Helios Grade - DaVinci Resolve Tools by Colormetric Labs (v1.10.0)

Downloadable Files

You can download Helios Grade for free from the end of this page.

Helios Grade by Colormetric Labs

A clean digital image is not always a finished image. Highlights can feel too sharp, colour can lack density, and perfectly smooth frames may miss the optical texture associated with film. Helios Grade is an OpenFX plugin for DaVinci Resolve designed to address these parts of the finishing process directly inside the grade.

Rather than applying a single baked look, it separates film-inspired finishing into individual tools for print character, light behavior, diffusion, color density, grain, framing and other adjustments. You can enable only the modules a shot needs, inspect their masks, control their strength, and combine them with a normal Resolve node workflow.

Film Character Without a Baked LUT

One of the central parts of Helios Grade is its library of 84 distinct print looks, organized into 10 groups. These looks are created with live colour matrices and curves rather than baked LUTs, so they remain part of an adjustable grade.

The library covers a broad range of styles, including print stocks, Portra 160/400/800, Fujifilm Reala Ace and Classic Chrome, Velvia, Astia, Fuji Pro 400H, CineStill 800T, Eterna, monochrome stocks, bleach bypass, cross process, faded release, creative negative, chrome and vintage families, along with several designed colour palettes.

Kodak 2383, Fujifilm 3513 and Eterna profiles are numerically fitted against reference LUTs, while ten profiles are derived from published sensitometry. The plugin identifies which looks are reference-based and which are designed.

Because the print profiles include a blend control, you can introduce them gradually rather than forcing the entire grade to full strength.

Light, Diffusion and Optical Texture

Helios Grade divides its optical effects into separate modules, giving each type of light behavior its own controls.

Halation

The Halation module creates a warm red-orange bloom around bright edges. Its Classic model spreads a single mask, while the Film model gives red, green, and blue separate spread widths with an exponential tail to represent the different scattering behavior of dye layers.

Edge Isolation preserves the original highlight while letting the surrounding spill develop, which is useful when highlights need softer, film-like edges without lifting the entire frame.

Glaze, Mist and Glow

Diffusion is handled through two different approaches.

Glaze places a blurred version of the image back over the frame using Soft Light, Screen or Multiply modes. It includes independent blur, colour, shadow and highlight controls, creating broad luminous depth while retaining underlying detail.

Mist is designed around lens-filter behavior. Its controls include highlight bloom, Midtone Softness, Bloom Saturation and Tonal Bias. A named filter wheel can also set the effect by filter name and density.

Glow is separate from these diffusion tools. It targets the bright end of the image with threshold, radius, and tint controls, plus a wider soft glow underneath. You can view its mask while setting the threshold, helping restrict the effect to actual highlights.

Grain That Responds Across the Frame

Helios Grade includes frame-varying grain with independent shadow, midtone, and highlight response.

Two grain models are available:

• Classic provides the plugin's standard grain behavior.

• Film sizes grain in microns per stock through a Super 35 aperture, with blue as the coarsest layer and sub-pixel grain faded rather than aliased.

Edge protection can also keep grain from becoming excessive around elements such as faces or text.

The grain system is resolution-aware. Classic grain scale and effect radii can scale with frame height, helping a look created on an HD timeline retain similar proportions when moved to 4K, 6K, or 8K. A Size Reference option is available when fixed-pixel behavior is required instead.

Colour Density and Tonal Separation

The colour tools extend beyond conventional saturation adjustments.

Colour Density includes Vibrance and separate cyan, magenta and yellow density controls, along with bleach bypass and two Chroma Rolloff controls. One operates across reds through greens while leaving skin tones alone; the second works on blues and can shift the treatment of colours ranging from cyan skies to violet-blue tones.

Split Tone provides separate colour pressure for shadows, midtones and highlights. Skin protection is included so you can apply the look without pulling faces as strongly into the tonal treatment.

Before these modules, Input Trim provides exposure in stops and contrast. Printer lights are available per channel at twelve points to a stop. Because Input Trim operates ahead of the creative modules, changes made here affect how the rest of the Helios Grade processing responds.

Finishing the Frame with Vignette and Blanking

Helios Grade includes two different approaches to shaping the frame edges.

Vignette provides corner falloff with separate size, roundness, and feather controls. Its dimensions scale with the frame rather than being tied only to pixel count.

Blanking is designed for a different result: a soft coloured frame matte with independently adjustable strength for all four corners. Shared controls handle size, blur, colour and corner roundness. The corners blend continuously along the edges, allowing uneven film-gate-style borders without visible seams.

This independent corner control makes Blanking suitable for asymmetrical borders that a conventional centered vignette cannot create.

Mask Views and Independent Modules

The major effect modules in Helios Grade provide mask views, including the skin-protection system. Instead of adjusting a parameter without knowing exactly where it is acting, you can display the affected pixels, define the range, and then return to the normal image view.

The modules are also designed to work independently. A shot does not need halation, diffusion, print processing, grain, and every other effect at once. You can build the finish selectively and blend each component to suit the image.

Creative sliders and colour controls can be keyframed directly in DaVinci Resolve.

DaVinci Wide Gamut and Optical Blending

Helios Grade works natively with DaVinci Wide Gamut / DaVinci Intermediate as well as Rec.709/sRGB.

The Input Color Space control tells the plugin which working space it is receiving. On a DaVinci Wide Gamut timeline, Helios grades DWG directly and returns DWG, preserving highlights brighter than white through the plugin rather than flattening them during an internal conversion.

The plugin also offers Classic and Linear Light optical blending for Mist, Glow, Halation, and Sharpening. This setting changes how those four modules combine light; it is not a colour-management conversion.

On a DaVinci Wide Gamut timeline, Classic is designed to match the Rec.709 look, while Linear Light can bloom from scene light so specular values above white contribute differently to the effect.

A Practical Helios Grade Workflow

A straightforward Helios Grade workflow can be organized as:

Input Color Space → Base Balance / Input Trim → Light Behavior → Colour Separation → Print Profile → Grain

First, set the Input Color Space to match either Rec.709/sRGB or DaVinci Wide Gamut / Intermediate. Exposure, contrast, and white balance can then be established in Resolve, or Input Trim can handle exposure and contrast before the plugin's other modules.

Halation, diffusion, Glow and Midtone Softness can then shape light and texture. Split Tone and Color Density handle color separation, followed by a print profile for the final stock character. Grain can be introduced near the end of the chain.

This order is not mandatory; the modules remain independently controllable and can be combined with Resolve nodes as part of the existing grade.

Compatibility and Technical Details

The plugin is supplied as a ZIP that is copied into DaVinci Resolve's OpenFX plugin folder. Once installed and activated, it runs directly from the Color page as part of the Resolve grading workflow.