The 'master painter' technique for better color grades

In this video I'm showing you a powerful technique used by my favorite master painters to add greater dimension and separation to their images. Colorists use this as well, but most use it with the most basic understanding possible. This 45 minute deep dive will cover the basics, more advanced understanding and techniques, and show you some of the tools you can use to put this to work in your own grades (and we're still just scratching the surface).

00:00 - The technique
01:02 - Definition, and how it relates to color grading
03:00 - Basic understanding of the technique
05:25 - Pointing out key things this does for your image
06:08 - The filmic characteristics this creates
07:47 - The problems you have to watch out for when using this technique
10:10 - Why you need to be careful if you're grading a commercial
11:47 - Different ways to do this in Resolve: Method no. 1
13:50 - What you should you consider when using LUTs for this
15:46 - The oldest and easiest way to use this technique
16:30 - Limitations to using primaries for this method
16:42 - A little talked about but critical piece to using this masterfully
21:48 - Method no. 2
23:21 - Don't skip this
25:42 - Method no. 3
28:59 - Refining the technique and taking things to the next level
30:00 - The problem with using primaries when you need to change something
32:15 - Refining with custom curves
33:43 - Refining the more advanced details
34:43 - How you can manipulate this technique to get greater contrast control
39:22 - Other ways you might want to fine-tune this technique

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[JimRobinson-colors]

I brought this up in one of your color grade school sessions, but couldn't explain it in the amount of characters given in the chat. I spent my teenage years selling oil paintings as an afternoon job while at school. So my life was all about color and painting back then.

Master painters used the Purkinje effect to add realism to painting where in the daytime the rods and cones in your eyes pick up more on the reds and other warm coolers 

As shadows have less light, this reverses - Greens and Blues become more dominant.

Painters of course needed to add the pigment to the paint and mix in the warm and cool hues.

The result being that we become nearly color blind under low levels of illumination. As the light dims, the rods take over from the cones, and before color disappears entirely, our color perception shifts toward the blue-green spectrum.
With cameras we have an advantage over painters because they have to add the tones in to make the colors look natural.

With skin there is also reflected sky that because the sky is so bright that it gets reflected into shadows and especially on the shadow side of skin. So direct light hits one side and the reflected light goes to the shadow side.
That effect is sometimes graded out of the frame by keying the skin, and thinking there should be no blue in the skin that we see on the vectorscope so people push yellow into the face shadow, or use the color compressor to compress the different hues. In my opinion, it tends to make the people look phoney.
Master oil painters that were looking for realism, would be adding blues into the shadows.
Anyway great video topic Cullen. Split toning can make things look more natural and the Purkinje effect is a detailed explanation as to why we use it.

[movie-trailer]

An amazing explanation of the split toning, which is a realistic vision of the image with a subtle "aftertaste". It looks great

[arizonarealestatewithdonbarar]

This was a fabulous presentation on the mechanics of split toning. But all of your videos are terrific and have helped me understand cooling grading. Thank you again for taking the time make these contributions. This is a very helpful channel.

[lrich]

Easily the best video (or up there) on split toning on youtube thus far 🔥

[Music-eots]

This video was extremely useful. Thanks Cullen

[macintosh]

4:17
I just started reading Bruce Block's "Visual story" book, and this stuff that you're talking about (warmer=closer cooler=further) is right at the beginning. Amazing!

[tomasz]

I have had this exact problem many times over. I ended up finessing split tone point for all clips that I thought look wrong. It's a lot of work but I think it's worth it.

[PaulinoAuyon]

Clear and concise. Made understanding this split toning stuff much better. Great video!

[outdoorsinontario]

Right on Cullen! Awesome stuff, as per usual!

[joshpickup]

I don't know whats wrong with me but in almost every example you give at the beginning - the non split tone image looks so much nicer. For example the image of the woman reading - the before shot has so much lovely colour variation in the background, - then you add the split tone and all of a sudden the entire background goes green and the neutrals have lost all their punchiness. look at how rich the table and carpet are before you add the split tone - then it just turns muddy green. I feel like sometimes we are conditioned to split tone because of the principle of colour separation rather than trusting what our eyes are actually seeing.

[graemetowner]

fantastic explanation, thanks for sharing

[heymiranda]

I cannot wait to be able to afford your class. Thanks for sharing!

[RandomBrendon]

Great video as always, is fun how you say something on your channel and then suddenly every other youtube channel is using the same techniques, Linear gain for balance for example we all appreciate the knowledge you pass.

PS: could not find the Grayscale ramp link 😕

[lerosIsland]

At last, a real and depth explanation about Split Toning....I believe it was only for the post photo with Lightroom..

[edmoua]

Thanks for the grayscale! the one you have as the link looks a little different from the one you show in the video.

[samagyepong]

Thanks Cullen for great tutorial on split toning. I don't see the link to exposure chart dctl please.

[mrpeff]

Great tutorial as always, didn't see the link do the Middle Grey LUT

[GlobalShutterNY]

Great as always... It seems that it would be nice to 'hold' back the split-toning effect on anything brighter 'pure' white - often those parts off a scene do look 'off' with a tint. I think the darker areas can tolerate the cool tints better in general. Any (simple) ideas on how to to do this (obvi complicated qualifiers for masks could work but with a lot of time spent...)??

[RallyAddict]

And what do you think about mixing the custom curves method with a simple luminance qualifier for some fine tuning of where exactly the color starts/ends instead of making so many little points on the curve? Thanks a lot for showing the difference when using primaries and curves. No I know why it looks so different. My first subjective choice without that knowledge was to create two separate nodes - one for highlights and one for shadows. In the shadows I pushed the color with lift + luma qualifier for shutting it down where I want and the same with gain for the highlights node. That gave me the best ease of use and control because it was easier for me to push a direction on the color wheel than "calculating" the curve. The qualifier was also handy because you can exactly see where the color lives on the image with the mask on. Now I think of using the same method but with two curves :). Some might say it requires two nodes instead of "one to rule them all" but that really doesn't bother me much. This way you can also easily use the mask gain to fine tune the strength of the push not touching the RGB sliders on the curves.

[cinematic.reference]

Thank you. This is a very important topic. I see that colorists have been using this technique more and more recently, but sometimes the image turns out to be strange. Instead of depth, they just add a cool color and even in contrast with a warm color, it just looks like a green or blue space.