The “Utility DCTL” pack encompasses tools for image analysis and adjustment. It includes the “Balance DCTL” for analyzing skin tones in footage and managing color deviations, the “Clipping DCTL” for identifying and handling clipping in light or dark areas, and the “Isolator” features for color isolation in bright and dark regions, emphasizing ‘pure’ colors.
BALANCE
The “Balance DCTL” presents skin tones in footage as yellow, magenta, or green, depending on their deviation from the skin-tone line. The “Neutrals to Green” function turns neutral colors green, and the “Exposure Heatmap” function assists in adjusting the image’s exposure.
CLIPPING
The “Clipping DCTL” identifies when the image clips in light or dark areas. The “Darken” function is particularly valuable as it darkens the image except for the clipping part, which remains bright red, thus simplifying the clipping check process.
ISOLATOR
The “Show Low” and “Show High” sliders allow for isolation of colors in bright and dark areas. The “Color Isolator” function equalizes brightness into neutral gray, emphasizing ‘pure’ colors.
SKIN TONE INDICATOR
The advantage of using the DCTL is that it simplifies the color correction process. You don’t need to switch to the COLOR PICKER tool, or move it over the face to analyze each region.There’s no need to draw a circle with a mask to isolate the skin region. It’s eliminating the need to check the scopes for analysis. By activating the DCTL, you immediately see which areas on the face align with the SKIN TONE line and which areas shift more towards magenta or green. The “Skin Tone Indicator” slider enables you to set the range that turns skin color into yellow,
The “Neutrals to Green” button in the DCTL tool is designed to facilitate color balancing in DaVinci Resolve. When activated, this function identifies colors within an image where the RGB values are similar, signaling a neutral tone, and converts those colors to green. By isolating these areas, it simplifies the process of adjusting color balance within a shot, allowing for more precise control and consistency.
EXPOSURE HEATMAP
The Exposure Heatmap employs a false color system to represent different exposure levels. Overexposed images shift towards warmer yellow and red tones, indicating areas that may be excessively bright. Conversely, underexposed areas adopt cooler tones of green, blue, and violet, signifying sections of the image that are overly dark.
Drawing inspiration from the EL (Exposure Latitude) Zone System, developed by renowned cinematographer Ed Lachman, ASC, this tool offers an intuitive, user-friendly interface for exposure correction. Rather than depending solely on numeric or less visually intuitive data, users can benefit from the clear visual cues provided by the Exposure Heatmap. This tool aids in making precise and effective adjustments to image exposure.
CLIPPING
The “white threshold” and “black threshold” sliders are instrumental in fine-tuning the clipping levels of the bright and dark areas in the footage.
The “monochrome” button provides the capability to convert the image into grayscale. The advantage of this feature is that it simplifies the process of identifying clipping issues when using vectorscopes. By transforming the image to black and white, the red indicator signifying clipping becomes more noticeable.
Moreover, I’ve added a “darken” button into this DCTL script. This button not only transforms the image to black and white, but also dramatically reduces the overall brightness of the image, rendering it almost entirely black. When used in conjunction with the Lightbox tool in DaVinci Resolve, the “red clipping” becomes remarkably prominent, making it easier to spot the areas of the footage that require adjustment.
CLIPPING
MONOCHROME & DARKEN
LIGHTBOX
In this example here, you can see the integration of the “darken” feature. This feature modifies the image into grayscale and substantially dims it. When utilized with DaVinci Resolve’s Lightbox tool, red clipping becomes exceptionally prominent, simplifying the pinpointing of footage areas requiring adjustments.
ISOLATOR
The vectorscope in DaVinci Resolve is a powerful feature that assists colorists in understanding and analyzing the color composition of their footage. It primarily shows two essential components of color: hue and saturation. The hue of a color is represented by the angle on the scope, with each primary and secondary color located at a specific position on the wheel. Saturation, on the other hand, is represented by the distance from the center of the scope, with more saturated colors appearing farther from the center.
However, a limitation of the vectorscope is that it does not directly represent luminance or brightness levels. A bright red and a dark red, despite their different luminance values, may appear in the same region on the vectorscope because of their similar hue and saturation.
The “Show High” feature isolates colors in the highlights of your footage, converting all other colors outside this bright range into shades of grey for an unobstructed vectorscope analysis. Conversely, the “Show Low” feature targets colors in the shadows or darker regions, transforming colors outside this low-light spectrum into grey. Together, these features allow for a precise and interference-free examination of specific color ranges within an image, providing a powerful toolset for professionals in the field of color grading.
SHOW HIGH
The “Show High” feature is a powerful tool that isolates colors in the highlights of your footage, enabling focused and precise vectorscope analysis. It functions by converting all other colors that don’t fall within the defined bright area into shades of grey. This selective color isolation facilitates an in-depth examination of the color values in the brighter parts of your image, without interference from other color ranges.
SHOW LOW
The “Show Low” feature concentrates on revealing the colors within the shadows or darker sections of your footage. Any colors not encapsulated within this predefined low-light spectrum are rendered as grey. This functionality paves the way for a detailed exploration of color values in shadow areas, undisturbed by the presence of colors from brighter sections of your footage.
COLOR ISOLATOR
The human eye is naturally drawn to the brightest areas of an image. When an image has high contrast and varying luminance levels, these bright areas could potentially distract from the fundamental colors that define your footage. The “Color Isolator” feature eliminates this luminance factor, enabling you to concentrate more closely on the underlying hues and their saturation levels.
The “Color Isolator” button in our tool introduces a transformative approach to color analysis. It functions by equalizing the luminance levels across your footage, transforming all shades into a uniform gray.
This aspect of the tool is indispensable, providing an unbiased perspective on your color composition. With the distractions of luminance and contrast removed, you can perceive the ‘pure’ colors in your footage, laying an essential foundation for your color grading decisions.
NODE TREE
For effective results, the DCTLs should be placed in the node tree after the Log to Rec.709 conversion, as these DCTLs operates best in display color spaces like Rec.709.
You can use the tool with any working color space you like. However, it’s just important to understand that these tools, often work best in a display color space like Rec.709. Here’s the reason: Tools like qualifiers are optimized to detect specific colors and often rely on having a clear distinction between the target colors and the surrounding colors. Rec.709, being a more limited color gamut, is often closer to the final look of the content that audiences will see. This might make it easier to isolate specific colors like skin tones.
This demo version of the DCTL features a watermark, which is displayed as two large squares. It is ideal for users who wish to explore the software’s features and functionalities before deciding to make a purchase.
“Utility DCTL” is versatile, operating seamlessly on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms. It has been rigorously tested with NVIDIA and AMD GPUs on PCs, as well as with the M1 chip on Macs, leveraging both CUDA and OpenCL infrastructures. It’s crucial to note that DCTLs are only supported in the DaVinci Resolve Studio.
Minimum Requirement: CPU: Intel Core i7, AMD Ryzen 7, or Apple M1 RAM: 16 GB GPU: 4 GB VRAM
Recommended Requirement: CPU: Intel Core i9, AMD Ryzen 9, or higher-tier Apple Silicon RAM: 32 GB GPU: 8 GB+ VRAM