How to Build a Simple Color Grading Workflow from Log to Final

The result is a flat, low-contrast, desaturated image. Your whites look grey, your blacks look milky, and your colors look muted. This is intentional.

Different manufacturers have their own log formats:

• ARRI uses Log C (and the newer LogC3 / LogC4)
• Sony uses S-Log2 and S-Log3
• Canon uses C-Log, C-Log2, and C-Log3
• Blackmagic uses Blackmagic Film and Blackmagic Gen 5
• Panasonic uses V-Log

Each has a slightly different curve shape and color space, but they all serve the same purpose: preserving dynamic range. A camera shooting in Rec.709 (the standard color space for HD video) might capture 8 to 10 stops of dynamic range before highlights clip or shadows crush. The same camera shooting in log can often capture 12 to 14 stops or more.

This extra information is what gives you the flexibility to recover a blown sky, lift crushed shadows, and build a rich creative grade. Log footage is not broken. It is a tool waiting to be shaped.

The CST answers two questions:

• Input: What color space and gamma is this footage in? (e.g., Sony S-Log3 / S-Gamut3.Cine)
• Output: What color space and gamma do I want to work in? (e.g., Rec.709 Gamma 2.4)

In DaVinci Resolve, you can do this with a CST node at the beginning of your node tree, or by using the Color Space Transform effect. You can also use a technical LUT provided by the camera manufacturer (ARRI, Sony, Canon, and Blackmagic all provide free technical LUTs on their websites).

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Applying the wrong log profile: If your footage is S-Log3 and you apply an S-Log2 LUT, the colors and contrast will be wrong. Always check the camera’s metadata or the shooter’s notes.
• Stacking a technical LUT on top of Color Managed settings: If Resolve is already managing the color space, adding a manual LUT on top will double the transform and break your image.
• Skipping the CST entirely and jumping to creative grading: Grading log footage without a transform first means your tools (curves, wheels, scopes) are working in a non-linear space and your corrections will be inaccurate.

Once your CST is in place, your footage should look like a clean, neutral, normal-looking image. Not beautiful yet, but correct. That is exactly where you want to be.

Your Tools

The core controls for primary correction are:

• Lift / Offset: Controls the dark areas (shadows and blacks)
• Gamma / Mid-tones: Controls the middle tonal range
• Gain / Highlights: Controls the bright areas
• Contrast: Applies a global S-curve to expand the tonal range
• Saturation: Controls overall color intensity

Use Your Scopes

Do not trust your eye alone for exposure. Use scopes:

• Waveform: Shows the luminance distribution of the image from left to right. Useful for checking exposure across the frame.
• Parade (RGB): Shows the red, green, and blue channels separately on a waveform. Essential for detecting color casts.
• Histogram: Shows the overall distribution of tonal values from black to white.
• Vectorscope: Displays color information plotted on a circular graph. Skin tones should generally fall on the “skin tone line.”

Your goal in this step is to set the blacks to a proper black level (not crushed, not milky), set the whites to an appropriate level without clipping, and achieve a natural, balanced mid-tone exposure.

Shot Matching

If you are working with a sequence of shots, this is also the stage where you match exposure between clips. A close-up and a wide shot of the same scene should have consistent brightness levels, even if they were shot at different times or with slightly different camera settings.

Reading the Parade Scope for Color Balance

On the RGB Parade scope, the three channels (red, green, blue) should be roughly balanced in the highlights and in the shadows. If the highlights on your blue channel are significantly higher than red and green, your image has a blue cast in the highlights. If your shadow green channel is lifted, your shadows have a green tint.

Use the Lift (shadow) and Gain (highlight) color wheels to balance the channels.

Correcting White Balance

If a scene was shot under tungsten lighting but the camera was set to daylight white balance (or vice versa), the entire image will have a warm or cool cast. You can correct this by adjusting the Temperature and Tint controls in your primary correction panel.

Skin Tone as a Reference

If your shot contains human subjects, skin tones are one of the most reliable references for color accuracy. On the vectorscope, skin tones should land on or very close to the skin tone line, regardless of ethnicity. Significant deviation from this line usually indicates a color cast.

Trusting Your Eye vs. Trusting Your Scopes

Scopes tell you what is technically accurate. Your eye tells you what reads as natural and pleasing. In primary correction, lean toward the scopes. In the creative grade, lean toward your eye. The goal here is a clean, neutral foundation, not a finished look.

Correction vs. Creative Grade

Color correction is about making the image look right. Creative grading is about making the image look the way you want it to feel. These are two separate intentions, and keeping them on separate nodes (or layers) makes it much easier to adjust either one independently later.

Approaches to Building a Look

Custom look from scratch

Using curves, color wheels, and hue-vs-saturation controls, you build a look by hand. This gives you total creative control and results in something unique to your project. Common techniques include pulling the shadows toward a complementary color (e.g., pushing shadows slightly blue-green while keeping highlights warm), reducing overall saturation selectively, and using an S-curve for a filmic contrast rolloff.

Film emulation LUTs

Creative LUTs emulate the look of specific film stocks (Kodak 2383, Fuji 3513, etc.) or established cinematic styles. They are a fast starting point and can be adjusted by reducing their intensity (blending them at 50-70% is common) and correcting on top of them.

Print film emulation

In DaVinci Resolve’s node tree, adding a print film emulation LUT (such as Kodak 2383 in the Output Color Space) after your creative grade can add filmic tone mapping, softening the harsh roll-off of digital sensors and giving the image a more organic feel.

Color Temperature and Emotional Tone

• Cool, desaturated grades read as clinical, tense, or melancholic
• Warm, high-contrast grades read as energetic, passionate, or nostalgic
• Teal-and-orange grades separate skin tones from backgrounds and create a vivid, cinematic depth
• Flat, muted grades with lifted blacks give a soft, documentary, or indie film feel

There is no objectively correct look. The look should serve the story, the mood, and the audience.

Consistency Across a Sequence

Once you have established a look on one hero shot, use Stills (in DaVinci Resolve) or saved color presets to apply a similar starting point to other shots in the same scene. Then tweak each shot individually so that the grade feels cohesive rather than identical.

Recommended Node Tree in DaVinci Resolve

Using Groups for Consistency

In DaVinci Resolve, you can place clips in a Grade Group and apply corrections at the Pre-Clip, Clip, or Post-Clip level. The Pre-Clip group is ideal for shared input transforms across all clips from the same camera. The Post-Clip group is ideal for a shared creative look across all clips in a scene. This means you only need to build the look once and every clip in the group inherits it.

In Premiere Pro or After Effects

Layer your adjustment layers in order from bottom to top:

1. Input LUT (on each clip or as a bottom adjustment layer per camera type)
2. Primary correction (Lumetri or Color Finesse)
3. Secondary corrections (masks, HSL)
4. Creative look (LUT or custom Lumetri settings)

The same logic applies: one layer, one purpose.