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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Davinci Resolve for Stills

Eric Haase

Eric Haase

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Is there any workflow or similar product for grading stills that is like Resolve? I find it laborious to use the brushes in Aperture and find I prefer to use the Tangent Wave along with Power Windows and qualifiers for any color work. I think after 16 years of supervising color sessions and doing some of my own grading work my brain just thinks with these tools in mind. Maybe I just need to take the time to learn Photoshop better or get used to Aperture. Just wishing for Resolve for stills!!!
 
I've color-timed tons and tons of slides and still pictures with various kinds of DaVinci over the years. I can recall a PBS project that used 1500 stills, each with programmed recomposition moves, power windows, and (sometimes) very complex color correction.
 
Eric Haase said:
Is there any workflow or similar product for grading stills that is like Resolve? I find it laborious to use the brushes in Aperture and find I prefer to use the Tangent Wave along with Power Windows and qualifiers for any color work. I think after 16 years of supervising color sessions and doing some of my own grading work my brain just thinks with these tools in mind. Maybe I just need to take the time to learn Photoshop better or get used to Aperture. Just wishing for Resolve for stills!!!
Click to expand...

Hi Eric,

What's the main issue you are running into when trying to do this today?

Regards,
Rohit
 
can I bring in CR2 Raw files or 16bit TIFFs into Resolve? I'm not looking to create video content- just looking to grade stills and end up with stills...as an alternative to Aperture or Photoshop...for fun! Because I love Resolve so much!!!!
 
Eric Haase said:
can I bring in CR2 Raw files or 16bit TIFFs into Resolve? I'm not looking to create video content- just looking to grade stills and end up with stills...as an alternative to Aperture or Photoshop...for fun! Because I love Resolve so much!!!!
Click to expand...

You can bring in 16-bit TIFFs, no CR2 though.
 
Eric, I would create a flat pass in Adobe Camera RAW and then batch convert out to 16-bit TIFF. Import TIFFs into Resolve and you should have a good starting point to grade from. If you need to go back to RAW to make an adjustment it should be easy to then bring it back into Resolve and apply the look you were already using.
 
Also, I believe Adobe Bridge will be your friend here. You can use it to organize, rename, convert, etc. You can also use Camera RAW from within Bridge. Here's how.
- To open raw files in Camera Raw from Adobe Bridge, specify that option in Adobe Bridge preferences. Choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Adobe Bridge CS6 > Preferences (Mac OS). In the Behavior area of the General tab, select Double-Click Edits Camera Raw SettingsIn Bridge. If this preference is not selected, double-clicking raw files opens them in Photoshop.
 
I have also used Resolve to grade stills. Works great using the CR2 -> TIFF 16-bit route.

But be warned. High resolution will require more ram on your GPU. I am using a GTX470 with 1.3 gigs on it. It will not work on anything higher 3-4k'ish. A real letdown when a work a lot with 8K and upwards scans of medium format. Would love to use Resolve for that, but need a beefier GPU for it.

Does anybody know the math for: frame resolution equals gpu ram?
 
As a Stills shooter, I spend a whole lot of time in Photoshop and every time I come out of Resolve, I'm like... why can't Photoshop be this easy and fast?!!! Especially with a Panel! One of the biggest things is how easy it is to change the masks in power windows. I often use gradient masks in Photoshop and they're so much easier to fine tune in Resolve.

The biggest drawback to the Resolve workflow is the IO. It's definitely more tedious having to import stills into the media pool and then setup their export settings and create an export job. If resolve added simple "Open" and "Save" features for stills it would kick Photoshop's ass!

I do often use something like the Qualifiers in Photoshop. If you add an HSL Adjustment layer, you can pick specific colors and adjust their Hue / Sat / Lightness and this is of course Mask-able. Almost anything you can do in Resolve can be done in Photoshop... it's just more tedious.

CB
 
Yep. Shake was great for lots of stuff. Too bad Apple let it die. :(

I use Resolve for lots of stuff, including stills. I pull lots of stills from EPIC, it's great.

Photoshop can do everything Resolve can do and more, so I still spend most of my time with photos there. Apps like Resolve and LightRoom both show us that perhaps it's time for Photoshop to get an interface overhaul to make everything more accessible in an up-front sort of way. Honestly, the Photoshop interface, which proliferates most of Adobe's apps as well as many other graphics apps throughout the industry, is ancient. I appreciate its one-time innovativeness and broad familiarity. That said, there's so much more that can be done these days.

Lightroom is somewhere between the color grading apps and Photoshop, blending features of both, but lacking the more robust capabilities and fine control of either. I think it's a glimpse of what can be, but as it is, I find I don't use it much because of what it lacks. Serious re-touching has to go back to Photoshop. Serious color work is better handled in Photoshop or over to a color-centric app like Resolve. Even though Resolve isn't really intended for stills, it works great for it. At least if the images are intended to stay in the digital realm. If destined for print, it needs to be in Photoshop where we have better output colorspace management and ICC profiles, process matching, etc..

I like Lightroom a lot, I really do, and find it very convenient for a lot of general photo processing. It still feels like an overpriced toy to me though...
 
Not worth the effort. Shake is locked in 32bit land, not optimized for more than 2 cores, nor is it optimized for current CPUs... It was a dog on OSX 10.5 on a 2008 Mac Pro.

:-(


And it's keyer, motion compensation and optical flow tech and all that, which were state of the art 8 years ago, are lacking today. Much better to stick with the modern tools like After Effects, Nuke, etc..
 
Christopher Barrett said:
As a Stills shooter, I spend a whole lot of time in Photoshop and every time I come out of Resolve, I'm like... why can't Photoshop be this easy and fast?!!! Especially with a Panel! One of the biggest things is how easy it is to change the masks in power windows. I often use gradient masks in Photoshop and they're so much easier to fine tune in Resolve.

The biggest drawback to the Resolve workflow is the IO. It's definitely more tedious having to import stills into the media pool and then setup their export settings and create an export job. If resolve added simple "Open" and "Save" features for stills it would kick Photoshop's ass!

I do often use something like the Qualifiers in Photoshop. If you add an HSL Adjustment layer, you can pick specific colors and adjust their Hue / Sat / Lightness and this is of course Mask-able. Almost anything you can do in Resolve can be done in Photoshop... it's just more tedious.

CB
Click to expand...

I find Photoshop to be really tedious for the kind of simple stuff I want to do. I like some things about Aperture but it is also tedious in it's own ways and the LGG style color wheel icons work terribly. Having to brush areas is also really tedious.

BMD could take Resolve and adapt it for stills with an easy import/export and organization tool. That would be awesome, but seems very unlikely. :(
 
You might also try some of the NIK plugins for Lightroom or photoshop. The interface is very different from both resolve and photoshop, but its genius. Definitely worth a look.
 
"Horses for courses" my friend. A huge percentage of the wedding photogs and sports photogs that slam down 3000 images or more on a weekend use Lightroom. Download the free trial, spend $30 for one month of "all you can eat" training on Lynda.com or KelbyTraining.com, pick one of the Intro to Lightroom courses and spend about 2-4 hours ...... or watch the free intro to Lightroom videos on Adobe.tv. Yes, the interface is foreign to video - it is a paradigm shift - but there have been a lot of those in video/cine as well. The workflow can be amazingly fast, especially compared to working only in Photoshop.
 
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