For anyone trying the demo, I'd love to know how it feels for you! I'll keep updating this plugin whenever I find a principled way to improve it, so I welcome your thoughts and feedback :)
But again - simplicity helps. The noise reducing bit like the current davinci qualifiers have and "clean black" "clean white". Woild be most helpful i think
Hi there! Perhaps you still need to restart Resolve? Here are the installation instructions, first thing I'd recommend is following the steps again! Let me know if it still doesn't work. 1. Open your Project Settings in DaVinci Resolve 2. Navigate to the ‘Color Management’ tab 3. Under ‘Lookup Tables’, click Open LUT Folder 4. Copy the ‘SmoothShift v??.dctle’ file to this folder 5. Close DaVinci Resolve and re-open 6. Under the ‘Effects’ tab on the Color Page, search for the item labeled ‘DCTL’ and drag it onto a node 7. Select ‘SmoothShift v??’ from the dropdown in the DCTL panel that pops up
This looks fantastic! Exactly the kind of DCTL I've been wanting someone to make for awhile now. I love that you can use the node as a matte to interface with any Resolve tool, but I personally think it would be super convenient if you could control XY Linear balance and linear gain right inside the DCTL, as I commonly use those tools when I need to pull a qualifier. Just a suggestion though, I definitely think there's a case to be made for keeping it more simple. Incredible work, looking forward to following what you do in the future
Much appreciated Will! Really glad to hear. Yeah the lin gain/balance is something I've been considering since early testing, but have yet to pull the trigger on for a few reasons. In the case of shifting exposure, I find that this is one of the few operations that often truly benefits from the case of blurring the matte (which in many other scenarios I find can be perhaps unintuitively damaging), and unfortunately spatial operations like blur in DCTL are very poorly optimized due to internal restrictions so I hesitate to include it since my recommendation would still be to use the matte option and go through Resolve's more performance-optimized blur->lin gain adjustment anyway. Exposure also is one of the more potentially destructive operations you can perform, especially if you're doing any kind of qualification based on hue or sat, and I feel like some users would be tempted to nudge it to taste while doing complex adjustments where they really shouldn't touch it. All that being said, I'm definitely still considering the additions - especially maybe the balance options since they don't suffer from a lot of the downsides that exposure does. Thanks for the feedback, I've made a note and I appreciate it :)
Man, youtube bring me to your channel and i saw the title, i was wait a minute lets see what this about, im like let him cook! 🤓 i was thinking to change the names like shadow,mid tones and highlight seems more close to me but man nice 1 going to my dctl arsenal for work 👏🏼
Appreciate it man! Hope you enjoy using it. I'm not sure what you're referring to with the shadow/midtone/highlight names, are you able to expand on that?
@@shadowgold1 Ah I see, yeah I agree that the selection modes could be a little confusing, they are perhaps one of the less intuitive parameters. With regards to the additive/spherical/subtractive option, the idea is to allow the user to smoothly blend between each model to give more fine-tuned control than a dropdown would. If instead you'd rather be specific to the model used, you can simply set the slider to one of the extremes (0 for additive, 1 for subtractive), or in the middle (0.5 for spherical). I appreciate the feedback so far, I've noted all of them :)
@@deepmusic2456 Hey there! That's a pretty big question that truthfully goes far beyond the scope of the dctl. You're welcome to use SmoothShift as a piece of the puzzle for introducing some of the nonlinear peculiarities into the look - in fact id say it does very well at this - but it is unable to replace a DRT or do any sort of tone curve adjustment. For look building, i would suggest using another tool to build the tone curve, then split toning, then broad strokes hue/sat/lum adjustments - then only for the remaining nonlinearities in hue/sat/color density would i use SmoothShift. Hope this answers your question at least somewhat! There are a lot of topics involved that would be far too much to cover in a RUclips comment
Hi Togan! You bring up a good point of discussion - I've noticed the same thing in the past. In a bit of an unintuitive way, however, I think it's important to note that the little specks on the matte itself don't always indicate an unsmooth operation, since images themselves have no constraint of being smooth pixel-to-pixel. For example if there's a tiny red bit on someone's face, that can be super defined from the pixels around it and appear as a speck in a selection matte, but it should still be shifted if you want to make the reds more orange, for example, and in this sort of case I'd argue it's actually smoother to shift every red pixel evenly than start selectively picking ones that shouldn't be affected, if that makes sense. In short: the specks can be slightly deceiving smoothness-wise, and it tends to matter more what you actually do to those areas and how smoothly you affect colors that are close in hue/sat/lum value rather than spatially close in the picture. Hope that makes sense! (For the same reason, I also only advise blurring the matte for very specific operations, which is one of the reasons I've left it out of the tool. You can still use the strategy I show at 12:15 when you do need it)
Hi Henry, thanks for the detailed reply but there will be never a spot in a picture ,shot with a camera and a lens, that will have a super sharp separation as you describe, maybe a green screen footage with a sharp object in foreground, so you will eventually need gradation, softness and blur to have a clean key both in color grading and vfx. Apart from this discussion, examples that you showed in the video is not a situation that you discribed in the comment. Those are simple noisy keys. I am following this new dctl trend for some time and all of them have this noisy keying problem. So if you solve this problem it will take you apart from the rest. I hope this makes sense. Cheers
I've tested it for both v18 and v19, but can't confirm for previous versions. Feel free to download the free demo if you're using a different version to see if it works!
@@HenryBobeck I tested it on version 17, and the tool isn’t responding. I use version 17 due to some specific features in Fusion. Is there any chance of an update for previous versions?
As soon as Blackmagic fix alpha functionality with DCTLs that will be possible through the alpha output! For now though, all you have to do is enable the 'Show Selection' and 'Matte' checkboxes and use the RGB output in the same way, as shown at 11:12
For anyone trying the demo, I'd love to know how it feels for you! I'll keep updating this plugin whenever I find a principled way to improve it, so I welcome your thoughts and feedback :)
@@HenryBobeck needs clean up refinement tools like "clean white" "clean black" "nr" "blur radius" etc
But again - simplicity helps. The noise reducing bit like the current davinci qualifiers have and "clean black" "clean white". Woild be most helpful i think
Really great that you made this, and truly mindboggling that Blackmagic has not made the qualifiers color space aware yet.
A really handy and multifunctional tool to make precise adjustment in any object of the image !! many thanks.
This tool is amazing in how versatile it is
This is really nice! I was just thinking recently that I'd love a better option for qualifiers - this looks great!
In the Blur Node you can also use Custom Curves to refine the Luminosity Mask
Great work Henry, love it...
Cheers Steve!!
Dear, Thank you for this tutorial. Best regards
Hi there! Perhaps you still need to restart Resolve? Here are the installation instructions, first thing I'd recommend is following the steps again! Let me know if it still doesn't work.
1. Open your Project Settings in DaVinci Resolve
2. Navigate to the ‘Color Management’ tab
3. Under ‘Lookup Tables’, click Open LUT Folder
4. Copy the ‘SmoothShift v??.dctle’ file to this folder
5. Close DaVinci Resolve and re-open
6. Under the ‘Effects’ tab on the Color Page, search for the item labeled ‘DCTL’ and drag it onto a node
7. Select ‘SmoothShift v??’ from the dropdown in the DCTL panel that pops up
@@HenryBobeck Dear, Thnak you very much. My mistake. All is perfect. I will try it these days. Thanks again.
@@laresilience Glad to hear! Happy holidays!
This looks fantastic! Exactly the kind of DCTL I've been wanting someone to make for awhile now. I love that you can use the node as a matte to interface with any Resolve tool, but I personally think it would be super convenient if you could control XY Linear balance and linear gain right inside the DCTL, as I commonly use those tools when I need to pull a qualifier. Just a suggestion though, I definitely think there's a case to be made for keeping it more simple. Incredible work, looking forward to following what you do in the future
Much appreciated Will! Really glad to hear.
Yeah the lin gain/balance is something I've been considering since early testing, but have yet to pull the trigger on for a few reasons. In the case of shifting exposure, I find that this is one of the few operations that often truly benefits from the case of blurring the matte (which in many other scenarios I find can be perhaps unintuitively damaging), and unfortunately spatial operations like blur in DCTL are very poorly optimized due to internal restrictions so I hesitate to include it since my recommendation would still be to use the matte option and go through Resolve's more performance-optimized blur->lin gain adjustment anyway. Exposure also is one of the more potentially destructive operations you can perform, especially if you're doing any kind of qualification based on hue or sat, and I feel like some users would be tempted to nudge it to taste while doing complex adjustments where they really shouldn't touch it.
All that being said, I'm definitely still considering the additions - especially maybe the balance options since they don't suffer from a lot of the downsides that exposure does. Thanks for the feedback, I've made a note and I appreciate it :)
@@HenryBobeck That’s great to know, super informative. Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
Amen.... pinking with the qualifier after a CST is never a one click operation no matter how pure the colour is .........
Man, youtube bring me to your channel and i saw the title, i was wait a minute lets see what this about, im like let him cook! 🤓 i was thinking to change the names like shadow,mid tones and highlight seems more close to me but man nice 1 going to my dctl arsenal for work 👏🏼
Appreciate it man! Hope you enjoy using it. I'm not sure what you're referring to with the shadow/midtone/highlight names, are you able to expand on that?
@@HenryBobeckyeah im talking about the sat selection mode include all above the term kind confuse me because is not specific like shadow/mid/hi.
@@HenryBobeckand the sat Add/sphere/sub should be in another place like selective box so you can choose the color model u want to use !
@@shadowgold1 Ah I see, yeah I agree that the selection modes could be a little confusing, they are perhaps one of the less intuitive parameters. With regards to the additive/spherical/subtractive option, the idea is to allow the user to smoothly blend between each model to give more fine-tuned control than a dropdown would. If instead you'd rather be specific to the model used, you can simply set the slider to one of the extremes (0 for additive, 1 for subtractive), or in the middle (0.5 for spherical). I appreciate the feedback so far, I've noted all of them :)
Interesting - going to have to try this out. Good work
Looking forward to your thoughts Jim!
wow, that's really cool and useful
🔥🔥 love this
Cheers man! If you test it out I'd love to hear how it feels for you
@@HenryBobeck gotchu
very nice!!!
How to build own custom Odt luts from your dctl like gamma mapping Rebuilding A LUT (+ Power Grade) From Steve Yedlin's Knives Out Demo
@@deepmusic2456 Hey there! That's a pretty big question that truthfully goes far beyond the scope of the dctl. You're welcome to use SmoothShift as a piece of the puzzle for introducing some of the nonlinear peculiarities into the look - in fact id say it does very well at this - but it is unable to replace a DRT or do any sort of tone curve adjustment. For look building, i would suggest using another tool to build the tone curve, then split toning, then broad strokes hue/sat/lum adjustments - then only for the remaining nonlinearities in hue/sat/color density would i use SmoothShift. Hope this answers your question at least somewhat! There are a lot of topics involved that would be far too much to cover in a RUclips comment
Every single key you pull has noise in it. You should add a blur slider
Hi Togan! You bring up a good point of discussion - I've noticed the same thing in the past. In a bit of an unintuitive way, however, I think it's important to note that the little specks on the matte itself don't always indicate an unsmooth operation, since images themselves have no constraint of being smooth pixel-to-pixel. For example if there's a tiny red bit on someone's face, that can be super defined from the pixels around it and appear as a speck in a selection matte, but it should still be shifted if you want to make the reds more orange, for example, and in this sort of case I'd argue it's actually smoother to shift every red pixel evenly than start selectively picking ones that shouldn't be affected, if that makes sense. In short: the specks can be slightly deceiving smoothness-wise, and it tends to matter more what you actually do to those areas and how smoothly you affect colors that are close in hue/sat/lum value rather than spatially close in the picture. Hope that makes sense!
(For the same reason, I also only advise blurring the matte for very specific operations, which is one of the reasons I've left it out of the tool. You can still use the strategy I show at 12:15 when you do need it)
Hi Henry, thanks for the detailed reply but there will be never a spot in a picture ,shot with a camera and a lens, that will have a super sharp separation as you describe, maybe a green screen footage with a sharp object in foreground, so you will eventually need gradation, softness and blur to have a clean key both in color grading and vfx. Apart from this discussion, examples that you showed in the video is not a situation that you discribed in the comment. Those are simple noisy keys. I am following this new dctl trend for some time and all of them have this noisy keying problem. So if you solve this problem it will take you apart from the rest. I hope this makes sense. Cheers
Does it only work in version 19 of DaVinci?
I've tested it for both v18 and v19, but can't confirm for previous versions. Feel free to download the free demo if you're using a different version to see if it works!
@@HenryBobeck I tested it on version 17, and the tool isn’t responding. I use version 17 due to some specific features in Fusion. Is there any chance of an update for previous versions?
@@vdoo Good to know. I'll take a look around and see if I can make a v17 compatible version. Appreciate the feedback
@ Thanks man
Cant take an alpha out from this 🥴😢
As soon as Blackmagic fix alpha functionality with DCTLs that will be possible through the alpha output! For now though, all you have to do is enable the 'Show Selection' and 'Matte' checkboxes and use the RGB output in the same way, as shown at 11:12
@ yes i just saw that part pf the video and have since used it succesfully. Works great!
lovely dctl. 😍
@@FilthyBadger Glad to hear, cheers!