DaVinci Resolve Color Page — Every Element Explained

DaVinci Resolve Color Page is the heart of the post-production capabilities of one of the best video editors out there. Here, the footage comes alive as it gets transformed through a node-based color grading process, turning raw clips into visually stunning sequences

Clips

Even in DaVinci Resolve Color Grading could be a bit hard without clips, so let’s start with them. In the middle of the Color Page, you’ll find their whole collection. All of the clips that you’ve put on the timeline will be there, simple as that. 

Mini Timeline of DaVinci Resolve Color Page

It may be small but it does lay out your entire project at a glance. You can’t use it for editing but it serves as a quick navigational aid to help you jump between clips in the color-grading process. It’s a real timesaver, allowing you to see what’s the position of the clip you’re currently grading, timeline-wise. 

Viewer

The viewer dominates the upper middle part of the DaVinci Resolve Color Page and is a window to the impact of your color grading, real-time. The ‘Unmix’ button within the viewer is a nifty feature that lets you isolate and adjust individual clips or layers, regardless of how they are stacked in the edit timeline. This is particularly useful for tweaking adjustments on overlaying clips or effects without interference.

Top Panels

The very top of the Color Page houses panels that, like on every other page in DVR, you can open or close depending on what you need. These panels offer everything from node navigation to detailed clip information — all easy to reach.

Color Controls

At the very bottom of the page, you’ll find the primary color controls — your main tools for making precise adjustments to your footage. They include (but are not limited to):

• Color Wheels: Essential for making adjustments to shadows, mid-tones, and highlights. These wheels provide control over the visual tone and balance of your footage.
• Keyframes: Allow for the animation of color adjustments over time, giving you the ability to make dynamic changes throughout a clip.
• Scopes: Including waveforms, vectorscopes, and histograms, these are for ensuring your color corrections stay consistent across different viewing platforms and meet broadcast standards.

Node Workflow

Tough to master, but rewarding — color nodes are a highly customizable and layered approach to color correction and grading. Each node offers a level of adjustment that can be fine-tuned, bypassed, or completely removed, providing a non-destructive way to experiment with different looks.

Don’t worry if you don’t feel like you get their point just yet — the number of tutorials available online proves that it’s not something that you learn from one text. 

It may all seem a bit confusing right now, but as you grow familiar with each feature, from the dynamic viewer to the precise color wheels and scopes, the Color Page will become more and more important in your video editing process. While the learning curve might be steep, the results can be stunning.