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Getting started with color grading using DaVinci Resolve for Adobe Premiere editors

See also: DaVinci Resolve vs Resolve Studio Comparison

Table of Contents

Introduction

If you have been editing with Adobe Premiere and want more creative control over your video image in postproduction, you’ll want to learn how to color grade using DaVinci Resolve from Blackmagic Design.

Resolve is a widely used in professional postproduction for color correction and grading. Compared to the Lumetri tools in Adobe Premiere, Resolve’s Color Page offers a more versatile and capable set of tools. Instead of layers, you are able to work with a powerful node-based image processing model, far better color management, along with advanced secondary masking, power windows, and tracking tools, to name only a few. 

DaVinci Resolve is available in a free version and a Studio version. The free version is very capable for video makers who are starting out. The Studio version offers more advanced capabilities and is sold for a reasonable $299 one-time fee, not as an endless subscription like Adobe Creative Cloud.

You can start by continuing to edit sound and picture with Adobe Premiere and sending your video edit to Resolve for finishing using the Color Page for color grading and the Edit Page for basic effects, transitions, and titles.

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Resolve Training

The best source for detailed step-by-step tutorials is Black Magic Design’s tutorials on the Blackmagic Design Training Page!. These tutorial videos, training courses, and sample media are the best places to start learning the ins and outs of DaVinci Resolve, and they are all free. 

Start with Introduction to Color (1 hour, 33 minutes); this will get you started with the basics and may be enough to color grade your term project.

When ready for more, go through Advanced Color, Color Management, and Delivering Content. These will provide a solid foundation and include sample materials to work with. On that page, you’ll also find The Colorist Guide to DaVinci Resolve, the official hands-on training guide from Blackmagic Design. This will takes you through a series of practical exercises to teach you how to use DaVinci Resolve’s color tools in detail. You’ll learn a wide variety of workflows, effects, and tools that is quite comprehensive.

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Trustworthy Resources on YouTube

For starters, there are three YouTube channels that offer quality tutorials and reliable guidelines you can trust.

  • Team 2 Films produces corporate, commercial, and documentary videos and they also make some of the best training videos for DaVinci Resolve on YouTube, a good place to start.

  • Darren Mostyn’s YouTube channel has produced what I consider to be the best-in-class color grading with DaVinci Resolve tutorials. When looking for specific tutorials, starting here will save you a lot of time; he knows what he’s talking about and is good at explaining things.

  • Cullen Kelly’s YouTube channel offers tutorials that are, on average, far more technical than Darren Mostyn’s; however, he brings some valuable perspectives to the more technical aspects of color grading and image science.

I have evaluated many YouTube tutorial videos and even previewed a couple of expensive courses. So far, the best thing I’ve come across for beginners is Blackmagic Design’s own tutorials and training, and then Team2Films and Darren Mostyn’s YouTube channels for topical tutorials, and then for more technical perspectives, Cullen Kelly’s videos.

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Reference, Troubleshooting, and Beyond the Basics

The DaVinci Resolve Manual (PDF) is one of the better software manuals I’ve encountered. It does not simply explain what controls do, but explains the theory of operation behind them. The manual comes with the DaVinci Resolve download.

The DaVinci Resolve Board on the Black Magic Design Forums is an excellent place to look when troubleshooting or trying to figure something out that you can’t resolve (no pun intended) a problem on your own.

An excellent source for technical information and deep dives suitable for working colorists is the Mixing Light online resource and community.

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Round-Trip Workflow: Edit with Adobe Premiere, Color Grade and Finish in Resolve

The following videos provide a good starting point for Adobe Premiere editors who want to get started using Resolve for Color Grading:

Here are the steps for editing in Adobe Premiere, performing color grading and finishing work (including titles and effects) in DaVinci Resolve, bringing the finished video back into Premiere in a new track over the old video. Keep the old video tracks around just in case, simply disable those tracks and then export the final video with a final sound mix from Adobe Premiere. This is by far the easiest, less error-prone way to edit and sound mix in Premiere. Color grade in Resolve, and then perform the final export from Premiere (and you can continue to work on the sound editing and mixing up to the end).

  1. Edit your project in Adobe Premiere, and keep the timeline simple and straightforward
  2. When it comes time to Color Grade and add titles and such, export your timeline as an XML file
  3. If you are working on a lab computer, ensure your DaVinci Resolve Disk Database is on the server, not the local computer! Media Files should be compiled to the local hard drive for usable performance; accessing video files over the network is not viable, as it’s too slow. It’s easy to relink media files if all of your media files are in a single “Media Assets” folder that does not change except the location of the folder itself. Remember the name you gave this Resolve Library!
  4. Create a new DaVinci Resolve project.
  5. Go to Project Settings (File ⇒ Project Settings) and set Color Science to DaVinci YRGB Color Managed, check Automatic color management, and choose SDR as the Color processing model and SDR Rec. 709 for the Output Color Space. With this setting, you can grade log clips as if they were linear clips, and this simplifies the Color Management workflow while taking advantage of color science for the best transformations from log to linear for grading on the Resolve Timeline.
  6. Import the XML timeline export into the Media Pool
  7. If you need to fix scale and position issues, use the Edit Page, select a clip and use the Inspector to change clip properties like position or transform
  8. If you shot log, for clips that were not shot in a format that includes color space information in the metadata, e.g., Sony a7iii, select the correct Input Color Space (right click option) for each clip (refer to your camera report for the specific Color Space you shot with, e.g., S-Gamut3) to have Resolve perform the correct Color Space Transform from the Sony color to the DaVinci YRGB Color Gamut,
  9. Perform color grading in DaVinci Resolve using the Color Page
  10. Use a Node structure with a Primary Correction Node, followed by one or more Secondary Correction Nodes (each followed with an Outside Node); if more than one Secondary Correctio is done, use the Parallel Mixer to combine all of your secondary corrections).
  11. Add any needed effects in DaVinci Resolve using the Color and/or Edit Page
  12. Add your titles and transitions in DaVinci Resolve using the Edit Page
  13. Export the timeline using the Deliver Page  in DaVinci Resolve using ProRes 422 HQ codec to preserve the quality
  14. Import the video you exported from Resolve into Premiere
  15. Place the video in a new Video Track above your other video tracks (keep the original video clips around to make sure you did not introduce sync issues)
  16. Finish your sound mix in Adobe Premiere
  17. Export your final video from Adobe Premiere as a 1080p H.264 file using the Match Bitrate High-Quality setting or the Vimeo 1080p preset
  18. Do a quality assurance check of the final export to ensure everything is complete, especially in audio and video, before handing in the work.

 If you would instead bring individual color-graded clips back into Premiere and perform final titles, effects, and composites in Premiere, there is an option to export XML and Individual Clips (with Handles) from Resolve. This is far more complicated and error-prone; so I don’t recommend this for projects in my classes.

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System Requirements

The system requirements for DaVinci Resolve are:

Apple: MacOS 14 Sonoma or later, 8 GB of system memory (16 GB when using Fusion), and an Apple Silicon–based computer or a GPU that supports Metal. This will be fine for HD work. For 4K work, complex color grading, or Fusion compositing, you’ll need an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 Pro or better) with 16 or 32 GB of unified memory, with 32 GB preferable.

Windows: Windows 10 Creators Update or later, 16 GB of system memory, an integrated or discrete GPU with at least 4 GB of VRAM supporting OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 12.8, AMD/Intel official drivers from the GPU manufacturer, and NVIDIA Studio driver 570.65 or newer. For 4K work, complex color grading, or Fusion compositing, you’ll need 32 GB of system memory and the better the GPU, the better, and DaVinci Resolve Studio will take advantage of multiple GPUs if you have them.

When working with HD footage, especially if you create proxies, the basic requirements are quite workable, you don’t need a high-end computer to get started. You might need a faster computer when you start doing serious color grading, noise reduction, or complex compositing using Fusion.

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