Color Grading Film Scans in DaVinci Resolve
In this article you’ll learn about color negative film inversion process using DaVinci Resolve, as well as further color correction and color grading process!
All images are by me.
The idea of grading still images in DaVinci Resolve isn’t something new, considering the fact that any video sequence is essentially, well, a collection of still frames. One major pro for using Resolve is the great granularity you can get into when working on an image compared to much more convenient and linear workflow provided by Lightroom/Photoshop etc. Another great thing that I would call the “secret sauce” is the ability to use a film print emulation LUT, basically taking your inverted negative to the next level by embedding the tone curve and other features of a print film stock. This yields amazing results especially when grading a Kodak Vision 3 negative stock, which historically was intended to be printed onto a print film resulting in a positive image suitable for projection in the good old days.
In this guide I will provide you with all the necessary steps for inverting the color negative on your own, correcting the white balance, black point, color correction and, finally, color grading through the print film emulation LUT.
The entire process can be handled in the free version of Resolve, however, I use the paid one (called Resolve Studio), so some FX might not be available to you with the free one.
As with any other editing approach, it is wise to start with the best source image file possible. In the case of DSLR scanning, always shoot in RAW, then convert to .dng with a free software tool Adobe provides (Resolve won’t be able to handle all possible proprietary RAW formats). If you scan using a dedicated scanner, then saving your scans as TIF files should be good enough to go.
Diving into Resolve, create a new project, give it any name you want and you’ll be left on the “Media” tab of the main window.
In the bottom right corner click on the gear icon and navigate to the “Master Settings” tab on the left. Set the timeline resolution to 3840x2160 Ultra HD from the dropdown menu (there’s also the 8K option that is available only in Resolve Studio as far as I know). By default, the aspect ratio is always 16:9, which isn’t what we need in case of 35mm scans and especially in case of medium format ones. For a 3:2 full-frame ratio, change the “3840” to “3240” — that will make sure your video viewport is in a 3:2 aspect ratio. Click on “Save” and you’re good to go.
Next, navigate to the “Edit” tab at the bottom of the main screen by clicking on its icon.
On the left-hand side you should see an empty panel displaying “No clips in media pool”. In case you don’t see the panel, click on the “Media Pool” button in the top left corner.
Now you’re ready to import your .dng or TIF scans into the project. After you drag all your files here you can start creating a timeline that will contain all your landscape shots or portrait ones, which will help with organizing your image clips in Resolve. Select the multiple images of the same orientation, right-click on them and select “Create New Timeline Using Selected Clips…”.
Under the “Timeline Name” type in the name you want. Personally, I name the timeline either “Landscape” for all my landscape shots or “Portrait” for portrait ones.
In the case of portrait, you need to switch the width/height size of the viewport, since remember we set the size for landscape orientation in the global settings window. Uncheck the “Use Project Settings” at the bottom of the “Create New Timeline” window, then go to the “Format” tab and swap the “Timeline Resolution” size values.
Nice, now you should have a timeline containing all your shots of the same orientation. When shooting in RAW most of the time all of the images will still be in landscape orientation even the portrait ones, so first we’ll need to fix that and make sure that each shot takes the entire viewport so that we don’t have any black lines on the sides.
Select the first image clip on the timeline, then open the Clip Inspector panel by clicking the appropriate icon at the top right corner of the main window. Here, you’ll need to set the Rotation Angle in case your image has the wrong orientation. Then, play with the Zoom values (both X and Y are linked together by default, so you can only change the value of X) until the image fills the entire viewport.
Once you’re happy with image sizing, rotation and positioning — we can move to the real magic place — the Color tab :)
You’ll be presented with a lot of panels, but don’t worry — we’ll use only the ones needed to do our job.
On the left you’ll see your viewport with the current image, on the right — The Node Tree and on the bottom depending on your DaVinci settings you’ll see the editing tools such as Primaries Wheels and Scope levels, which will help you judge the exposure and color information of your image.
The first step in converting a color negative is subtracting the orange mask. Ideally, you’ll have the film border present in your scans, which will help greatly with picking the border color. But in case you don’t, like when using a flatbed scanner that often has the holder blocking the borders — don’t worry, I’ll show you how to deal with both scenarios.
In the Node Tree by default, you’ll see one node. Now, right-click on it, then select Add Node and Add Layer. This will create a new layer node beneath the current one and a special Layer Mixer node that controls the way the layers and combined into one single image.
Select the first node, which represents the top layer, then open the Effects panel by clicking the Effects button on the top toolbar.
In the opened panel, type “Color” into the search field and search for the “Color Generator” effect.
Now click and drag this effect onto the top layer node. If done correctly — the node preview should change to a static white color.
On the right you should now see the settings for the Color Generator effect, given that your top layer node is selected in the Node Tree.
Now, you need to click on the eyedropper button and sample the film border color from the Viewport. Simply click on the eyedropper button, then click somewhere on the film border in the Viewport.
If everything’s fine you should see the new color appear as the node’s preview and in the corresponding color sample rectangle in the Color Generator effect settings panel.
Now, what do you do in case you don’t have the film border present in your scan? The answer is pretty simple — you need to sample from the darkest part of the image. Given a negative that’s gonna be the lightest part.
Then we need to change the blending mode of the layers or as DaVinci calls it — the Composite Mode. Right-click on the Layer Mixer node, choose Composite Mode and then choose Subtract. Congratulations, you’ve successfully subtracted the orange mask from the negative!
The image is very dark, but don’t worry — we’ll fix this soon. But first, we need to make sure that we don’t lose the information in the shadows so we have room to work in later.
Select the second layer node, that is, with the original negative image, not with the Color Generator effect. Then open the Key panel on the bottom by clicking on its button.
You’ll see the Key panel at the left bottom now. In the Key Output section, start decreasing the Gain parameter. You’ll see the shadows rising. I like to use the Scopes panel to judge the levels and to make sure that my darkest portions of the image are just above zero.
Then right-click on the Layer Mixer node and select Add Node, then Add Serial. In this one, we’re gonna set the White Point. First, make sure the Color Wheels panel is active at the bottom by clicking the corresponding button.
At the very bottom of the panel, find the Lum Mix setting and set it to zero. This will allow us to work with individual RBG channels without affecting the relationship between them.
Then you need to open the Curves panel by using, again, the corresponding button.
By default, you’ll see a single white-colored curve line that controls the overall Luminance of the image. But we need to work with individual RBG values so you need to click the corresponding button.
Let’s start with the Red one. Click on the “R” button. You’ll see the curve change to the red color. Now, click and drag the top-right point to the left, while looking at the Scopes panel. Your goal is to make the Red channel reach the top, but not clip.
By doing this, you de-compressed the image’s Red channel. Now do the same for Green and Blue channels. Again, use the Scopes panel as the guide.
With most images, you should now have a somewhat balanced look that isn’t as dark as it was.
Try toggling between the original negative and the current result by using the Shift+D shortcut. Look at how much you’ve achieved by a couple of nodes in DaVinci!
Now, let’s tweak the image further. After the node where you set the White Balance by using the Curves panel, add six more nodes. You can use the Alt+S shortcut to quickly add serial nodes sequentially after the selected one.
To the secret sauce I’ve mentioned at the beginning of this very long and maybe boring article — the Print Film look. Right-click on the latest node, select LUT -> Film Looks -> Rec709 Kodak 2383 D60. This will apply a LUT (if you aren’t familiar with color grading and don’t know what this is, think of it as a sort of filter that applies to your image) of Kodak 2383 motion picture print stock. The D60 portion of the LUT’s name is the temperature, there are two more options: D55 and D65, where D55 produces a slightly warmer look and D65 — a slightly cooler look, respectively. Personally, I always use the D60 one since you can easily tweak the White Balance by yourself and arrive at the look you want to have.
On the node before this one, that is, node number 9 if you followed the instructions correctly, open the Curves panel, make sure the “Y” channel is selected and make a slight adjustment to decrease the highlights level.
This is needed because the print film LUT often pushes the highlights a bit too far, so to preserve the information there I found this to work great. The lower you set the point, the darker the image is gonna be, so be sure to come back to this node later after the next step.
Now, on the node before your highlights adjustment, number 8, open the Effects panel and look for the “Color Space Transform” effect. Drag it onto the node. You should now see the settings for this effect on the right. We’re interested in the “Output Gamma” one. Long story short — this will convert the color space of your ordinary image to a special color space needed for the print film LUT to work correctly. Don’t worry if technical details don’t make any sense to you, all that’s important is the result. Click on the Output Gamma setting and in the list scroll down till you find the “Cineon Film Log”.
Now we’re good to work on the exposure and colors to achieve the final result. Select the node #5 and open the Color Wheels panel. Now using the Lift, Gamma and Gain sliders we can play with the exposure to set it where we want.
By dragging each slider left or right, you decrease or increase the level of your shadows, midtones and highlights correspondingly. Take some time playing with them until your exposure satisfies you. Should you find the image too dark when doing this — return to node #9, where you used the Curves panel to dip the highlights before applying the print film LUT and tweak the level to brighten the image, but keep the highlights from blowing out.
After some tweaking you should have something like this:
Next, we’ll tweak the Saturation, since currently the image is very dull. On node #6, still in the Color Wheels panel find the “Saturation” setting at the bottom and increase it till the colors start to breathe. In my case, for this particular image, I ended up increasing the Saturation to 100.
Now, depending on many factors, at this point, you should either have a somewhat balanced image or not — in that case, we’ll need to return to node #4, where we set the White Point and play with individual curves to tweak the white balance. Create a point in the middle of each RGB curve and play with it till you arrive at a balanced look.
Now, on node #7 I like to perform further Color Grading using Color Wheels Lift, Gamma and Gain controls. Each one gives you the ability to shift the hues of your shadows, midtones and highlights. You do this by dragging the central point of the wheel in 2D space. The fourth wheel, Offset, gives you the ability to apply a tint to the whole image, not just its part, so be sure to try that as well.
Using this approach you’ll have total freedom when it comes to achieving the look you’re looking for and you’ll quickly realise how there’s an endless space of possibilities when it comes to exposure, colors and overall feel of the image.
What you can do next is to sharpen the image a bit. For that, after the last node add another one and then open the, what a surprise, the Blur panel.
In this panel, decrease the value of the Radius setting to 48 and notice how the image gets a bit sharper. At any time you can toggle the node active state using the Command+D on Mac or Control+D on Windows shortcut.
Now onto export. Add another node after the sharpening one and add the Color Space Transform effect to it. In the effect settings, choose sRGB for Output Color Space and Output Gamma. The reason for this is to make sure that the color profile is supported by any device you’re gonna view this image on. Right now you should see that the image got darker in the preview, but don’t worry — once it’s exported it should look the same as it was before applying this conversion node.
Now right-click the image in the preview panel and choose Grab Still. The Gallery panel should open on the left with your still image selected. If not — use the corresponding button at the top to bring up the panel.
Now right-click the selected still and click Export. Choose TIFF Files for the output format and the destination to save to. Once saved, you’ll have a .tiff image of the edited scan you then can use.
So far, I hope this article helped you to try something new and see for yourself how the process of converting the color negative into a positive works.
