How To Use Saturation in DaVinci 

Your timeliness is uncanny. 🥴 I literally just spent two days in deep study on this topic (the "science and weeds"). I determined that the saturation knob (additive) is useful for high-key talking head tutorials and filmic, or subtractive saturation (HSV technique), is my go-to for more emotive storytelling. Being part of your community continues to pay dividends. Thank you for discussing the topic. It ranks up there with middle gray. 😁

I’ve switched all my Saturation nodes to HSV since I watched your “How To Get Cinematoc Saturation” total game changer. Thank you 🙏

Something worth mentioning here is the global saturation knob in the hdr-palette. It should be color space aware and work differently from the knob in the primaries.

Always precious advises, dear Cullen, warm and cool teachings, definitely the wise organization for my nodes, follow the basics parameters of Davinci resolve using the DWG timeline’s color space. Adopted the linear Exposure and Ratio nodes, the HSL saturation node, and many other precious advices. Recently follow the how to improve the Mac display renderings... more than 2 years now I consider Cullen Kelly as the best ever open free colorist teacher. ❤️❤️❤️ by the way, I’ve found interesting to use, in the Exposure’s node, only the white clew (luma) to expose correctly without impacting the RGB, now resolved in the SAT hsl or hsv’s node dear Cullen you’re the best

Golden advice as usual. Will start using the HSV Sat trick from now on. I wonder if I can further tweak it by adding a Sat vs Sat curve node after this 'filmic saturation' (as it were) to further reign in the overly saturated, stray peaks I might get.

I use the Hue vs Sat tool the most to adjust my saturation, because i often create my look by de- and increasing oposit colors, but i could also do the same in the HSL Colorspace where i also can adjust the overall saturation within the curve which is my favorite tool of all, so I definitly have to try this out. Thank you for all your hight quality content and kind regards from Germany -Jonathan

My best practice is in using HSV color space for fine cinematic saturation adjustments. In general, if you correctly adjust the divided contrast in medium and dark areas, you can compensate for the direct use of saturation and abandon direct saturation. As an addition, HSV has the best effect on saturation in my practice.

Hi Cullen, first of all let me say just how helpful your videos are. I found your channel a few months ago and have been binging it, currently about halfway through it but my goal is to watch every single video and catch up. I've been adopting everything you've been saying especially the color managed workflow you recommend (and got the voyager pro pack recently as well!) and noticed that when I export following your recommendations, my final video doesn't look like the resolve viewer, and after digging into it further it involves how Mac and color sync utility work, and that a lot of people get around it using rec709a, but that's where my understanding of color science fails and I'm not sure how I can still use DWG/Intermediate and grade directly from my mac's monitor. After a lot of research, there really isn't much out there for us Mac users still grading on our display who also want to color manage the way you recommend, so I was wondering if you already have or would be interested in making a video about color management specifically for more intro colorists like myself who are Mac users who might not have a dedicated monitor yet. I know it's not the final destination for a colorist but for a lot of us where we're at, we don't yet have the calibrated 2nd monitor so we're stuck with what's out there already for using rec709a, but a definitive guide from you would I'm sure help a lot of us be able to still incorporate your workflow and luts, without a dedicated monitor or pc! Thanks for taking the time to read my comment, and I really appreciate all your content so no pressure!

This is fascinating. I'll definitely be trying out your HSL and HSV ideas. Thanks.

Incredible channel!! Been learning tons since I discovered you Cullen. Great job!

Your old video about the HSL for me was lifechanging, helped me a lot to solve one of my greatest problems while grading witch was the saturation. However, for this video i might have skiped something, but i didnt understand the difference between the HSL and the HSV. Arent you still manipulating only the S channel on Both? is there a difference how resolve calculates the saturation channel in between those two spaces? Thx!

was looking for a deep dive on this, thanks!

Thanks again Cullen, great informative video

This was a great tutorial on saturation concepts. Thank you, Cullen!! : )

Hello, cullen. I'm an amateur colorist who loves your lectures very much. I'm always impressed and respectful to your great lectures. Thank you. And I have one question while listening to your lectures. I remember learning that I should set the Lum Mix value to zero when changing the color space, Cullen, what do you think?

Hey Cullen, for your next Live session: Can we go over what must be done to Fuji Log 2 inside DWG when black magic currently only has FLog 1 supported?

Nice workflow with the HSV saturation Cullen but should you not do a proper color balance prior to your node set-up? IMHO you will boost the wrong colors if the color balance was off on your original shot.

Awesome Cullen 🙏🏻. Do you always increase Gamma and reduce Gain? Which combination do you use to compress saturation? My knowledge exploded through your videos, game changer 🎉🥃

Thank you for the professional and in depth video on color. I started my color grading journey about 2 years ago and there‘s still a lot to learn! And it can definitely get overwhelming at some point. Do you have any tips or advice on which topics are the most important or make the biggest difference? Thanks so much

Thank you Cullen! You're a huge help for understanding resolve and a great teacher! Would you mind doing a lesson on compressing high value saturation values? I'm using a combination of traditional saturation and color warper with good results but I'm wondering if you have any nifty tricks.

Hi Cullen, amazing video as always. Your intent to teach us how the tools work rather than pushing your own creative agenda is always felt and appreciated. This video did have me wondering, is there a test chart to play with these tools on to see their results as well? Obviously your examples were very demonstrative, but I am hoping to maybe see the results play out on a chart, similar to when I pull a grey scale ramp to see how different contrast adjustments behave. It would be really cool if there was an analog to this in the saturation space.

I consider myself so lucky being part of your privileged community. You're such an incredibly effective teacher!

there is a great Avery Peck video that uses a DCTL to visualize the contrast curve. Really helps to explain it technically. But maybe not well conceptionally.> alt+Y add splitter combiner should be Independant of your color managed setup. I don't think this is the best way to edit HSL - we should just get an HSL option for the curves panel... we already have something like sat v sat - but that is normalized to the derivative and limited in range. So it stays monotonic.

definitely great info! I've been also looking at your other vids, love it all so far! can you do a video working with groups? I know you spoke a lot of timeline color, which is great! but I was wondering if you can show workflow using groups, for example for different scenes and tie them together into timeline. Thanks!

This information is great! However, I would like to understand placing the saturation node in the bottom layer of the parallel mixer. For example, when I color a poorly white balanced shot and need to correct it, when I boost saturation the colors being boosted are from the pre white balanced image. For instance, get a very blue shot, balance it, then try adding saturation. all of a sudden we reintroduce blue again. I find adding the saturation node after the balance node tends to act nicer. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

Hello my friend. Thanks again for the great content. Looking for ways to significantly improve my drone footage (DJI Mavic 3 pro). Is the trick of popping the video by cranking up the saturation of the midtones (gamma wheel) and toning it down with the gain wheel (one of your latest videos) the way to go?

Great man!

Thx Cullen amazing explanation, plz explain how to make multiple exports from same grade HDR-Rec709-DCIP3-DolbyVision how to setup the color mangment at the start for multiple exports, what are the possible way for trimming at the end. & plz make an Episode on White Point.

I get very noisy results in my low midtones and shadows when I use this HSL/HSV technique. It's the only thing I don't like about it. Try it on a shot that's not so brightly lit and you'll see. It breaks the image and I'm not sure why. I am color managed using braw in DWG I will add also.

Could I ask why you place it as a parallel node and not after your primary adjustments?

Hi Cullen, I love your videos and own your Voyager LUTs. This was an excellent demo of different Sat tools, however you never really say how Sat is calculated using the different tools, you just refer to "video" vs "filmic" (can't remember your exact words). I see the difference, but would like to know the actual way Sat is calculated using the different methods. For example, why is Sat in HSL different from Sat in HSV? Not just showing me how different they look, but what's actually going on under the hood.

how to selectively/locally adjust saturation? what you are doing is a global adjustment

Hi Cullen, thanks for this amazing tutorial! Is there any way where I can adjust the saturation of only one channel (RGB)?

Hi Cullen, how does the HSV method compare to tetrahedral interpolation tools in DCTLs?

Hey please can you tell us how to increase and decrease saturation of certain colours in the hsv node?

Does Lum Mix have any affect when in the HSV node?

Will the hsl work the same with cst dw method?

Cullen, i love your channel man, i have been using the HSV sat trick but sometime it make my image appear some artifacts, im not doing it agressively, but its easy to start to see the artifacts, you know why this happen?

Cullen, I am having a hard time understanding what do you get when you meddle with the "Gamma" knob in the HSV channel vs the "Gain" knob also under the HSV channel. I am confused between the two now under the same HSV channel.

would somebody be able to explain to me the science behind using gamma and gain in HSV. What is boosting gamma and lowering gain affecting color science wise? is boosting gamma only applying saturation boost in my mid tones of my colors and lowering gain subtracting saturation in my highlights?

Did you switch off any of the channels in HSV?

How does your SatShaper DCTL work as far as HSL-HSV?

Do you have a video about audio output levels? I can’t seem to get my audio loud enough

Is it necessary to tuurn off the channels if you only adjust the green (saturation) bar?

I have a general question. If working in a color managed workflow, input: Slog3.cine timeline color space: dwgi output color space: rec709, do tools and LUTs that expect rec709 still work?

Instant Switch to HSV.

This is so gangster.

Tried the HSV thing. It gave me some artifacts in low sat areas...

I only use HSV at this point.

Buddy I know you know your stuff. But please increase the intensity in your key light of front fill. You come off so dark in your videos and your thumbs being pushed out as screen grabs via push services like Google news makes it look like mud.. You need exposure seperation from your bg.. Just saying.. 🙄