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Hi all, I’m a bit new to this so please correct me if this doesn’t make sense.
I’m working in davinci resolve with two DELL Ultrasharp monitors. I have calibrated the monitors with an i1Display Studio.
As I understand it, Resolve is not colour managed, so even though my monitors are calibrated, I’ll be seeing the ‘wrong’ or uncalibrated image in Resolve (when the viewer is displayed on the monitors I am using).
So I need to generate a 3D LUT in Displaycal which basically applies a compensation to the viewer as a LUT, so the image I see in Resolve is affectively being colour managed to match the calibration of my monitor.
Is that right?
Currently, without this LUT I know that what I’m seeing in Resolve is ‘wrong’ because when I export, the file that comes out (whether it is QT, DPX, TIFF or whatever) looks different to what I see in Resolve. I’m viewing the output in Screen, which I use so I can check the colour management – using the management mode ‘Embedded’. This looks the same as Quicktime. The only way I can get the output in Screen to match the look I see in Resolve is if I choose ‘Bypass’ from the Colour Management setting.
I have now generated a LUT in DisplayCal which I apply to the viewer in Resolve, and this means that the look in Resolve I am seeing is the same as the output I see in Screen (again, using the ‘Embedded’ colour management option).
My question is – have I done this right? Or is the look I was originally seeing in Resolve (and the one I was seeing in Screen with ‘Bypass’ enabled). The more accurate image?
Calibrite Display SL on Amazon
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.And I guess as an extension of this question – if we go through all of the trouble of calibrating monitors, what is then the best way to view video on these monitors in the most accurate form (in software terms). It seems like every piece of software I use – Premiere, AE, Screen, Quicktime, Resolve, displays video differently, with a confusing combination of software colour management and how that interacts with the colour management of the OS.
Small update – if I go into the resolve preferences and choose “Use Mac Display colour profile for viewers” that seems to do the same as applying the LUT to the viewer – i.e. applying the monitor’s calibration to the viewer. Again, I’m not sure if having this box ticked / unticked is going to produce the most accurate image in the resolve viewer.
I’m working in davinci resolve with two DELL Ultrasharp monitors. I have calibrated the monitors with an i1Display Studio.
As I understand it, Resolve is not colour managed, so even though my monitors are calibrated, I’ll be seeing the ‘wrong’ or uncalibrated image in Resolve (when the viewer is displayed on the monitors I am using).
So I need to generate a 3D LUT in Displaycal which basically applies a compensation to the viewer as a LUT, so the image I see in Resolve is affectively being colour managed to match the calibration of my monitor.
Is that right?
No.
When you calibrate a monitor (depending on its capabilities) you are making it to behave like some calibration target.
Common monitors can be calibrated internally to fix whitepoint.. and thats all. Additionally using GPU you can correct grey (its color, even white color, and gamma). This won’t modify boundaries of monitor colorspace.
Some advanced monitor can modify monitor native colorspace to simulate some smaller colorspace, like widegamut monitors simulating sRGB.Depending on your Dell model you can do 1st one (DisplayCAL or i1Profiler) or 2nd one (DUCCS for monitors with HW calibration)
As you may have read in other threads usually for this 2nd type monitor is only calibrated in white and grey, leaving whole native colospace so you can use it in other apps.After calibration display is measured, like a taylor, and a description of calibrated colorspace is measured and stored in an ICC profile.
Color management engines that support ICC use this information to translate RGB numbers in some colospace (sRGB for example) to another set of numbers in monitor colorspace, so monitor is showing the same color as image.Resolve and other apps like madVR in Windows make a different approach. Instead of calculating this transformation on the fly (image colorspace -> monitor colorspace, for every possible requestes image colospace) these apps use a “crystalized”, fixed transformation from ONE image/video source colorspace to Display colorspace, a LUT3D.
Since display colorpace is described by an ICC and “source image” colorspace is described bya nother ICC, these are the inputs of DisplayCAL LUT3D creator.So LUT3D does not match your monitor calibration. A LUT3D reencodes an image to your particular display calibration, so display shows the image like if it was sent to a display that matched image’s colorspace.
Since these whole pipeline may be prone to user errors, if you doubt of resolve response, load a video patches of known colors, like 100% saturation Rec709 RGBCMY and measure them with your colorimeter using ArgyllCMS command line “spotread”, or with HCFR with a wndows laptop next to your workstation.. etc.
Keep in mind that Apple apps (not Adobe’s) rely on macOS color management emgine… which is faulty since it only supports very basic idealized profiles (matrix,perfect neutral grey , infinite contrast ICC profiles) so apps using that engine may not render a superb accurate color corrected color. A well behaved display may be described properly in this simplified way with some accuracy.
Again, if you dobut, use a set of patches will known color like those saturation video patches and measure with ArgyllCMS.If there was a mistake in some step in this pipeline we cannot know, only instruct you to locate it by measuring and explaining this color pipeline as I wrote above.
PS: remember to apply colorimeter correction to spotread command with “-X path_to_correction.ccss”
Thank you for the incredibly detailed and in-depth response! Some of this went over my head but you’ve given me lots to learn about. Think I’ll get a proper REC709 broadcast monitor and use that!
If anyone else is coming to this and has limited knowledge like me then here is what I did to get consistent look across Resolve viewers and other software on my machine. This approach would probably only work for output to web.
– In resolve settings, I went to General – and checked the box ‘Use Mac Display Color Profile for Viewers’. This seems to do something similar to applying your monitor’s calibration to viewer.
– On export, I set a gamma tag that matched the gamma of the timeline – this created a consistent look across all of my outputs (so the image looked the same in Premiere, Vimeo, Quicktime etc etc). Without this tag, Premiere and quicktime displayed the video with different gamma (darker).
Whether or not this look reflects the look of a proper REC709 monitor is another question, but the ‘Use Mac Displays’ checkbox seems to help get a consistent look IF your output is generally going to be similar to your computer monitor (ie web, as opposed to broadcast). The gamma tag on export seem to help different software produce a look that was the same as what was intended.
