of the neighboring slices away from the skin slice which effectively increases the skin slice’s width. This is a simple way to avoid artifacts some have presented.

However I primarily chimed in here as you started an OP with misleading and bad faith information. Suggesting BMD take the ideas and modifications of another Dev. I stand by my statements.

Do you have some bone to pick here? Or do you just like to spread hearsay?

Reeeallly?? Bad faith? Tell me one reason why it would be bad if BMD made the colorslice tool even better than it is and close to that guy's version! To be honest, you can complain all you want but they will. We all know that. The fact that they noticed is proof that they care about the end user!!!

but we hope that most times, the 3rd party developers will rise to the occasion and push the envelope a bit harder

YEAH! Rise to the occasion and just do better then. Listen, BMD has brought filmmaking to the masses with their affordable tools and software tools. And I am sorry, I understand that some people may not like that they are unable to sell their dctl for $200, I understand, I used to be a small business owner. But we have to deal with this. BMD will improve this even more and it will keep becoming better and better. Nothing you, or I, can do about it.

[Peter Chamberlain]

Please, lets just focus on product features and use.

Please, lets just focus on product features and use.

I am sorry. I will not comment about users and other people anymore and will only keep it to features and settings. Thank you very much Peter.

First - the color slice tool has demonstrably inferior performance to that of the DCTL tool mentioned in the OP's YouTube post.

...

For his part, Stephan released a new and improved version of his DCTL tool that competes in a very real way with the color slice tool and provides superior results (at least in the test cases he demonstrated).

He doesn't demonstrate the full power of the Color Slice tool at all, full skin coverage can be attained simply by adjusting the Center control for Skin, possibly in combination with adjusting the center for red or yellow.

Likewise rolloff can be adjusted for any given hue by adjusting the Center control for adjacent hues (@Peter Chamberlain this really should be mentioned in the manual though, it's not intuitive at all that this can be done).

Joey D'Anna demoed that to me as he was sitting at the Big Panel in his spot in the BM booth at NAB. It was the slick way you can shift hue selection sideways that really impressed me.

Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk

I want to clarify that it was never my intention to make the "Color Slice" tool look bad. While I did notice the Center values, I didn't realize that adjusting the Center slider for neighboring hues could soften the falloff. This was not apparent to me, and even after consulting with multiple other colorists before releasing the video, none of us considered this approach. I agree with others that this functionality is not intuitive at all.

Despite this, what I demonstrated remains accurate: if you only increase the skin slider without adjusting the Center value of neighboring hues, the result looks exactly as shown.

I also want to address the point: "He doesn't demonstrate the full power of the Color Slice tool at all." This is correct. The intention of the video was mainly to inform my followers about an update to my DCTL pack and to provide some quick comparisons with Color Slice, rather than to do a deep dive into Color Slice.

I did some extensive testing with Color Slice, but I decided not to include that in the video or discuss it because my conclusions could be very wrong. Currently, "Color Slice" is not available in Fusion, which makes it harder to analyze. I don't want to talk about the features in Color Slice without fully understanding them.

I'd like to add, that just recently I bought a package of Mononodes DCTLs for € 300 and Dehancer lifetime licence for about € 400 and boom - DVR19beta came with the new and very similar film look creator.

But those tools are worth their money and I have no problem in paying for developers work.
If DVR onboard tools keep getting better - so external tools will have to, too.
Win-win for me.

And if someone doesn't want to spent the money for external tools - well the choice is there.

I think the Color Slice palette has a lot of potential, but is implemented in way that is not user friendly.

There are lots of ways the tool can improve without changing too much of the math behind it, and many of them are related to GUI improvements.

1) The Global controls are much more sensitive and don't follow the same mouse range as the primaries controls (such as Midtone Detail, Saturation, Color Boost, etc). This makes changing the values a pain. Also, it doesn't follow the -100 to 100 rule that Color Boost, Hightlight, Shadow and Midtone Detail share, but a -1 to 1. Please, change the controls to match their older siblings.

2) The most apparent problem right now is that we have little control over the hue falloff, and it generally feels too tight. This makes using the Color Slices with noisy footage also a pain, if not a breaking operation. I tried it while grading a film restoration project, and ended up buying a Density DCTL because it gave much cleaner results. Please, let us manually set the falloff, even if only globally, to a higher extent.

3) I would be nice to have the option to pop out a floating window showing a large scale hue circle with detailed range and center indication. Or you could revamp the entire UI to condense the sliders to one side and show a single, big hue circle to the other. Something akin to the Capture One "qualifier" UI.

4) It would also be nice to be able to turn some slices off, to make the hue selection even broader.

5) We should be able to lock the highlight of one slice while changing the neighbour ones, especially if adjusting their centers affect the main slice hue range. If you go into Highlight mode, then it should lock to the last slice you clicked highlight.

6) Having a way of limiting the amount of density applied by the saturation value of the pixel is also very helpful, and would be a much preferred way of doing it compared to how out of scale the saturation from the HSL qualifier is.

7) Many people are reaching out for Fusion to do look development jobs. Please, make Color Slice a ResolveFX.

I think the Color Slice palette has a lot of potential, but is implemented in way that is not user friendly.

There are lots of ways the tool can improve without changing too much of the math behind it, and many of them are related to GUI improvements.

1) The Global controls are much more sensitive and don't follow the same mouse range as the primaries controls (such as Midtone Detail, Saturation, Color Boost, etc). This makes changing the values a pain. Also, it doesn't follow the -100 to 100 rule that Color Boost, Hightlight, Shadow and Midtone Detail share, but a -1 to 1. Please, change the controls to match their older siblings.

2) The most apparent problem right now is that we have little control over the hue falloff, and it generally feels too tight. This makes using the Color Slices with noisy footage also a pain, if not a breaking operation. I tried it while grading a film restoration project, and ended up buying a Density DCTL because it gave much cleaner results. Please, let us manually set the falloff, even if only globally, to a higher extent.

3) I would be nice to have the option to pop out a floating window showing a large scale hue circle with detailed range and center indication. Or you could revamp the entire UI to condense the sliders to one side and show a single, big hue circle to the other. Something akin to the Capture One "qualifier" UI.

4) It would also be nice to be able to turn some slices off, to make the hue selection even broader.

5) We should be able to lock the highlight of one slice while changing the neighbour ones, especially if adjusting their centers affect the main slice hue range. If you go into Highlight mode, then it should lock to the last slice you clicked highlight.

6) Having a way of limiting the amount of density applied by the saturation value of the pixel is also very helpful, and would be a much preferred way of doing it compared to how out of scale the saturation from the HSL qualifier is.

7) Many people are reaching out for Fusion to do look development jobs. Please, make Color Slice a ResolveFX.

8) Make it able to be keyframed on the Color Page.

I think the Color Slice palette has a lot of potential...
2) The most apparent problem right now is that we have little control over the hue falloff, and it generally feels too tight. This makes using the Color Slices with noisy footage also a pain, if not a breaking operation.

Lots of good thoughts.
#2 - most seem to agree the selection process isn't ideal.
Seems an easy solution would be to allow an even further move into a/more neighboring slice(s).
Maybe more like the qualifier tool range in a way.
So skin tone slice isn't getting it all no matter how it's tweaked, some is still in the red. (even after adjusting the red slice)
Allow the skin tone selection to move as far into the red as desired?

...Make it able to be keyframed on the Color Page.

+1

8) Make it able to be keyframed on the Color Page.

Your command is their wish

What’s New in DaVinci Resolve Public Beta 3
- Addressed an issue with dynamic keyframes in the ColorSlice tool.

Confirmed it is working.

Good stuff BMD (next up is Color Warper dynamic keyframing?)

I really hope the Resolve team would add a refine tool panel to the ColorSlice like you can find in the select tool or the color warper. To be able to refine and soften selection to avoid artifacts would be great.

I really hope the Resolve team would add a refine tool panel to the ColorSlice like you can find in the select tool or the color warper. To be able to refine and soften selection to avoid artifacts would be great.

Adjusting the Center control for adjacent hues can soften selection

I love having Color Slice built in, it's very cool, thanks you BMD! I do think there's room for improvement in both the UI and the underlying maths. I've had it create artefacts along highly saturated edges, I don't know if other models have the same problem - certainly I get this when dropping the Sat v Lum curve too.

As for the UI, perhaps mimicking the lift/gamma Primaries Bars would be better, you can easily see which slider has been moved?

Yes, Stefan Ringelschwandtner of Mononodes is a terrific colorist and has some very interesting products.

https://mononodes.com/about/

Look on all of these things as options: you can use Color Slice provided for free in Resolve 19, or you can try another method by Stefan and the other DCTL designers. Having more options is a good thing.

Okay. That's right. Options are good I guess. For those of us who don't want to take certain options, we will wait for continuous improvements and feature adds that BMD team keeps making!