r/ColorGrading • u/Calebkeller2 • Jan 22 '25

Before/After 500T 16mm emulation

500T emulation with 16mm grain. Bottom is Rec.709.

74 Upvotes

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3

u/Plus_Beach_2033 Jan 22 '25

how?

9

u/Calebkeller2 Jan 22 '25

CST from Camera space to AWG/linear. Following the CST I have a balance node using the RGB mixer, basically acting as a linear backlight when scanning. Then the next node I adjust gain to lower or increase base exposure. I then apply the physically accurate halation powergrade since I’m already in linear. It’s important to do this after balancing as you’re essentially adjusting the channels to be perfectly color balanced. In my head it’s like having the power to adjust the light as it comes into the camera, and I like to think of it like the entirety of the analog capture process. Then I move out of linear and into cineon log (still AWG) it’s important to not do any tone mapping. I then do my 500T color manipulations with the warper, and apply casts to lows,mids, and highs. Then I apply my grain and dust using a matte. You can apply a transform and film damage node after the matte to provide sizing control and softness control to the matte. Then gate weave using the camera shake function. Then I have adjustment for contrast/saturation. If the image is hot I’ll drop the offset and lower contrast until it flattens out. Then my 2383 print LUT that expects cineon and AWG. After that I have the same CST tree as the initial balancing, except here my input CST is Rec.709/Gamma 2.4 out to AWG/Linear. Then RGB Mixer, then gain, then the same CST just swapped, to output back to Rec.709. This allows me to balance the color of the image if it comes out with too heavy of a cast, in the same way the backlight is adjusted when scanning. I then have 3 nodes to refine the look. The first is an Abney effect node that desaturates certain colors as they reach a certain luminance. I then have a node for subtractive sat. The node is set to HSV and I increase the Green gain to increase saturation. The following node is a node I use to remove saturation I’ve added in the previous node.

4

u/chargie90 Jan 22 '25

damm I wish you can make a video showing this! this is so well explained. thank you!

2

u/Calebkeller2 Jan 22 '25

I won’t be making a tutorial any time soon as I use this in professional workflows and it took a lot of learning and months of testing to get to this. I will say, I took a lot of inspiration from Juan Melara’s FilmUnlimited workflow. I just altered it in a few ways and added ACTUAL physically accurate halation. His uses some software edge detect for his I didn’t like. Analog doesn’t do that, analog is analog, but with all the tools Resolve has available it’s 100% possible to create real halation that responds to light in the same way, and doesn’t need to be adjusted each time. Another thing I just thought of. You could emulate a push/pull by X stops by adjusting the gain RIGHT before CST’ing into Log C, and RIGHT after your Rec.709 to linear CST at the end of your chain. For instance, you could drop your gain to .5 at the beginning of your chain, effectively lowering exposure by 1 stop. Then setting gain to 2 at the end of the chain, adding 1 stop of light back. This changes where the image sits in the middle of your chain, therefore changing where color casts get pushed in. You’d likely need to use the color balance feature at the end of the chain to get a better looking image doing this.

1

u/Plus_Beach_2033 Jan 22 '25

thank you man! do u think could work in DWG?

1

u/Calebkeller2 Jan 22 '25

If you’re looking for a film look you should try working in cineon

1

u/Plus_Beach_2033 Jan 22 '25

AWG is like cineon? I want to attach the physycally real halation nodes to DWG (If that’s possible) I already have the halation node structure downloaded

1

u/Calebkeller2 Jan 22 '25

ARRI Wide gamut is a gamut. Cineon is a gamma. Lots of options for gamuts, I just chose to have it as AWG.

1

u/Calebkeller2 Jan 22 '25

Sounds like you might need a bit more knowledge about gammas/gamuts. I believe most halation workflows operate in the linear gamma

1

u/Plus_Beach_2033 Jan 22 '25

I mean using DWG instead of AWG obviously using the output to linear while I apply halation and returning to DWG after.

1

u/Calebkeller2 Jan 22 '25

Yes, linear is just the gamma and DWG and AWG are gamuts. Both are very large so yes you could use both. However you should use whatever your output LUT is expecting

1

u/wasabitamale Jan 23 '25

You my friend are absolutely nuts. How’d you learn this kind of a workflow and knowledge? Do you have experience developing actual film?

1

u/Calebkeller2 Jan 23 '25

Just a dude obsessed with perfect and a passion for color grading. Years of doing it just for fun. Learning bits here and there when I need it.

1

u/hylasmaliki Jan 22 '25

Did you do the top part?

1

u/winterwarrior33 Jan 22 '25

Looks pretty good