White Balancing in Resolve with Tint/Temp

[Virgil Edward]

Hi! Do you guys use the Tint/Temp controls in white balancing or LGG for the most of it? Is there a backlash in using Tint/Temp controls? Thanks!

[Abby Bader]

Many colorists use the offset controls to balance because it's global controls that doesn't break the relationship between lift, gamma and gain. 

[Remco Hekker]

I've recently found out how amazingly effective the temp/tint controls are during a resolve course I taught. Before, I would always use LGG and sometimes offset. But when I saw how quickly my students got great results using temp/tint, I decided to start using it myself. I've never looked back.

Now, the temp/tint controls do change the relationship between LGG and I do still use the other tools to add a color bias for ambiance. But in all, I found the temp/tint controls (especially on my tangent elements) to be very effective very fast.

[Jussi Rovanperä]

Isn't Temp/Tint is just a gain control?

 

[Thomas Singh]

Temp control is a kelvin slider and shifts between blue and red. Tint control shift between green and magenta and is traditionally used to handle sodium vapor and fluorescent situations. These two controls are not enough to balance an image alone in all situations, but definitely be a supplement to the other tools.

[dermot.shane]

i think Jussi is correct - it's the gain ball mapped to two axis, or as Resolve has those controls implemented they can be replacated with the gain hue offset ball

another option that i use alot in Resolve is setting a node to L*a*b and bypassing channel 1 so you have only *a*b, for me that's the simplest cleanest workflow, but be aware that the surface will react more like it's in 1998 mode

Baselight's tint/temp controls are somewhat diffrent btw, and really feel closer to L*a*b than to Resolve's gain offset method

true color temp is more a horseshoe shaped matrix than a straight line from blue to yellow

 

[Thomas Singh]

On 5.1.2018 at 5:02 PM, dermot.shane said:

i think Jussi is correct - it's the gain ball mapped to two axis, or as Resolve has those controls implemented they can be replacated with the gain hue offset ball

That's why you can't balance an image alone in all situations with those controls. The pivot point is on the botton which means absolute black stays black in the cases where the black is absolute black. In all other cases you will need other controls to balance black. 

[Anton Meleshkevich]

In the past I always used printer lights (offset) on non-RAW material. At first I adjusted exposure of all the clips. Then I adjusted WB. I used printer light hot keys with modified step calibration settings for exposure and WB corrections. It allows me to make adjustments very quickly (approx. 10 seconds per shot).

Then sometimes I fixed blacks' WB using shadows wheel on some shots

Now I use Resolve CMS, setting timeline color space to gamma 2.4 and output color space to gamma 2.2 with IPP2 mapping most of the time.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Anton Meleshkevich

[Nicolas Hanson]

21 hours ago, Anton Meleshkevich said:

modified step calibration settings

Why do you have to modify the settings? Aren't the hotkeys set up to push one increment on each color channel on each click?

[Sam Gilling]

2 minutes ago, Nicolas Hanson said:

Why do you have to modify the settings? Aren't the hotkeys set up to push one increment on each color channel on each click?

Sometimes you want to be able to move the channels around with more finesse, I like setting them to .5 or .3r. 

[Anton Meleshkevich]

5 minutes ago, Nicolas Hanson said:

Why do you have to modify the settings? Aren't the hotkeys set up to push one increment on each color channel on each click?

Default settings are ok for exposure adjustments. But for WB I'd like to have more precise control.

[Jussi Rovanperä]

also keeping ctrl pressed gives you half points instead of full points.

[Emil Öberg]

Wow I had no idea about the printer light hotkeys! Very helpful. Is there anywhere I can see the actual hotkeys? And where can I modify the settings of it?

[Anton Meleshkevich]

@Emil Öberg

 

Edited March 18, 2018 by Anton Meleshkevich

[Emil Öberg]

@Anton Meleshkevich 

Thank you for the help! May I ask you how exactly do you about when you adjust WB using the printer lights? I’m playing around with it but I don’t understand how to adjust for example only the gain or only the lift to get a precise match? Also which scope is best used with this?

I hope you don’t mind me asking I’m pretty new with color grading and with the software.

[Anton Meleshkevich]

@Emil Öberg 
If you like some kind of old school grading, you can use Printer lights (offset) to adjust WB and Exposure. Printer lights controls should be used only for log footage before a log-to-rec709(or something) LUT.

Adjusting RGB simultaneously (Enter and Plus keys on numpad) is exposure. Not identical to adjusting exposure by changing ISO on camera or adding more light at shooting stage, but still very often used for that. For contrast use contrast parameter. Some colorists prefer to uncheck S-curve for contrast in settings. So it will work like lift and gain wheels while adjusting black and white points. Like levels in photoshop. Also you can use shadow wheel to make blacks more black without increasing contrast in midtones.

For WB again use offset wheel (I prefer RGB addition and subtraction hotkeys). In addition to it sometimes you can find useful to correct WB in shadows using shadow colorwheel. But you should to know that it isn't the most mathematically correct way to adjust WB. For similar to RAW WB you shoud use Gain operation in Linear or 2.2 / 2.4 / 2.6 gamma (not rec709 scene gamma). I mean, you should to convert your log to linear (1 / 2.2 / 2.4 / 2.6). Then to make Gain operation for WB. Then to convert it back to log. This all can be done in one node, using node gamma and resolve CMS. However this is similar to RAW WB only for the gray scale. You need one of the LMS color spaces for the colors (most of the time you can ignore that).

Edited May 7, 2019 by Anton Meleshkevich

[Jussi Rovanperä]

The contrast control and the log controls are pretty recent addition, I think resolve 9 or 10. So before that you had only lift-gamma-gain and offset.

I'm using the offset-contrast-pivot in a pretty methodological way when I'm grading on my own, but I end up resorting to lift-gain when I have a client watching and things need to move fast

[Emil Öberg]

@Anton Meleshkevich

Thanks for the explaination! It helped me understand alot better.

[Anton Meleshkevich]

Here was some incorrect info from me about resolve color math. But since I found some of the conclusions I made about it wrong, I decided to edit this post in order to not misinforming others 

Edited May 7, 2019 by Anton Meleshkevich