Mononodes - Download Utility DCTLS v2.1 - DCTLEs for DaVinci Resolve Studio

Mononodes - UTILITY DCTLS for Davinci Resolve: The "Utility DCTL" pack consists of tools designed for image analysis and adjustment. Among its offerings is the "Balance DCTL," which allows for the examination of skin tones in footage and the correction of color deviations. The pack also includes the "Clipping DCTL" for identifying and addressing clipping in both light and dark areas. Additionally, the "Isolator" features enable color isolation in bright and dark regions, emphasizing the purity of colors.

BALANCE

The "Balance DCTL" categorizes skin tones in footage as yellow, magenta, or green, based on their deviation from the skin-tone line. The "Neutrals to Green" feature transforms neutral colors into green, while the "Exposure Heatmap" function aids in adjusting the overall image exposure.

CLIPPING

The "Clipping DCTL" detects instances of clipping in light or dark areas. The "Darken" function is particularly useful, as it darkens the entire image except for the clipped part, which is highlighted in bright red, streamlining the clipping check process.

ISOLATOR

The "Show Low" and "Show High" sliders enable the isolation of colors in bright and dark areas. The "Color Isolator" function normalizes brightness to neutral gray, accentuating the purity of colors.

SKIN TONE INDICATOR

Using the DCTL simplifies the color correction process by eliminating the need to switch to the COLOR PICKER tool or manually analyze each facial region. There's no requirement to draw a mask or check scopes for analysis. Activating the DCTL instantly reveals areas on the face aligning with the SKIN TONE line and those leaning towards magenta or green. The "Skin Tone Indicator" slider allows customization of the range that shifts skin color to yellow.

NEUTRALS TO GREEN

The "Neutrals to Green" button streamlines color balancing in DaVinci Resolve. When activated, it identifies areas with similar RGB values, indicating neutral tones, and converts them to green. This simplifies the color balance adjustment process, providing precise control and consistency within a shot.

CLIPPING

The "white threshold" and "black threshold" sliders play a crucial role in refining the clipping levels for bright and dark areas in the footage.

The "monochrome" button simplifies the identification of clipping issues by converting the image to grayscale, making the red indicator for clipping more noticeable on vectorscopes. Additionally, a "darken" button has been incorporated into the DCTL script, which not only turns the image black and white but also significantly reduces overall brightness. When used with the Lightbox tool in DaVinci Resolve, this intensifies the visibility of "red clipping," facilitating easier identification of areas that require adjustment.

ISOLATOR

While the vectorscope in DaVinci Resolve is a potent tool for understanding color composition, it primarily focuses on hue and saturation, lacking a direct representation of luminance or brightness levels. This can lead to similar hues appearing in the same region despite differing luminance values.

The "Show High" feature isolates colors in the highlights, converting non-highlight colors to shades of grey for a clear vectorscope analysis. Conversely, the "Show Low" feature targets colors in shadows, transforming non-shadow colors into grey. Together, these features enable precise and interference-free examination of specific color ranges within an image, offering a robust toolkit for color grading professionals.

SHOW HIGH

The "Show High" feature serves as a potent tool, isolating colors in the highlights of your footage for focused and precise vectorscope analysis. By converting colors outside the defined bright area into shades of grey, this feature enables a thorough exploration of color values in the brighter regions of your image without interference from other color ranges.

SHOW LOW

Concentrating on revealing colors within shadows or darker sections of your footage, the "Show Low" feature renders any colors outside the predefined low-light spectrum as grey. This functionality allows for a detailed examination of color values in shadow areas, free from interference from colors in brighter sections of your footage.

COLOR ISOLATOR

Addressing the tendency of the human eye to be drawn to bright areas, the "Color Isolator" feature eliminates luminance factors, enabling a closer focus on underlying hues and their saturation levels. Activating the "Color Isolator" button equalizes luminance levels across your footage, transforming all shades into a uniform gray. This aspect is crucial, providing an unbiased perspective on color composition and allowing for a clearer perception of 'pure' colors in your footage, laying a solid foundation for color grading decisions.

NODE TREE

For optimal results, place the DCTLs in the node tree after the Log to Rec.709 conversion, as these DCTLs perform best in display color spaces like Rec.709. While the tool is compatible with any working color space, it is essential to note that these tools often work most effectively in a display color space like Rec.709. This is because qualifiers and similar tools are optimized to detect specific colors and benefit from a clear distinction between target colors and surrounding colors. Rec.709, with its more limited color gamut, is closer to the final look that audiences will see, making it easier to isolate specific colors such as skin tones.

How to install

• 1. Open "Project Settings".
• 2. Navigate to "Color Management" and then "Lookup Tables".
• 3. Click on "Open LUT Folder".
• 4. Drag and drop the folder containing the DCTL files into this folder.
• 5. Restart DaVinci Resolve for the changes to take effect.

I recommend utilizing the 'UTILITY DCTL' as the final element in your node tree. This should be implemented after executing a Color Space Transform (CST) from scene-referred to display-referred. 

Mononodes - Download Utility DCTLS 2.1 - DCTLEs for DaVinci Resolve Studio from the below link now!