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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

“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