pink highlight removing/noise reduction and sharpening in Davinci Resolve Lite

[scarluuk]

Hey guys, just wanted to share some info i found out when using Davinci Resolve.
I had some problem with pink highlights, especially when i wanted to sharpen my video.
After some trial and error i found a way to decrease the pink highlight and gain better sharpness without boosting the pinkyness.

RAW file with color space set to BMD Film for maximum Dynamic Range
 

CC'ed shot with sharpening applied


CC'ed shot with sharpening and pink removal


Basically what i did was to add a layer mixer node as very last step as you can see here:

The layer mixer node composite needs to be set to add in order to work for this removal.
Now the two nodes it created before the final layer mixer node are the ones where going to work in.
Set the top node to 0% saturation and pull down the Y gain on the bottom node like this:


Now what we did was separate the Chrominance from the luminance, this means that the top node contains the information of exposure and the bottom node contains the information about the color.
If we add a simple sharpening to the top node it only sharpens the black and white channels and doesn't touch the color noise meaning a cleaner/sharper image than you would have with normal sharpening.

Now we added some sharpening to the top node so we need to do the opposite thing to the bottom node.
So go ahead and open the sharpen/blur tab for the bottom node.

Make sure that you turn off the gang button (it's the tiny shackles on the top left in the picture above), this gives you access to adjust the levels individually.
Now these are the settings that worked for me in this picture, just try it on your picture because the settings could of course be a bit different.
If you pull up (meaning less color) the red channel radius you will see that the pink highlight is disappearing together with the red color noise if you shot at higher ISO's.
Now you can use the other 2 channels too to remove some more unwanted color noise, and this trick only removes the color from that color noise meaning more detail with noise reduction turned on instead of blurring the whole picture as the normal noise reduction does.

And there you have it, less noise, no pink highlights and a sharper picture WITHOUT losing detail!
Now i wouldn't say that this is the best or only way, it's just the only way i found out to do this.
Hopefully it could help some of you guys

P.s. sorry for my bad English, it's not my native language

[DaveAbbott]

This is great. Cheers dude!!

Your shot looks epic too!

[marekk]

Thanks for this guide !!

Pls. try to use fresh raw2dng (compiled today) and tell me if you still have issues with pink highlights.

[trsaunders]

Thanks for this, I've been getting quite frustrated by the pink! I'll give this a go tonight 

[scarluuk]

Thanks for this guide !!

Pls. try to use fresh raw2dng (compiled today) and tell me if you still have issues with pink highlights.

Where can i find the fresh raw2dng? also, is it mac compatible? I used RAWmagic so far since the normal Raw2DNG didn't spit out cinema DNG's which are needed for Resolve.

This is great. Cheers dude!!

Your shot looks epic too!

Thanks, you can find the whole test movie where i used this shot in over here on Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/68410126

[mageye]

@ scarluuk

That's a very good look that you are achieving in Resolve. I am impressed .

I have been trying to work with RAW footage in Resolve and am really finding it hard to get the footage to 'play' with Resolve.

What I mean is that (from my understanding) Resolve works in log and the RAW footage from 5DMKII is in linear. I have used an input LUT that converts it from video to log (apparently). When I use this it flattens the image as expected but I am still having problems working the image. It never really seems to be 'easy' to work with and tiny adjustments seem to pull things too far or just have virtually no impact?. The exposures are all over the place. Basically I am having a nightmare with it!!!

Is there any chance you could reveal the most elementary work flow for working with RAW (to get get it to play with resolve properly).

Just the LUT's you use? and the most basic settings would be a big help here because it's really depressing knowing how powerful Resolve is and not being able to get anything reasonable from it

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

[scarluuk]

If i find the time this weekend i will make a small tutorial to show my workflow in Davinci

[mageye]

Thank you for your response. I would appreciate your time on that so very very much. I look forward indeed

[driftwood]

Can you confirm this workflow improves on this?

[scarluuk]

Can you confirm this workflow improves on this?

Basically it's almost the same, didn't knew somebody else already made a video about it haha.
Thanks for sharing your video, just one question, why add an extra node to the bottom layer?
Edit, never mind the last sentence, by adding an extra node you can preview the changes without messing up the gamma or saturation.

[hjfilmspeed]

If i find the time this weekend i will make a small tutorial to show my workflow in Davinci

THAT WOULD BE AWSOME!!!!! your work is excellent!!!

Actually i have a lot of questions for you when it comes to sharpening in resolve. Have you compared the sharpening you can get in resolve with ARC? I find from my tests that ARC has a much more organic sharpening then resolve lite. For some reason when i sharpen in resolve even with the methods above i get a very artifacty looking sharpness and ACR just seems more like film grain. Am i doing something wrong? Would love to here your thoughts because i love the workflow of resolve but im stuck on the look of ACR.

[dirtcastle]

This whole fringing/aberration problem has been a huge obstacle for me.

Thank you for making this information available! I haven't tried this out yet, but I will be back to share my results.

[scarluuk]

THAT WOULD BE AWSOME!!!!! your work is excellent!!!

Actually i have a lot of questions for you when it comes to sharpening in resolve. Have you compared the sharpening you can get in resolve with ARC? I find from my tests that ARC has a much more organic sharpening then resolve lite. For some reason when i sharpen in resolve even with the methods above i get a very artifacty looking sharpness and ACR just seems more like film grain. Am i doing something wrong? Would love to here your thoughts because i love the workflow of resolve but im stuck on the look of ACR.

Never made it to do the tutorial, sorry about that but i will make one in the near future!

About sharpening, the sharpening in ACR is much nicer than in resolve, since it uses a more unsharp mask instead of normal sharpening.
But ask yourself, how much sharpening do you need in your shots? most of the time i add just a little bit and let film grain do the rest.
Since it's a moving picture, sharpening in my opinion is very overrated.
By adding film grain, the picture looks much sharper and organic than if you would only add sharpening to your picture.

This whole fringing/aberration problem has been a huge obstacle for me.

Thank you for making this information available! I haven't tried this out yet, but I will be back to share my results.

If you make a color profile with only this effect/setting and save it as a still, you can apply it to all your shots by using right click and "append node"
If you choose append node instead of add correction you will find out that it only adds the effect to your current correction instead of erasing the last correction and add this effect

[s---70]

I can't understand how you are all satisfied with this workaround. It's just a blur of the color information, so it leads to noticable degrading in areas with high color detail. There has to be a better way, we shouldn't stop looking for it just because we have a workaround that kinda works in some situations!

[scarluuk]

I can't understand how you are all satisfied with this workaround. It's just a blur of the color information, so it leads to noticable degrading in areas with high color detail. There has to be a better way, we shouldn't stop looking for it just because we have a workaround that kinda works in some situations!

Nobody said we should stop looking, there is always a better solution.
But if this solution works for some people, then what is the big deal? working with RAW has still a long way to go to become an easy workflow, so we still have time to look for solutions.
I, myself hope that this will be fixed in Resolve 10, but we can only wait and see.
Until that time, i'd suggest looking for a solution is a better idea than go around and telling people that a workflow isn't ideal.

[arturochu]

is this a problem in resolve and not in acr because of the debayering method? or why dois this happens just in resolve?

[scarluuk]

It's a problem from davinci unfortunately.
If you import the same footage in ACR you will find out that the pink highlights are gone.

[hjfilmspeed]

Never made it to do the tutorial, sorry about that but i will make one in the near future!

About sharpening, the sharpening in ACR is much nicer than in resolve, since it uses a more unsharp mask instead of normal sharpening.
But ask yourself, how much sharpening do you need in your shots? most of the time i add just a little bit and let film grain do the rest.
Since it's a moving picture, sharpening in my opinion is very overrated.
By adding film grain, the picture looks much sharper and organic than if you would only add sharpening to your picture.

If you make a color profile with only this effect/setting and save it as a still, you can apply it to all your shots by using right click and "append node"
If you choose append node instead of add correction you will find out that it only adds the effect to your current correction instead of erasing the last correction and add this effect

No worries!!! I just loved the look of your edit. Real nice!

And i always prefer a more organic sharpness. I use very little sharpening too. I guess what i ment to say was detail. Detail seems to be a little more organic in ACR. (sorry but since i first saw the detail that is possible with the 5d3+ML raw+ACR i dont want anything less ha ha. especialy after fighting with h.264 all these years)  But the color and speed of resolve is just soooooooo nice. Also the method described above is awsome!!! best i have seen for this issue and i have been using it.

Also it might bee my eyes playing tricks on me but it seems like im getting a little better detail from the older versions of raw2dng with resolve then the newer versions. I have not tested this though.

2 Questions.
 Also how do you make this color profile? I usually just apply the color luma separation to the track. but this append node trick could really save some time.
Also do you add your film grain in resolve or in you NLE?
 

[kgv5]

How do you guys are making "highlights recovery" in resolve? (I know, that there are issues with it). I mean what is the best way to recover cloud/sky details without darkening the whole image too much (and i am not talking about that little thick under the settings) ? With BMD setting it was practically impossible for me (i have not much experience with resolve), i tried with masks, curves, everything - it is just always looks worst (weeker) than in ACR (even with some nice LUT like Hunters). However i figure out that with clip setting and rec709 it is easier to do that than with BMD setting.
What do you guys do with it in your workflows?

[hjfilmspeed]

There realy is no way other then dropping the exposure in the raw tab but then compensating with you grade. i think the bmcc setting pulls a lot of those highlights back. Just be super careful not to clip when recording. if possible. use the raw histo too. you should see all of your highlights in resolve if you didnt clip. I use canon standard pic style and expose to the right as much as possible with the histo from canon (yes i know pic styles dont matter but they effect the canon histo. and the over contrasty standard can kina act as a safety net for your highlights and shadows) also in super sunny situations circular polarizer filters will help you reduce spotty highlights from reflections. but this probably doesnt help you to much. I avoid harsh light like the plague now. Sorry i hope this kinda helps.

[araucaria]

Recovering highlights works nice, you have to change to log color wheels, then under high range go down to 0.333 or less, then go to the highlight wheel and pull it to the left (not the actual color wheel but the one below that changes brightness) then go back to highrange and fine tune.

This method of getting the pink away is nice but it doesnt kill the artifacts (at leastwith 50d footage)

[scarluuk]

I've been looking in to the HDR function of Resolve (which only works with R3D files) but if we manage to somehow  convert our cinema DNG's to HDR DNG's so resolve would recognize them then we could bring back a lot of data which is now lost in the footage.
What HDR on R3D files does is make a over exposed image and a under exposed image and put them together in 1 file.
If you add 2 inputs in your grading area in Resolve you can pull back the highlights from the underexposed shot and add more shadow details from the other exposure, all manually!
However, i cannot find how this file structure is created and Resolve only accepts 1 layer at a time (unless it has the HDR file encoded in there somehow)

[hjfilmspeed]

I dont know but i think the hight detail is really good from resolve if you use bmcc profile. still light years better than h.264. then if you add a nice lut you get a smooth roll of into highlights which is delightful. I assume its better in acr but amazing still in resolve. Anyone have any good recommendations for outputting codec for windows. Been using 16bit cineform RGB but sony vegas seems to choke when rendering at like 75% render every time (darn you vegas) so i usually re wrap it to avi then it does ok. Any ideas?

Made this little edit with these tips from scarluuk. Nothing much just a little for fun edit.

[premini]

Apparently Resolve 10 got rid of the purple sucker.

[p48l0]

Thank you so much scarluuk!

Fantastic!

Were weeks that I was trying to find an answer to this problem. Finally I saw this post and following the vimeo tutorial I said "oh no this workflow doesnt work for me" then I try yours at the top of the post and magically the pink dot disappeared.

Plus I learnt a bit of resolve...

And thanks to all the guys out there from the ML to the forum.

EDIT: no sorry it doesnt really work. I was excited by a fast attempt but I realized that was on a blurry footage so the pink higlight disappeared but I couldnt see that the sharpness too. I saw it after on a "on focus image" that the problem was gone as well as the clearness.

I wolud like to show you my problem, so maybe someone can tell me something.



https://db.tt/Mi9uWVNs

I see a pink dot always on the same point of my monitor and in all the shots. This doesnt happen in ACR. Is this what we are talking about here? sorry but maybe I didnt understand the point.