Qualifying A Color; Adding A Power Window - Blackmagicdesign Cinema Operation Manual

Using DaVinci Resolve
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Use the HSL qualifier feature to select specific colors in your
image. This is handy when you want to make areas of your
image 'pop', to add contrast, or to help draw the audience's
attention to certain areas of your shot.
Use power windows to mask out areas you don't want to be
affected by the HSL qualifier secondary adjustments.
Power windows let you make secondary corrections to specific
parts of your image.
However if you need to adjust specific parts of your image, say for example you wanted to improve the
color in the grass in a scene, or you wanted to deepen the blue in a sky, then you can use secondary
corrections. Secondary color corrections are where you select a part of the image and then adjust
just that part. With nodes, you can stack multiple secondary corrections so you can keep working
parts of your image until everything is just right! You can even use windows and tracking to allow the
selections to follow movement in your images.

Qualifying a Color

Often you'll find a specific color in your clip can be enhanced, for example grass by the side of a
road, or the blue in a sky, or you may need to adjust color on a specific object to focus the audience's
attention on it. You can easily do this by using the HSL qualifier tool.
To qualify a color:
Step 1.
Open the 'qualifier' window and make sure the 'color range' sample eyedropper tool
is selected.
Step 2. Click on the color in your clip you want to affect.
Usually you'll need to make some adjustments to soften the edges of your selection and limit
the region to only the desired color. Click on the 'highlight' button to see your selection.
Step 3. Adjust the 'width' control in the 'hue' window to broaden or narrow your selection.
Experiment with the high, low and softness controls to see how to refine your selection. Now you
can make corrections to your selected color using the trackballs or custom curves.
Sometimes your selection can spill into areas of the shot you don't want to affect. You can easily mask
out the unwanted areas using a power window. Simply create a new window and shape it to select
only the area of color you want. If your selected color moves in the shot, you can use the tracking
feature to track your power window.

Adding a Power Window

Power windows are an extremely effective secondary color correction tool that can be used to isolate
specific regions of your clips. These regions don't have to be static, but can be tracked to move with
a camera pan, tilt or rotation, plus the movement of the region itself. For example, you can track a
window on a person in order to make color and contrast changes just to that person without affecting
his/her surroundings. By making corrections like this you can influence the audience's attention on
areas you want them to look at.