A suggestion for Post Production Resolve cookbook

Blackmagic has excellent instruction books on color grading. I'd like to suggest that they add one more to their repertoire. How about a cookbook with recipe's on post production workflows (ACES, RCM, CST, etc.) and using their different color science (Gen4, Gen5) in Resolve, how to get it right, recipes for color correcting, recipes for accomplishing certain look, recipes on color space transformation, applying LUT correctly, advance recipes of the pros, etc. I think folks like Captain Hook, Alexis Van Hurkman, Doin Scoppettuolo (pardon if I mispelled your last name), Marc Wielage, and the expert and experience trainers in BMD can collaborate. That will be amazing. If done right, this should not be on how to use Resolve, but a desktop resource of recipes that a budding or even pro colorist can pick up when they need a quick "How can I do this task?" reference of recipes and follow it succinctly. This will be a terrific resource, IMO.

BTW, what I am suggesting is not another Alexis Van Hurkman Color Correction Handbook which is thorough and in depth, and an excellent book which I constantly go back to. But a cookbook of the hundreds or thousands of ways and techniques in short recipe form that can be immediately use and applied when one is looking for a solution to a problem or work.

The subject is changing too quickly to do an all-encompassing book on color management. Alexis covers some of it in the Resolve 17 New Features Guide, and I'm expecting it will be expanded in the final Resolve 17 manual.

Alexis has a terrific Ripple Training on Resolve 17 Color Management:

https://www.rippletraining.com/products ... esolve-17/

and there's an older (but still useful) one on Lowepost:

https://lowepost.com/insider/courses/co ... solve-r38/

For general guides to color theory, I'd recommend:

VES: "Cinematic Color" (free 52-page white paper)
https://github.com/jeremyselan/cinemati ... or_VES.pdf

"Color & Mastering for Digital Cinema"
by Glenn Kennel
https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Digita ... 0240808746

"Digital Cinematography: Fundamentals, Techniques, & Workflows"
by David Stump
https://www.amazon.com/Capturing-Shot-F ... 0240817915

"Color Reproduction in Electronic Imaging Systems"
by Michael Tooms
https://www.amazon.com/Colour-Reproduct ... 1119021766

"Digital Video and HD: Algorithms and Interfaces"
by Charles Poynton
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Video-HD ... 0123919266

"The Reproduction of Colour"
by Dr. R.W.G. Hunt
https://www.amazon.com/Reproduction-Col ... 0470024259

"Color Mania: The Material of Color in Photography and Film"
by Barbara Flückiger
https://www.amazon.com/Color-Mania-Mate ... 3037786078

"Colour Cinematograph"
by Adrian Cornwell-Clyne
Chapman & Hall
https://www.amazon.com/COLOUR-CINEMATOG ... B000GU30WE

The best book on Film Lab color-correction I've ever read is this one:

"Film Technology in Post Production"
by Dominic Case
https://www.amazon.com/Film-Technology- ... 0240516508

The latter explains how film was color graded in the laboratory prior to television and digital. Some of the basic principles still apply today.

Marc, thanks for sharing all those references and I have a few of them and they are great training materials. However that is not what I am suggesting. What I am suggesting are collections of “how do I do something” at the point where I am in need to do a particular thing and just need to do it. I have a software engineering background and there is this publisher Called O’rielly press and they produced a number of programming cookbooks. So if I was writing some software and I need, say, to add code that sorts a file for example, I can just look up the recipe on “how to sort files” and get instructions and actual code on how to implement it. As a busy programmer, I don’t have to go and learn about how sorting work or what files are and I get the piece of work done because the coding technique is pretty much a pattern or repeatable through a recipe. I hope that my explanation makes it clearer as to what I refer to as a cookbook.

Or maybe this forum can host another sticky category called "Color Correction Tips and Techniques" where pro colorist can share their knowledge by creating topics of recipes of "How to" on grading workflows, color correction, color styling, etc.

Unlike the other category and topics in this forum, the particular category has its primary focus of sharing and educating (a resource pool), and not discuss/debate the tip or technique since there will be different ways to do the same thing (multiple resources). It is up to the reader to choose which one will work form them.

Example of topic title would be:

How do I create an RCM workflow?
How do I apply a LUT correctly for a Rec709 color space?
How do I adjust skin tones?
How do I color a day for night clip?

I know they all exist in one form or another throughout the internet and YT but wouldn't it be nice if there is a central source on all Resolve color tips and techniques that one can just go to and reference?

Marc, thanks for sharing all those references and I have a few of them and they are great training materials. However that is not what I am suggesting. What I am suggesting are collections of “how do I do something” at the point where I am in need to do a particular thing and just need to do it.

I have asked before (going back several years) that they have a "real world/how to" section of the manual that goes through some average situations that lots of people encounter, and how to work them out. For example: sample settings that work well with NR; how to adjust Red Raw (and similar raw/log cameras); how to get a reasonable starting point. Basic session setup, standard organizational practices, and how to safely backup projects. How to transcode and several methods for creating dailies & proxies. Basic steps on matching shots using scopes. The need for a calibrated monitor (and a color-managed output), which should be on page 2 of the color section.

And a troubleshooting section: what the error messages mean; what to check when a render fails. How to optimize performance.

All these are good ideas, as is an entire section on Resolve color management. We'll see what the v17 manual is like when it comes out in about 3 weeks. BTW, I have heard that Alexis Van Hurkman is working on an updated edition of his Color Correction Handbook, so perhaps that will cover some of these ideas that are beyond just Resolve-specific instructions per se.

Example of topic title would be:

How do I create an RCM workflow?
How do I apply a LUT correctly for a Rec709 color space?
How do I adjust skin tones?
How do I color a day for night clip?

The problem from my perspective is you could probably do 100-150 pages just on these five topics. The trick is in figuring out, if there's 3 or 4 different methods available, how do you decide which one works best? I generally will throw the kitchen sink at the problems I encounter, but I'll tend to use the one that works the fastest and gives the best results. Sometimes neither method #1 nor method #2 works, and I have to curse and grit my teeth and say, "OK, we're going to go at this from a completely different direction," and usually that works. The reality is there's no substitute for experience. Do this long enough, and the answers will become more obvious over time.

I can tell you that the HDR/Zone Grade controls are a new challenge, and I'm already grabbing them more often for my SDR jobs. Once in awhile, I'll encounter a shot that looks basically OK, but I'll realize I need to pull out more midtone detail or more highlight detail (or both). The HDR controls let me do this in a way that's fairly surgical, and yet don't create any artifacts unless you push them much too far. But you only figure this out by experimentation.

...., How about a cookbook with recipe's on post production workflows (ACES, RCM, CST, etc.) and using their different color science (Gen4, Gen5) in Resolve, how to get it right, recipes for color correcting, recipes for accomplishing certain look, recipes on color space transformation, applying LUT correctly, advance recipes of the pros, etc. I..., This will be a terrific resource, IMO...,

I would fund this if it was a kickstarter of indiegogo....., I think other people would too.

BTW, I have heard that Alexis Van Hurkman is working on an updated edition of his Color Correction Handbook, so perhaps that will cover some of these ideas that are beyond just Resolve-specific instructions per se.

I have his older edition and it's a great reference. I also have his Color Correction Look Book, which is kind of a cookbook too, and use it as reference when I need to quickly do something like "how do I minimized flaring. It's a great book for getting ideas how to accomplish something but you'll have to figure how to do it with your own grading software. That is because the provided recipes was written to be applicable with any color correction software so it does not go through the details on how one would do it say in Resolve. What I am suggesting here is a cookbook almost similar yet more specific to just Resolve and includes workflows as well.

I would fund this if it was a kickstarter of indiegogo....., I think other people would too.

Yeah, I would contribute to the funding as well.