Shadows and Highlights

I have only "discovered" Resolve for myself a few months ago, and have been positively floored by its power and relative ease of use. Frankly, I haven't opened FCPX or Premiere Pro since first starting to experiment with Resolve and discovering something new every day. The fact that it was included with the BMPCC 4K was yet another reason for me to plonk down the money to get it.

As many of you probably know, Photoshop was first, in the Adobe CC Suite, to make the Camera RAW module available to non-RAW images, and After Effects followed suit by including a "Shadows and Highlights" filter that did, in essence, the same as the RAW module, but on non-RAW files.

Is there a method in Resolve that allows me to easily lift/lower shadows, highlights and mid-tones without having to jump through more difficult hoops? or maybe there is a plugin that will achieve the same thing?

I have been shooting timelapses since 2001, hundreds of them, and many of them weren't shot in RAW for one reason or another, but the JPGs are of such high quality that they can easily withstand some pretty heavy grading, as I have done so in Adobe Lightroom with great success...it's just *so* much easier to deal with all of those sequences in Resolve, though!

Is there a method in Resolve that allows me to easily lift/lower shadows, highlights and mid-tones without having to jump through more difficult hoops? or maybe there is a plugin that will achieve the same thing?

If you go to the Color page in Resolve, look down to the Color Wheels in the bottom left, and click the disclosure triangle on the top right corner of the color wheels title bar, you'll see an item for "Log," which actually has wheels named "Shadow," "Midtone," and "Highlight." These behave differently from Lift, Gamma, and Gain.

If you want to learn more, I'd highly recommend the 'Advanced Color Grading in Resolve 15" tutorial from Ripple Training. It's not cheap (normally about $120, on sale now for $90) but worth it, and definitely accessible to a beginner. It's very thorough and clear and walks you through good workflows. I think you'd find it a revelation.

While there are the Shadows, Midtone and Highlights wheels as the user above wrote, there are also the Shadow and Highlight options, on the Page 2 of the options that start with "Contrast" (simply click on the 2 on the left of Contrast). These two in my opinion are more important than the wheels if you're trying to get back shadow & highlight information from near-clipping. Midtone Detail is also a very interesting one (similar to Local Contrast option found in Lightroom). Between these 3 I get the cinematic look.

thanks, Brad, for pointing out to me exactly what I was looking for!

I shall take a look at Ripple Training for the course...I love what they do and have purchased some of their plugins for FCPX. Good tip!

Eugenia, when you say

..., on the Page 2 of the options that start with "Contrast" (simply click on the 2 on the left of Contrast).

I don't understand what location in Resolve you mean...on the Color page? Page 2 of what? Sorry to have to ask, and thanks for pointing out an alternate method.

Is there a method in Resolve that allows me to easily lift/lower shadows, highlights and mid-tones without having to jump through more difficult hoops? or maybe there is a plugin that will achieve the same thing?

No. Learning how to color correct is a process that you develop over time. I've been doing it for almost 40 years, and I still learn new things every week. (I learned a few just this past week, as a matter of fact.)

You can start by reading the manual and going through the recommended tutorials that are pinned at the top of this forum. A lot depends on the nature of the material being color-corrected, and the initial setup and adjustment is critical. Once you learn how to do that, everything else becomes faster and easier over time. But as an old friend of mine likes to say: "it takes years of experience to get years of experience."

Eugenia, when you say

..., on the Page 2 of the options that start with "Contrast" (simply click on the 2 on the left of Contrast).

I don't understand what location in Resolve you mean...on the Color page? Page 2 of what? Sorry to have to ask, and thanks for pointing out an alternate method.

It's right here:

shad-hl.jpg (38.71 KiB) Viewed 10433 times

You can of course experiment with all these methods (and also try Lift, Gamma, and Gain) to see what produces the best result in your JPEGs. I suggested the log wheels because they're more a focused adjustment and with JPEGs that might cause the least damage. If you turn on the video scopes and set them to show the waveform, you can see what is actually happening with each of these methods.

This might be all you need for your JPEGs, but if you want to learn how to color-grade video I really think you'd benefit from a book or tutorial. The Rippletraining one I mentioned above would give you a great start; it's Blackmagic Design certified and the instructor provides very clear explanations and walks you through different workflows. The manual provides a good introduction too (and is free!), but I find for complex things like this a video tutorial can be the most effective approach. There are also some excellent tutorials by colorist Patrick Inhofer available; look him up and you'll find them on his own Mixing Light site or on Lynda.com.

Just like the plot of any good martial arts movie, the hero in the Color Grading Suite recognizes or realizes that there is no one single technique that can be used to win every battle. The technique must always be appropriate for the adversary. Which is not to say that LGG isn't a great all-around technique.

I suggest that one of the best ways to learn resolve is to know that there are many, many ways to solve a problem, but to become so proficient in a few of them that you might yourself believe you have mastered them. At that point, try using a different approach with an eye toward seeing how the new technique makes some things much easier, some things much more difficult, and play with that until you have mastered that. Lather, rinse, repeat. Over time you will recognize which techniques are most appropriate for which grading situations--situations which are not only image dependent, but also situations which are production-dependent (schedule, budget, delivery requirements, etc).

wow, thanks everyone for your help and advice, much appreciated!

I would like to add, though, that I am quite aware of the importance of proper grading and have honed the craft for many many years...it's just that I am new to grading in *Resolve*.

While not all of these timelpases have been properly graded just yet, many of them have been, if you wanna see some samples of my work:

https://vimeo.com/album/4562803

And I do know how frail JPGs are for grading purposes and how important it is to understand the limits within *any* application that allows for these adjustments...but since JPGs are all that I have to work with, in many cases, that's just what it is. During my 2013 Timelapse trip around Iceland, I wasn't prepared for the sheer beauty and amount of timelapses I would be shooting (87 of them, over the course of 10 days), and had to resort to using JPG after I filled up half of my available storage in the first 2 days...and Iceland is not a place where you can find a BestBuy or Fry's around every corner, or order on Amazon for 2 day delivery

But I am grateful for all you fine folks for getting me on my way with Resolve's way of doing what I'll need to do. What a fantastic piece of software! It's so liberating to feel like I am not bound to Macs with FCPX, or Mac/PC's with the Adobe CC Suite anymore, but can literally build a very powerful editing/grading system on all 3 major platforms, Mac/PC, *and* Linux! so cool.

Hi Till,

I just wanted to take a look at your work on Vimeo but when I click your link https://vimeo.com/manage/albums/4562803 I get a message saying I'm unauthorized?

oops, sorry, I shared it from my admin panel, that's why.

the public share URL is: https://vimeo.com/album/4562803

I'll correct it in my previous post, thanks for letting me know!

Mr Wielage: Where did they get the names Lift Gamma and Gain for Shadows Midtones and Highlights? I'm just curious. Random names or is there somwthing in the meanings of the words?