DaVinci Resolve is the most capable colour tool most people will ever have on their machine, free, and that abundance is exactly why grades in it go wrong. There is no obvious order of operations in the interface, so people start with the look and spend the rest of the evening fighting it.
The order below is the one the software is built around. It is worth following even when it feels slow, because every step after it is easier.
Set colour management before anything else
Project Settings → Color Management, before the first clip is touched.
| Setting | When to use it | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| DaVinci YRGB | You will apply conversion LUTs yourself | No automatic transform — full manual control |
| DaVinci YRGB Color Managed | Mixed cameras, or you want the simple path | Resolve converts each clip from its own profile |
| ACES | Heavy VFX, multi-vendor delivery | An industry interchange standard, more setup |
For most solo work, Color Managed with Output Colour Space set to Rec.709 is correct and removes a whole category of problem. Set your input colour space per clip in the media pool, and Resolve handles the conversion — which means you are grading a normal-looking image instead of trying to grade log directly.
If you prefer YRGB and conversion LUTs, the transform you need is camera-specific: which Rec.709 LUT your footage needs covers choosing it, and adding LUTs in Resolve covers the mechanics.
Work on nodes, not on one image
The node graph is the reason to use Resolve, and it is simpler than it looks. One node, one job:
01 Balance exposure and white balance
02 Match this shot against the others
03 Look the creative grade or LUT
04 Secondary skin
05 Secondary sky / background
06 Output vignette, grain, final contrastAdd a serial node with Alt/Option + S. The value is not technical purity — it is that in three days you can turn off node 03 and still have a correctly balanced shot underneath, instead of a single node holding six decisions welded together.
Balance the shot first
This is the step that does the most work and gets the least attention. On node 01, with scopes open:
- Lift until the darkest part of the frame sits near the bottom of the waveform without crushing.
- Gain until the brightest part approaches the top without clipping.
- Offset to correct the white balance until neutral objects sit with red, green and blue level.
- Gamma last, for the midtones.
Use the parade scope rather than your eyes. A monitor that is slightly warm will have you grading every shot slightly cool to compensate, and you will not notice until you watch it somewhere else.
Balanced footage looks unremarkable, and that is the correct result. Colour grading basics goes further into why the order matters more than any individual control.
Match the shots to each other
Cut between two clips of the same scene, repeatedly, and adjust node 02 until the cut stops being visible.
Shot matching is what separates footage that looks graded from footage that looks handled. An audience never notices a good grade, but they always notice the shot where the wall changes colour. Match to the shot that is hardest to fix rather than the one you like best — the others have more room.
Then, and only then, the look
Node 03 is where the creative grade goes, and by this point it is a small decision rather than a rescue mission.
A look is usually some combination of contrast shaped in the curves, split-toning through the colour wheels, and a little saturation restraint. If you use a creative LUT, put it here — never at the start — and lower its strength, because most are built for footage that was already balanced.
What actually produces a filmic result is mostly not the LUT: it is highlight roll-off, restrained saturation and consistent skin. What creates the DaVinci Resolve film look takes that apart properly, and how to make footage look cinematic covers the parts that happen before the grade.
Secondaries, last and sparingly
Secondaries isolate one thing. In practice, two are worth the time:
Skin. Qualify it with the HSL picker, soften the selection heavily, and make small moves — a touch of saturation, a nudge of hue toward consistency. Heavy-handed skin work is instantly recognisable, and skin tones are the one thing a grade must not break.
Sky or background. A power window with tracking, to hold a blown sky or lift a dark backdrop.
Where the timeline stops being right
Everything above assumes shots worth individual attention. A lot of footage is not that.
If you have a card of 200 clips from one camera, on one profile, that all need the same conversion and a consistent look, opening a Resolve timeline is a disproportionate amount of ceremony for a transform that is identical on every file. The same is true of a photo shoot needing one treatment across the whole folder — batch editing in Lightroom and Photoshop's batch options have the same ceiling.
BatchTone is for that half of the work: point it at a folder, choose a .cube, and it applies the LUT across every photo and video file in one pass with a per-file strength dial. It is not a Resolve replacement and it has no timeline — Resolve alternatives covers the tools that genuinely are. It is what you use so that the clips arriving in Resolve are already consistent. There is a seven-day trial with everything unlocked.
Common questions
Is the free version of DaVinci Resolve enough for colour grading?
Yes, comfortably. The free version includes the full colour page, nodes, scopes, power windows and tracking. Studio adds noise reduction, some effects and faster rendering — none of which are grading limitations.
What is the correct order to grade in?
Colour management, balance, shot matching, look, then secondaries. The common mistake is starting with the look, which means every later correction fights it.
Why does my footage look flat in Resolve?
Almost always log footage with no conversion applied. Either set the input colour space under colour management or apply the conversion LUT for your camera's profile on the first node.
How many nodes should a grade have?
Usually four to six. More than that is often one decision being repaired by another — worth checking the balance node before adding a seventh.
Should I use a LUT or grade manually?
Both, in order: a conversion LUT or colour-managed transform to get into Rec.709, then manual balance and matching, then optionally a creative LUT for the look at reduced strength.