I hate reading instructions, but I will admit, it never goes to waste.

I opened up Da Vinci Resolve the other day for the third time ever and stumbled my way into the colour grading section. I am not yet up to the whole timeline thing, just making my footage better for the project at work.

Lots of options, lots of new terminology.

When I transitioned from film to digital, a lot of the terminology came across easily. The basics were like for like, with only a few little changes like Noise = Grain to deal with.

Dealt with.

So, Gain, Gamma, Lift and Off-set………….What the hell?

My first reaction was to go to the things that made sense.

In the base colour correction panel in DVR, there are some old friends such as white balance, tint, contrast etc. These are little wheels, running in little windows along the top and bottom of the tool window and proved to be mainly a distraction.

The big ones, the ones that dominate the panel are the above. Each has a virtual wheel and the colour wheel (other type of “wheel”) sat proudly above it.

I needed to know why.

In a brief moment of clarity, I decided to look for the actual instructions.

Easily found, all 470 pages down loaded and opened easily and to my surprise were both easily navigated and taken in. The section on Grading even has a small essay on the why and how of the process and a little history, a bit like reading a magazine article.

Lift = Shadows

Gamma = Mid tones (or tonal range)

Gain = Highlights

Off-set = Global

Simple as that.

The colour wheel in the middle lets you actually control the colour of each level of exposure separately. Very cool.

Want more contrast? Push the Lift down, blackening the blacks.

Want more “Crunch”, go to the Gamma tool.

Control overly bright highlights? Gain is your friend.

The other tools are more global, but are still useful as support for these. Want a warmer image, but not in the highlights? You could warm up the othe two settings, or drop the highlight warmth back and warm up the whole.

Natural colour style on the Panasonic reacts well to this. I shot flat, meaning +0 across the board, but now see the benefit of reducing sharpness and contrast. I have had less luck with the Olympus “Flat” profile and have heard little good about OMLog400 (which is however supported with a LUT in DVR). I may try their “Muted” profile in C4k with contrast and sharpness pulled back.

Six different clips were shot the other day in the same place, but over time. I will admit I got six slightly different looks thanks to poor white balance control and in-out natural light messing with exposure, but DVR has allowed me, with little practice and a quick read of the relevant instruction pages, to get five to match well and one to be “in the ball park”.

I know there are things I did clumsily, but overall the process felt linear and clean and more importantly, I got what I wanted.