Chromatic Adaptation in DaVinci Resolve
Does your footage ever look too orange or maybe too blue? Don’t worry; we have DaVinci Resolve - it’s not ruined forever! Today, I want to share with YOU the most accurate way to correct and white balance any 10-bit Log footage in post-production with just a couple of sliders.
Just look at some of these shots before…. and then after.
All this heavy lifting is done with the chromatic adaptation OFX plugin. However, to set it up correctly, a little understanding is required, so let's learn together with three simple steps…
Step 1 - Scene to Display
I’m going to start by saying that this technique works best with log-encoded footage. You may already be aware that Log encoding is a camera trick to capture more values of light into a video file. These log color spaces also typically record a wider range of color information; think of a larger box of crayons or what we call a color gamut (with a t). This flexibility allows us to fix incorrect white balance without requiring a RAW file. Just make sure you know which Log profile you’re looking at. Ask if you’re unsure, or check the metadata.
In DaVinci Resolve 20, you can transition from Scene to Display with a Project or Timeline setting and tagging footage accordingly, or with a color space transform node on the color page. I want to keep this tutorial simple, so we will focus on project settings color management today. But if you do use a node to transform Log to Rec709 for display, make sure its the last thing in your node tree. EVERYTHING ELSE should happen earlier to the left in the signal.
Step 2 - Objective Greyscale Reference
One of the magical things about our eyes is that they rapidly adjust to create a white balance with how the cone cells in the back of our retinas interact with our brains - but the color is always in the context of the surroundings. So what if the surroundings had zero color, as in we save a black-and-white version? Then, we can compare the white balance objectively with an image split wipe—a cool Resolve color page feature.
Step 3 - Chromatic Adaptation
The Chromatic Adaptation Transform OFX plugin performs complex matrix multiplications that perceptually match the Long, Medium, and Short cones in the back of our eyes - because our brains interpret colors differently depending on the lighting source. The tool operates based on an LMS color model, which you can certainly explore further.
Place at or near the start of your node tree
Source Illuminant is what the lighting “on Set” was (or a guess of what it was)
Target Illuminant is the actual white balance on the camera (catalyst browse, MediaInfo app, or Arri Reference Tool) - or a guess if unknown
Yes, there are many other methods to balance a shot, like - Offset, HDR Global, and Linear gain - but none are as accurate as this; they might just be a bit faster to use.
