Why I skip the HDR palette (and when not to)

Indexado: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]You can do almost anything with an image in Resolve, but that means that it's up to you to choose the right thing. And it's crazy how difficult that can be and how easily we can get pulled into tools like the HDR pallet just based on their placement in the software and on the lingo that's used to describe them. In this video, I'm going to show you how this tool set works, how to make sure it's actually improving your grades, and why color space aware isn't always a good thing. Okay, let's get started and take a look here at this HDR palette which lives right next to our primaries over here. It's got a similar circular icon. Even the little wheels here within the pallet look pretty familiar, right?

[00:00:37]So, the main differentiator that's used to describe what's different about the HDR palette versus the primaries seems to be this term color space aware. And I don't know about you, but when I hear that term, I think that's something that I need. I certainly don't want to be color space unaware. There aren't many areas in color grading where it pays to be less aware of anything, right? So, we hear that, we think that's something we need. But what does that actually mean?

[00:01:00]What does color space aware actually mean for our work? Before we start getting hands-on with the HDR palette, I want to give you a quick definition of what that means in practical terms. So, any color space aware operation, whether it's the HDR palette, which by the way is kind of the main color space aware tool within Resolve. There's a few other tools that are sometimes described as color space aware within the color page, but for the most part they really are not fully color space aware. That is a uh distinct thing for the HDR palette itself. So three steps to any color space aware operation. Step one is to take the awareness of the color space that we are starting in to move into some other space. So that would look like doing a mapping from in my case Da Vinci widegamut intermediate which is how I'm working today. By the way, I'm working fully color managed in nodes today. The a way that I typically do here on the channel. I've got a dedicated video showing how I like to set things up for my color management. I encourage you to go check that out if you don't already have a sense of how I do that or how that works. For today, let's just say I'm working in Da Vinci wide gamut intermediate. So, the first step in any color space aware tool or operation would be a mapping from my working space which the tool is aware of into some other space to do some other kind of thing. And then step two, you guessed it, that's going to be the doing of something. It's performing some operation, some adjustment in some other color space. Okay? And then lastly, we're going to go right back where we came and transform back to the color space where we began. Now, just to note it, the awareness that we are talking about, where does that come from? How can a tool be aware of the color space that we are working in? That is specified right here in our project settings. I have told Resolve, I have made it aware of the color space that I'm working in. So this is where we are granting the gift of awareness to any color space aware tool. Okay. Now with that simple definition in mind, it gets a little bit easier to recognize that a color space aware tool is not inherently good or bad. It really depends on two criteria. Okay. Number one, does the color space aware tool in net whatever it is doing to my image, is it something that I like? Is it something that I want? If it's not, then it really doesn't matter how it got there, right?

[00:03:07]it just doesn't uh really make a difference because it's not what I want to see for my image. That's number one.

[00:03:13]The second thing, even if it is doing something that I want, regardless of whether it's doing something that I want, did it even need to move into another color space to do it? Was that whole round trip even necessary? For example, I'd like to have groceries when I run out of groceries in my fridge. But if I drive over to Nebraska to get my groceries and then I drive back here, I may have stocked my fridge with groceries, but I really didn't need to drive to another state to go get them. I could have gone to the grocery store down the street. Right? So, these are the two criteria that we are going to evaluate several different adjustments and uh tools within the HDR pallet based on to make better sense of when we might want to use this pallet and when we might want to leave it behind. We're going to start with the thing that takes up the single biggest amount of real estate here within the HDR palette, and that's these big wheels here. Okay? And we're going to focus on the rings for now. By the way, we are definitely not going to touch on every single manipulation within this palette. I want to give you the tools, the criteria for evaluating these things for yourself.

[00:04:10]And we're just going to take a look at a couple of key ones right now. So, let's start by looking at these adjustments with our rings. Okay. I'm just going to grab for my shadows here. And I'm going to spin this like hard to the right just so we can get a sense for what's in there. So, remember, what's the first of our two criteria for evaluating a color space aware tool? Is it doing a thing that I want? Now, again, I just spun this hard, but take a look at what we're getting here. Is that something that we want? It is not something that I want. I don't like what I'm looking at right now at all. Let's just do a comparison here.

[00:04:41]I'm going to grab a still of this and reset my node. I'm going to go back to my primaries and very roughly try to match it with my gamma. Now, that's not a one:one adjustment at all, but I do want to just show you that I can make a similarly kind of strong adjustment with my gamma, and it might not be what I want. It might not be doing exactly what I want to see, but it doesn't look crazy. It doesn't feel dead wrong. It just feels like, all right, that's maybe too far, too much of a direction that I don't need to push that hard, but it's not bizarre looking. Like, this is very strange looking to me, the way that it is trying to relate color and contrast to one another. So, in terms of those two criteria for these zones adjustments, I'm just giving you sort of a representative example right now, but this is something I see making zonal adjustments within this palette very consistently. The long or the short way of describing it would essentially be, is it doing something that I want to the image? Nope. Looks weird. Don't like it.

[00:05:33]Can't really trust it. I would much rather make my adjustments here in my primaries or uh with my contrast pivot up here in that section or using my custom curves where the adjustments feel more organic to me and less manipulated and strange. So that's the first of the two criteria for these zones. The second thing, if we look at what are we actually doing to the image, I can tell you from a color science POV, there's nothing about this operation, even if for whatever reason I'm like, I actually really like that. I think that's a great look for whatever reason. Maybe that's how you feel. I can tell you even if it was, you didn't need to move into some other kind of space to do it. You could have gotten those groceries at your neighborhood grocery store, not at the grocery store in Nebraska. To beat up on that analogy for a minute. So that round trip wasn't necessary and the operation is one that I don't even want in the first place. Okay. So that's a kind of summary on our zonal adjustments. So let's take a look at some other adjustments here within the HDR pallet.

[00:06:28]I now want to talk about contrast pivot because we already have a contrast pivot tool within our primaries, right? So, what's the difference here? Is there any benefit to doing them here versus within our primaries? I'm going to start by telling you something that I really like about contrast pivot here inside of the HDR pallet. By default, the pivot point of zero, which is on a different scale, by the way, than the pivot point in our primaries. But the pivot point of zero here basically means that I'm going to be uh injecting neutral contrast into my image, meaning I'm not going to be moving my middle gray point. That's a positive. I really like that. And let's actually start to add some contrast. And let's actually do this on a slightly brighter image just so it's easier for us to see what we're doing. And so I'm going to pump contrast again. And I'm going to make all these adjustments hard just so it's easy for us to see the differences that start to emerge when we hit it hard. So it's nice I would say that we are pivoting around our middle gray. And one of the uh sort of value props or benefits that's often invoked when people are talking about the HDR palette is, hey, take a look at the vector scope and how when you add this contrast, the overall saturation and hue kind of spread isn't really changing when you add this contrast. Well, that can be cool. That can sometimes be what we're looking for, but especially as your contrast really starts to get pumped like we're seeing here. This visually doesn't feel to me like we are maintaining saturation. This visually feels to me like we're losing saturation. This is fundamentally, we've already touched on it in two different tools within the HDR palette. This is a big part of what feels kind of odd to me about this tool set is the way that it is trying to interrelate color and contrast and sort of separate them out.

[00:08:04]In theory, in principle, it sounds like a good idea, but what it often leads to is these sort of strange renderings of image where it feels like, oh, I'm adding contrast, but at the same time, I'm getting kind of this like bleachy look in my colors in a way that's not really desirable. So, I like that we're pivoting around mid-graay, but I don't usually like the sort of quality of contrast that I'm getting here in my image. And let's just do a comparison on this. Okay, so I'm going to grab still.

[00:08:28]I'm going to reset my node, and we're going to go over to our primaries again, and we're going to do some contrast pivot within here. Now, within here, remember pivot is not set by default to anchor around mid-graay. So, we need to set that up. I'm going to do that by typing.336 in here. How do I know that number? Because I'm a weird dude and this is what I spend all of my time doing and I I've got numbers like this committed to memory. If you're not as much of a weirdo as I am and you want to know what this number is for Da Vinci wide gamut intermediate, it's 336. But if you want that for handy reference or you want to know what it is in another color space, I've got a free resource called the mid-grade cheat sheet that's available on my website. I'll leave a link to it in the description so you can grab it for yourself and put it on your wall and make some cool art out of it.

[00:09:05]But that's what it is for Dim UI gamma intermediate 336. So check out what happens when I start to add kind of similar level of contrast to the image using this. I'm going to actually wipe to our other version. So those are roughly aligned. I'm not like trying to be perfect about it. Those are roughly aligned. Very different behavior in terms of the color, right? Like the color feels very different here versus here. Now, I'll just point out oftentimes when people are getting the itch to try something other than contrast pivot in their primaries, it's because they feel like, oh, the change in the vector scope that you can see here, the saturation shift is actually too much. They actually want a little bit more of that confinement of the saturation, that type of behavior that we're seeing in the HDR palette.

[00:09:47]However, I want to propose an alternative to you that does not require you to go over to an entirely new palette and do a big fancy color space aware round trip into another color space because we can now see in our second of the two criteria we've been talking about, is it something that was necessary to produce the effect? Nope.

[00:10:03]We're able to do it right here in log, right? And if you want to get more of that bleachy look for the colors and you want them to hold in the vector scope and to visually kind of bleach out more so than to uh stretch out, it's a very easy adjustment. Check this out. I'm going to right click on this node. I'm going to go to composite mode and set that to luminosity. Now, this isn't going to be one one, but let's just wipe to what we did in our HDR palette a minute ago.

[00:10:26]That's pretty close, right? Like a quite close adjustment without needing to take on the complexity of another tool. So, for me, if we're evaluating our same two criteria for contrast pivot, does it do something that I want? I don't know.

[00:10:38]Maybe in some cases, definitely not all cases. Was it necessary to do a big fancy color space aware round trip to get there? Nope, not at all. could have done it in our primaries, including the thing that is often uh sort of like identified as unique or desirable about the contrast pivot operation in the HDR palette. You can actually do either of those without ever leaving your primaries palette. Okay. All right.

[00:11:00]Let's reset this node and keep looking at some other adjustments here in the HDR palette. So, we've talked about our zones, we've talked about our contrast pivot, we're now going to talk about our temp and our tint. Okay, this is another one that often gets called out is like, "Oh, this is more accurate or more intuitive or it gets better results than doing temp and tint here in our primaries." Now, here's the thing that I'm going to say that's actually true.

[00:11:23]The temp and tint in the primaries are not tools that you ever want to touch.

[00:11:27]They're really, really inaccurate and are basically no better than just pushing wheels in some direction, which by the way, I'm not dogging on. That's my preference. I like working in a linear gamma. Let me show this to I'm going to right click my node, flip my gamma into linear. By the way, what have I just done effectively? I've just made my own color space aware tool with a very specific reason. So, what am I doing? I'm moving from my working uh log space, Da Vinci Intermediate, into linear where I'm going to do a thing and then I'm going to move back into my log space after I'm done. That's all happening under the hood invisibly transparently within the same node. It's kind of neat. So, what I like to do is set that up and then do RGB gain.

[00:12:06]Actually, I'm doing this in the HDR palette. I don't want that at all. Let's go back over here and reset this like so. And let's go back over to our primaries. This is where I want to do this manipulation because I'm literally just tuning the ratios of red to green to blue in the same way as if I could actually go back to the camera sensor and change the sensitivity of the red, green, and blue buckets to the linear scene that's being shown. I love adjusting balance in this way. And quick side note, all the complexity and uh sort of like fancy techniques that get thrown around for how to balance an image. So much of that entire discipline comes from figuring out how to solve problems that we ourselves are introducing. So we're going to talk more about that in just a minute, but for now suffice to say, this is not only a really ideal way to adjust balance, it's a way to adjust balance that doesn't require compensations after you have gotten to a rough balance point that you like. So that's the way they like to do it. But if we go back to our adjustment here within the HDR palette, temp and tint, these actually are objectively better, more color science rigorous than the temp and tint in our primaries. But here's the thing. To get the same adjustment that I was just uh intuitively getting with one track ball, I have to do these two little knobs to get to the same place. It kind of feels like doing an Etch a sketch, like, oh, I've got to go up this way and then over with that one. It does not feel particularly intuitive and fast to me.

[00:13:26]And the funny thing is it's neither intuitive and fast, nor is it particularly rigorously accurate. They like to say that it is in the HDR pallet, but I know that it's not because if I ever really need to make a big swing in the balance of my image and I want it to be as accurate as possible and I don't want to just freehand it all the way like 3,000° warmer or cooler or something like that. I like to use my chromatic adaptation tool for that because it is not particularly fast. it takes a click longer, but when you know what you're doing, you can get really color science accurate, really pleasing results from it. So, these temp and tint knobs kind of sit somewhere in between.

[00:14:02]They are neither fast and intuitive, nor are they rigorous and accurate. They're kind of the worst of both worlds. So, again, if we think about criteria here, is this doing something that I want? Not really. Was it necessary to move into that uh the the the like intermediary like operational space? Yeah, maybe. uh but it's not really doing something that I want. So, uh it's hard to say and hard to really claim that as a win. Okay.

[00:14:27]Next thing we're going to look at, let's take a look at a straight up comparison because I just told you I love to do RGB gain in linear over here, right? Well, what's the closest thing that we can do to that with our HDR pallet? That would be making my global adjustment right here with this track ball. So, check this out. This is going to be pretty similar to that RGB gain adjustment that I just identified a moment ago as really liking to do. But here's what's interesting. If you go and look at the Resolve documentation and you actually read the manual for this stuff, which as I already told you, I'm a geek, so I do stuff like that. If you go and look at it, it will describe in their own words in Blackmagic manual, it will describe the adjustment as being quote somewhat linear. Now, for all the geeky reasons that I gave you a moment ago when I was talking about my preferred method of adjusting color balance using RGB gain on the track ball set to linear, I don't want somewhat linear. I want linear because that's the only adjustment that's not going to end up having me chasing my own tail and compensating for problems that I myself have created. So somewhat linear for me is a non-starter.

[00:15:34]So our first criteria, is it doing something that I want? No, it is not doing something that I want. And here's the other thing. The way that the Resolve documentation talks about the somewhat linear approach where they characterize it as having more influence in the middle and tapering off and having less influence in the deep shadows and in the bright highlights.

[00:15:50]There's a tool right within our primaries where we can do the exact same thing. Not pixel identical, but the same basic distribution of strength of manipulation, that's what our gamma does. So, if you even wanted that type of thing, which again I don't. For my balance adjustment, I very much prefer to make a uniform adjustment that doesn't require compensation or make the need for compensation. If you wanted to use a adjustment that for whatever reason is only adjusting more in the middle or is adjusting more in the middle than in the top and the bottom, your gamma is made to order for that and there's no need to move into that other space at all. So, again, we're failing on both criteria on that front. Okay, I feel like I've been dogging on the HDR palette for a while and I don't want to because there's one thing that I really like using this tool for that I want to talk you through right now. The thing that I love using this tool for is right next to this global track ball that we just looked at. It is the global wheel on the outer edge. Cuz strangely, even though the track ball is somewhat linear, the wheel itself is not somewhat linear, it is precisely linear. It is phototrically linear, meaning that if I dropped this exposure wheel by 66, that is exactly 2/3 of a stop trimmed off of the image, I would have gotten the exact same result if I had trimmed 2/3 of a stop on the actual iris of the camera when I was photographing the scene in the first place. It's a really clean way to adjust exposure. So much so that let me show something to you. If I drop this exposure to an even 0.1 for an example sake, I'm going to grab a still of this.

[00:17:23]So, I'm going to reset this node. I'm going to do a thing that I showed you a minute ago, flipping my gamma to linear for my node. I'm going to go back to my primaries and go to my gain and I'm going to drop this value to a 0.5. Let's look at the difference between these two approaches.

[00:17:39]These are identical. They're not close.

[00:17:41]They are the exact same adjustment because that's what the HDR pallet is doing for that global wheel. It's moving things into a linear space and gaining them down. So, this is the exact photometric adjustment here in my primaries. Which of course is going to bring up the question, well, Colin, you've been saying, why tap over to the HDR pallet to do stuff that you can already do within your primaries. Why would you bother with doing your exposure adjustment over there if you can do it here in your primaries? Well, there's a good reason for it. Cuz what's cool is right now I've had to change this node into linear. So, if I were to try to do some of my other traditional operations like contrast pivot or working with my custom curves or something like that, stuff's going to feel kind of weird. for contrast adjustments. Working in log is often the preferred better feeling space. So what we can do if I reset this node by working within the HDR pallet here is I can get the best of both worlds. I can get that straight up clean linear gain exposure adjustment that I like to make.

[00:18:36]And then if I want to do lift gamma gain stuff for my contrast or contrast pivot more likely in my case or even custom curves as I talked about before, I can do all that stuff in log right within the same node. And that's my preferred workflow. Some of you guys might know I like to use a the first node in my node tree called prime where I'm going to adjust all exposure and all contrast, anything tonal right there in the same spot because those things are so interrelated. So, it's a great way natively within Resolve's tool set to get nice clean linear gain adjustments or exposure adjustments and log contrast adjustments all within one node. And again, let's be fair and say, what are the criteria and how does this exposure adjustment in the HDR palette stack up on these criteria? Number one, is it something that I want? Yes, it is something that I want. It's exactly the type of exposure adjustment that I'm looking for my image. Number two, could I have gotten it without going into some other space at all? In this case, the answer is no. Some of you might be familiar with the idea of working in your offsets. And you may have heard that offset is pretty close to exposure.

[00:19:39]But offset is actually not identical to exposure. It's only close. What you're going to find if I try to make this exact same matched adjustment with my offset. I mean, let's just pull it up since we're here. It may or may not be dramatic in this case, but what we're going to see is a movement in contrast.

[00:19:54]We are going to be what's called dragging our shadows around with offset compared to linear gain, which is going to be uniform and perfect up and down the tone scale. With offset, as we expose down, we're going to start to clip out blacks in a way that shouldn't happen. And as we open up, we're going to start to fog blacks in a way that shouldn't happen with a perfectly linear adjustment. So, in this case, we're passing both tests. We like what we're seeing, and it couldn't have been done in the exact same way in any other way except to move into that linear space.

[00:20:23]So, that's my kind of lightning round tour of the different features within the HDR palette and the ones that I like to use and ones that I don't. Like I said, I didn't cover every single tool within the HDR palette, but I hope I did give you a really simple two-step test for evaluating any tool within the pallet that you are curious about using.

[00:20:40]my prescription. What I would recommend, at least what I do that you are free to copy, is I do my exposure adjustments only within the HDR palette and then I let everything else happen here in my primaries, usually using a combination of my contrast pivot and then my soft clip controls here in my custom curves.

[00:20:57]That's a whole other video we can talk about in the future. That's the way that I like to approach things. Now, it's actually not important that you work the exact same way that I do. It's not important that you reach the exact same conclusions that I do. You might choose to use just one. You might choose to use several. You might choose to use all of the adjustments and sliders and tools within the HDR palette. What is important to me is not how many of those things you choose to use or not. It is that when you do, you do it understanding what it's doing for your image, having evaluated it through these criteria that I've just given you, and you commit to it. Okay? So, if you choose to do HDR global exposure in the HDR palette like I've just talked about doing here, that means I don't want you half the time going, "Oh, I'm going to do it in offset for this one." There's a great expression from one of my favorite filmmakers, David Fenture, who says, "Look, there's actually not a million ways to do things. There's only two, and one of them is wrong." I'm such a believer of that in color grading.

[00:21:50]There's really usually only one ideal right way to do stuff. We want to find that and then put it on repeat over and over and over again because it's the right way to do stuff, right? As opposed to tackling things with more than one tool or switching up the tool that we tackle it with depending on the project or our mood or whatever feels handy to us. So, whatever you choose to do within the HDR palette or not, I want you to commit to it and I want you not to be toggling between that and other tools.

[00:22:16]Even if it's just for the duration of a project, you can always say, "Hey, now that I've done this full project, I feel like whatever it is, adjusting the shadow wheel or the shadow track ball in the HDR palette, I thought it was the answer. I actually don't really love what it was doing in some cases. Next project, I'm going to choose something different." And then for that project, I want you to commit to that. The biggest challenge with the HDR pallet to me, even more than is it beautiful, is it terrible, is it somewhere in between, is it puts so many of us in this confused state where we've got now two different tool sets to navigate without a clear criteria for which one we should or shouldn't use. So, what do we do? We end up kind of using both, right? It costs us confidence, it costs us speed, and depending on which tools we select, it can often cost us quality of results as well. So, I hope that's a helpful walkthrough for you on the HDR pallet.

[00:23:03]If you have questions for me, stuff that doesn't make sense, let me know in the comments. I'll answer as many as I can.

[00:23:08]You are also very invited to join me for my live stream that I do every two weeks here on YouTube. We usually do it Friday mornings at 10:00. It's called Grade School. You can come in, you can drop your questions in the chat. If your question gets selected, then we'll bring it up live and we get to talk about it in a lot more depth than we can in a comment section. In case you can't tell, I love talking about this stuff. So, if you want to go deeper on this topic or any other topic, I encourage you to join for that. In the meanwhile, hope you enjoyed this today. Drop your quick questions in the comments and I will see you here for the next video.