The saturation tool you should never use again (and what to use instead)
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
- Today I'm sharing with you one tool you should never use again for your saturation, and two tools you should use instead - one of them you would never expect.
00:29 The tool to never use again, and why
03:01 One tool you should use instead
04:04 Why this tool gives you "good" saturation
07:00 The unexpected second tool you should use
10:19 Why this works
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I feel like color warper needs to be discussed after this series on curves.
great point!
Plus 1
Plus 2
+1
Yes. Color warper please .
Just found your channel, ( recommended by reddit users) just watched 4 videos and just noticed there's no music and intro? I love it! so peaceful.
Don't worry Hue V Sat, in a few years when everyone is bored of the 'cinematic look' and craves some of that lurid 80's video goodness, you'll be back!
Love it! I live in hue v hue, because I find that the regions between the color primaries are where cameras and codecs prove their worth. I started in audio. The crossover region between two drivers on a speaker (woofer and tweeter) is a wonky place, and the equivalent can often be said about the space between the camera sensor’s color channels, especially the red and green. This is compounded by the fact that silicon chips are most sensitive to infrared and lower frequencies, even when they’re filtered to green and blue. Consequently, red clips easily, and the green and especially blue tend to get noisy, as they’re progressively less sensitive. Add to that that all of the sensor primaries often have overlap, so there’s regularly a ton to clean up between red and green, notably skin, wood, and foliage. I wish I was having comparably good results with color slice and subtractive sat, but I’m getting more artifacts and noise than I’d like. Any tips for less image breaking aside from going easy?
OMG WHY DID I NOT FIND THIS VIDEO BEFORE!!!
A sort of combination of the two is to rotate the hue within the colour slice colour of your choice. Been using that a lot to great effect. Both to purify colours and to help certain objects stand out.
Cool idea!
If you watch a cropped area of lets say BLUE, a blue patch or so, you´ll find that Hue-vs-Sat lowers the complementary colors to saturate (see parades), while Color Slice raises the picked color (compl. stay on the same level).
While both looks similar on the vectorscope, it completely differs lookwise (HvS looks darker, video-ish). Also, picking a color in HvS gives you a quite short range of color, kind of "peak". Its a good idea to widen the color points left and ride to a fair amount.
I tried with a gradient - Color Slice is nice and wide, HvS is quite narrow when using the color picker. Bad chance to raise/lower a too narrow part of your colors then.
thanks for giving this insides! it motivated me to look further in it and investigate...
Thank you for these excellent tutorials! I appreciate the professional and straight-to-the-point approach you apply in your videos!
Fantastic. I consider myself an above average colorist with a fairly decent understanding of many of the tools in resolve, but I wouldn’t normally think about using HvH for a sat adjustment. Thanks for making me rethink my application of the curves tools.
HvS looks like it also boosts luminance, making for neon colors when they’re boosted.
Yeah for that reason I often have found myself going in into HvL and selecting the same colour I’ve increased sat on and then dropping luminance but I don’t know if that’s a very good idea.
@ I’ve never had very good results with HvL.
The color slice is a more modern and productive tool for working with shade than the good old HUE vs SAT. We have all used it before, as there was no better tool. By the way, Color Warper can also be considered as an alternative to HUE vs. SAT, but to a lesser extent, since it works more rigidly. The best option remains the Color Slice.
Thank you for your work! I use DCTL mononodes, that German one. They are just excellent at what they do. I can do whatever I want with color. They are much better than Davinci tools.
Great video as always! Also great drinking game for every "hue vs sat" mentioned 😄
Goated, instantly useful content as always 🤙
Very interesting, thanks!
Hi Cullen! It would be nice to hear a geek out session explaining the idea of "hue angle." Why is it an angle and how that differs from other color perspectives for manipulating images.
It's described as an "angle" because of how hues are arranged on a colour wheel. I don't think there's an underlying technical reason based on colour science.
@RobinParmar I'm sure he would be great at explaining his perspectives
Thank you❤
You the best, Cullen.
Wow! Mind blown at that last H vs H adjustment. I would've thought to drag it up on H vs H and I would not get what I wanted and abandoned H vs H as a solution. I'm not a colorist so I might be in the minority there but I thank you Cullen for this invaluable nugget for Sat.
thanks! nice very helpful.
Colour slice is great, but you need to pixel peep to see if it causes problems, along with the colour warper, with 8 bit video clips. It can cause artifacting in the blacks where it randomly turns blacks blue and you can only see if you show at full screen or zoom in. It's normally only when you are using the density controls, which are amazing, but you need to be careful.
You're absolutely right! We discuss these exact issues in my recent ColorSlice video
Hey Cullen, Great video as always.
I have a question for a future video. I'm color correcting a project that has very long takes...2 shots are well over a minute. I was wondering if you could do a tutorial on long takes...shots with multiple lighting setups, multiple masks. I would love to know your approach to complicated shots that have multiple color profiles and how to navigate a complicated setup like that.
Thanks and keep up the great work! Also I love Contour.
i wanna see this too!
Great video
Cool. I now have a better approach and understanding of color manipulation. And how to gain a better result.😄
I use some DCTLs that work as well as Slice or in addition to Slice.
Color Slice should have a built-in High Frequency bypass function. It gets so noisy! In most occasions I've used it, I put a Detail Recovery after it to fight the extra noise it creates.
That would be a bandaid on a gunshot wound IMO...it really just needs to do a better job from the start 😉
But in LUT creation, you’ve showed some of the issues color slice can create. For that purpose would you still recommend Hue/Sat?
I wouldn't recommend either for look dev...for that task I'd suggest my look dev plugin Contour.
How does it compare to the HSV technique? Or what do you think is the best way to use the Color Slice and HSV together?
So the color slice choice is riding the sat-hue adjustment? Shouldn’t u reset sat-hue curve then compare to slice adjustment to get a more accurate color comparison?
Does anyone know if he has any videos that explain the thought process of seeing a color in a frame and deciding that it needs to be more or less saturated?
Your method with hue vs hue made me think, is it only possible to get this effect with the three primaries red, green and blue? What if I want to have this effect on, let's say, yellow or cyan?
I often use color warper (the spider web) for my look development, but I don't use it to get more saturated or pure colors, but to reduce the color palatte in the frame to get a specific look.
I would really be interested why the color warper is such an ignored tool, is there a specific reason? I find it very intuitive to work with. Would be great if you could also cover it a little in-depth or talk about why you wouldn't use it, if so.
Appreciate your consistently great work!
We'll be talking about the Color Warper soon!
@ Great to hear 🤩 Looking forward to it.
I have one general question for look building. What exactly is the reason to use the curves over the wheels for look building, especially on a global scale like on timeline level? Is it because the curves give you the possibility to be more precise?
Great question! And yep, in general it's because they allow more precision and more control than one or even several knobs.
Is there a place for contour in this workflow or should that only be applied as a final touch on timeline level?
Yep, Contour is something you'd be grading underneath, but not grading *with* if that makes sense...
What are you using on your control surface to adjust the color slicer? I have the micro panel.
ColorSlice is mapped to my Advanced Panel...I don't think this is the case with the Micro, though I could be wrong.
how are these wipes done? I have tried to figure it out please someone help me 😅 Only way I know is taking stills but thats not fast
Do you mean when I wipe between different image states? That's done by grabbing stills and then wiping to them, which you can do by clicking the "Image Wipe" button at upper left corner of your viewer. Hope this helps!
@ yeah exactly! when you quickly compare two grade nodes or different settings, dont remember specifically but you do it often. Thanks!
Is there something I can use insead of the saturation in the primaries?
Try the Master Saturation in ColorSlice!
What about 8bit footage? Is the color slice a proper tool for tasks like that?
It definitely can be! 8-bit is going to be more delicate no matter what tool you're using, so you just have to keep an eye on it.
In photo editors we have the selective color tool, which increase saturation by decrease the complementary color, which is the best way to have a pure color. I was wondering what is the best tool in DR to do the same way? Hue vs hue if I have understood ?
Hmm, I think I'd have to see that behavior in your photo editor in action to give a good answer here...
There is one thing about saturation that you did not mention.
You discussed how to ramp up saturation but you did not discuss how to reign in very strong colours that are 75% or even around 100%
I use the hue/sat curve to pinpoint the colour/hue that is obviously overpowering the Vector scope and pull it down to a more respectable level.
Is this a good use of the Hue/sat curve or are there other tools to reduce/moderate strong saturation levels of specific colours/hues?
You're right, we didn't talk about that aspect -- for this, I think Hue vs Sat definitely performs a bit better, though I'd still probably use ColorSlice in the interest of consistency and simplicity....
@CullenKelly I'm loving the colour density slider. Used exceptionally conservatively it makes my stuff look really really polished.
Using a monotone DCTL to get contrast nailed and the density slider and I'm half way to making my homemade projects look as if I am working well above my pay grade.
Couldn't you just use the Hue slider in the color slicer tool?
This kind of videos are really hard sometimes, since RUclips really touches your color everytime you upload something.
I would agree with you for the color slice vs Hue vs Sat but I would argue that changing the "purity" of a color has nothing to do with it's saturation. Since you are using Hue vs Hue you are changing the Hue. If you are color grading and you want to create a look, then fine, but again, the last adjustment cannot be called an alternative to Hue vs Sat...
I get your point, but Hue and Saturation are highly related/interactive properties in the visual system and even moreso in RGB displays...
if you philosophically think of saturation as making the color more of that color, E.G. making green more green, then Collin’s method works perfectly
@Andrew-vi7je I have to admit that I watched the video on my Samsung phone which has a bit more saturated screen than my Mac, but what I saw in the last adjustment was a completely different green Hue on the leaves which again from my perspective is not increasing saturation of the Hue that was before but changes the Hue entirely... Therefore I remain to my previous comment that this would be a look development rather a saturation increase.
My problem with Hue vs. Saturation is that it's actually a Saturation vs. Hue graph. ;-)
But the HvH adjustment looks exactly like what it says, a HvH adjustment. Collapsing colors to primaries isn’t the same idea as increasing saturation. Both techniques are great but I have an issue with bundling them together and saying it’s “saturation”.
You talk WAY too much, I'd say you should just show what you're talking about, but I realize what you're doing... you want to make it sound like you know more than you do so you stretch 30 seconds of actual information into 12 minutes. Like we've never seen that before. You only like color splice because it's new so you think it's better. If you actually were a good colorist you'd realize it's no different than anything you had before, decreasing luminosity to give more saturation, or boosting sat and reducing luminosity, techniques real pros have done forever... it took Resolve showing you that for you to fall in like because you're a HACK. Anyone who's color grading even ONE outdoor shot would know that foliage is rarely green in terms of the green channel in an editing program... you didn't add saturation to it, you changed it's color entirely.
and if all three fail, you just need to key it out
Speaking of Purity, wonder if anyone else uses the L channel of the L*a*b* color space to get more color separation, and what Cullen has to say about that.
I dont use da Vinci but in premiere pro I would just select the highlight part of the blue sweater and reduce luma and add sat. What you did here is only increase sat of shadow blue. You want to add density to the highlights
Color slice uses math differently than what you're describing. It's not just increasing saturation of the shadows. It's increasing it in the color space assigned. What you're doing is fine as well, but you're missing the BIGGEST part of Cullens lessons, and lessons as a colorist in general. Time. Real world scenario you want to use 1 tool rather than 2.
Christian has some good insights below...I'm not just affecting dark blues in my adjustment, but all levels of brightness. He's also right that we always want to do our work with as few adjustments as possible, so 1 tool that gets the job done definitely beats 2.
@@CullenKelly and I learned all this just from your free lessons. Can't imagine what your classes could do for me! Hopefully soon I can join one. Also to note; I could be wrong regarding color-space-awareness in color splice. I'm not sure if it actually is.
Thanks for your comments
so it's a problem of... hue-bris
Instead of "Now I want to talk about", just say it. Quicker, more efficient. We all miss time.
No, you won't have access to prior recordings of the course, but you will have access to recordings of this one!
Sorry to say, your encodes are bad, there is a flicker in the middle of the screen, its been in there in previous vids ( you can clearly see it on grey resolve interface, looking at 1080P version ).
Looks good here in the 4k stream. RUclips is responsible for reencoding the downscaled version, so not much options to do here.
@pdp11 yea 4k is the only version that looks good. Well, all other billions of vids look good except this streamer, but I guess it's YT fault. Ok . Smh.
Try watching in 4K if you haven't already!
Everything is Good .
But at last You are comparing HUE & SATURATION . which is confusing