Tools · DaVinci Resolve · DCTL
Negative, a colour grading library for Nikon ZR footage, one module at a time.
Split across three node levels, so every clip shares the same film and display stages.
Clip
Input · Tone · Color · Lens
Per-shot balance and look.
Group post-clip
Film · Texture · Palette · Sharpness
One film stage for the whole scene.
Timeline
Display
References are illustrations made on my own photographs, not the modules’ output.
Brings the camera into one working space.
Takes Nikon ZR footage, R3D in RED Wide Gamut / Log3G10 or N-Log / Rec.2020, and normalises it into DaVinci Wide Gamut / Intermediate. Everything after it can assume the same scene-referred data.
Exposure and contrast by zones.
Shapes tone with overlapping zones that always add up to one, so moving the shadows never tears the mids. Chroma Lock keeps saturation steady while contrast changes.
Perceptual colour moves that protect skin and neutrals.
Colour decisions run in Oklab, a space built around how we see hue and lightness. Scene-referred values above 1.0 are normalised first, with mid grey held at 0.5, so tonal zones behave on real camera data.
What the glass adds: geometry, falloff and bloom.
Adds the optical character a lens gives a frame: geometry, a masked optical field for vignetting and falloff, and bloom around highlights.
Film density from measured curves.
Applies the density response of 30 film stocks, built from measured D-log E curves. It is a negative-only stage: no print emulation, so the grade stays open instead of being locked into one look.
Grain that moves on its own.
Physical grain that animates every frame without keyframes. A standalone grain module, Silver, is in development for use outside the library.
Expressive colour in a cinematographer’s words.
The creative colour stage: tonal split, convergence and density, using the terms a cinematographer would use on set. Split toning lives here.
Detail across five bands.
Multi-scale sharpness in five frequency bands, so fine texture and larger edges can be shaped separately instead of one global sharpen.
Render for the screen, once, at the end.
Resolve’s own Color Space Transform takes DaVinci Wide Gamut / Intermediate to Rec.709 Gamma 2.4 with DaVinci tone mapping and saturation compression. Grading never happens after this point.
Setup for ZR, how it was made and what comes next are on the library page.
Open the library
