色彩校正入门An Introduction to Color Correction

简介Overview

在进入色彩校正的技术层面、学习 DaVinci Resolve 强大调色工具的工作原理之前，先花一点时间理解色彩校正这门创意媒介本身，是很重要的。Before you get into the technical side of color correction and learn how DaVinci Resolve's powerful color correction tools work, it's important to take a moment to understand color correction and the creative medium it is.

色彩校正不是学会调色台控件就能做好的事，也不是只靠示波器就能做好的事。它是一项高度创造性的技能——好的剪辑师能用画面讲述故事、营造戏剧节奏，而调色师则通过对画面的视觉处理唤起观众的情绪。和所有创意技能一样，成为顶级调色师需要时间，但它永远不会让你觉得无聊，因为你总有新东西可学、新风格可以探索。Color correction is not something you can do by learning the controls of the color corrector, and it's not something you can do well just using the scopes. It's a highly creative skill. Just as a good editor can tell a story and bring a dramatic flow to a program, the colorist evokes an emotion in a viewer via visual manipulation of the image. While it can take time to learn how to be a top-level colorist, like all creative skills, it never gets boring because you'll always have something new to learn and a new creative style to explore!

使用 DaVinci Resolve，你将受益于超过 30 年的色彩校正经验。Blackmagic Design 率先研发了专门用于艺术化增强电影、视频和数字画面外观的调色硬件与软件。因此，DaVinci Resolve 拥有极其深入、精细且高效的工具集，既能调整节目中每个片段的视觉效果，也能在整条时间线上统一管理这些调整。When using DaVinci Resolve, you have the advantage of more than 30 years of color correction experience. Blackmagic Design pioneered the development of color correction hardware and software specifically designed to artistically enhance visual images acquired from film, video, and digital sources. As a result, DaVinci Resolve possesses an incredibly deep, sophisticated, and efficient toolset for adjusting the look of the clips in your program and managing these adjustments over an entire timeline.

此外，DaVinci Resolve 一直在来自全球电影和广电行业各级别专业调色师的反馈中持续进化，所以 Color页面的设计贴合调色师的思维方式。不过，无论技术多么先进，记住一点很重要：DaVinci Resolve 终究只是工具，需要艺术家来发挥它的全部潜力——而这恰恰是最有趣的部分。Furthermore, DaVinci Resolve has continuously evolved thanks to feedback from countless professional colorists worldwide working at all levels of the film and broadcast industry. So the DaVinci Resolve color page has been developed to work the way colorists think. Still, for all its technological sophistication, it's important to remember that DaVinci Resolve is merely a tool that requires an artist to realize its full potential. But, of course, that's the fun part!

下面的课程涵盖你开启 Color页面调色之旅所需的基础知识，无论你做的是电影、剧集、网络短片、广告片还是企业视频。不同类型使用的核心调色技法和基础工具是相通的；如果你刚踏入专业调色的领域，不必担心，所有顶尖调色师都曾从这些基础起步，而你在这里学到的方法，将伴随你整个职业生涯。The following lessons cover the basics you'll need to learn to begin harnessing the power of the color page in your own projects—be they feature films, episodic television, web series, short subjects, spots, promos, or corporate videos. No matter what you work on, these formats employ the same fundamental grading techniques and the same basic tools; so if you're new to the world of professional color grading, don't worry. All rock star colorists once had to learn these first steps for themselves, and you'll use the fundamentals you learn here for the rest of your career.

高质量调色曾是高不可攀的事，这种时代已经一去不返。Blackmagic Design 让 DaVinci Resolve 的强大调色工具走入任何拥有合适工作站或笔记本的剪辑师手中。在 Color页面上，你距离世界级的画面水准只有一次点击。Gone are the days when high-quality color grading was unaffordable. Blackmagic Design has put the powerful color tools of DaVinci Resolve within reach of any editor who has a reasonably capable workstation or laptop. The polish you'll need to achieve world-class results is only a click away on the color page.

不过，在深入色彩的具体操作之前，有必要先退一步，看看这些工具真正的用途是什么。However, before you start getting into the specifics of color, it's important to step back and consider what these tools are really used for.

为什么要做色彩校正？Why Color Correct Your Work?

无数制片人和导演都曾问过一个诱人的问题："节目拍出来看着就挺好，为什么还要花时间调色？"在时间就是金钱的行业里，这是个合理的问题——如果 Edit页面上剪好的节目已经不错了，何必再调呢？Here's a tempting question that countless producers and directors have asked: "The program looks fine the way it was shot; why spend the time to color grade it?" It's a good question in an industry where time is money; if the program you've cut in the edit page looks fine, why bother grading it?

答案是：因为调色之后，它还能更好。The answer is because your program won't look as good as it will after being graded.

对节目中每个片段的对比度和色彩进行调整的过程，可以叫做色彩校正（color correction）、色彩调色（color grading），或者直接叫 grading。术语上的差别大多是表面的，但大多数资深调色师更偏爱"grading"，因为"correction"暗含只修正错误之处，而"grading"意味着以更高的艺术标准去审视节目中的每一帧。调色师问的不是"这个片段看起来还行吗"，而是"这个片段还能更好吗"。The process of adjusting the contrast and color of every clip in a program is variously called color correction, color grading, or just grading. The difference in terminology is largely superficial, but most experienced colorists prefer "grading" because "correction" implies that you only adjust things that are wrong, whereas "grading" implies that you're holding each clip in your program up to a higher artistic standard. A colorist doesn't ask, "Does this clip look good?" A colorist asks, "Could this clip look better?"

用色彩营造情绪Setting the Tone of the Visuals

关于色彩对观众情绪的感染力，人们已经谈论得很多。冷蓝色光下的场景，与暖橙色光下的场景，气场截然不同。荧光灯偏绿的色调、汞蒸气路灯偏橙红的辉光，都在为剧集的画面染上不同的氛围感。运用得当，这些色彩能强化叙事、影响观众的感知。Much has been said about the emotional power of color to shape audience mood, and everyone would agree that a scene lit by cool blue lighting will have a very different vibe than one that's lit by warm orange lighting. The greenish tinge of fluorescent fixtures and the salmon-hued wash of mercury vapor streetlights each paint the scenes of a show with different atmospheric feelings that, when done right, add to the narrative and how your audience perceives it.

当然，这些不同光源的含义取决于你所建立的视觉调色板。暖光在一部电影中可能象征浪漫，在另一部中却可能烘托沙漠中的焦躁与不适。它们的影响取决于你通过调色在画面与故事之间建立的关联：这个场景是否应显得更接近傍晚？色彩是否更柔和？天空是否应成为无法回避的存在？当你通过调色对画面施加细腻控制时，你就在主导观众的这些感受。Of course, what these varied illuminants mean depends on the visual palette you develop. Warm lighting that denotes romance in one film may instead portray roiling, desert-bound discomfort in another. Their impact depends on the associations that your grading makes between the visuals and the story. Should this scene seem later in the day? Should the colors be more subdued? Should the sky be an inescapable presence? You control these audience perceptions when you exercise subtle control over the picture via color grading.

关键在于，Color页面为你提供了塑造这些关联的工具——按需强化、削弱或完全抵消它们的影响，从而为每个场景奠定恰当的基调。The important takeaway is that the color page gives you the tools to mold these associations to suit your needs—intensifying, attenuating, or completely counteracting their effect, as necessary, to strike the right tone for every scene.

主观再现世界Portraying the World Subjectively

叙事性摄影几乎不追求以完美准确、中性的色彩与影调来客观还原被摄场景。相反，摄影师借助大量灯具和精细的美术置景来操控现场的光线与色彩，使其呈现忧郁、奇幻、惊悚或暧昧等情绪。这种努力延伸到调色环节：你的工作不是呈现世界本来的样子，而是呈现摄影指导和导演希望观众看到的世界。Narrative cinematography is rarely concerned with capturing objectively lit renditions of locations with perfectly accurate, neutral color and tonality. Instead, truckloads of lighting instruments and careful art direction manipulate the light and color of the location to make it look somber, magical, frightening, or sultry. These efforts extend to the grading suite, where your job is not to portray the world as it is, but the world that the cinematographer and director want the audience to see.

纪录片摄影虽然常常追求呈现未经修饰（却又画面精美）的世界，但即便是这种"写实"风格也是一种人为建构。因为你为改善主体可见度、突出自然壮美、清理档案素材或将画面四周推入背景所做的每一项调整，都可能像音乐 MV 的调色一样经过精心设计与操控。Documentary photography may very often be concerned with presenting a supposedly unvarnished (yet gloriously rendered) look at the world. And yet even this "realistic" look at the world is a fabrication, since every adjustment you make to improve the visibility of a subject, enhance the glory of nature, clean up some archival footage, or push the surroundings of the frame to recede artfully into the background can be as carefully thought out and manipulated as any music video grade.

无论你制作的是恐怖片、建筑纪录片、销售视频还是汽车广告，你都在运用色彩校正的工具与技法来创造画面的主观表达。你对这种表达掌控得越精细，可调动的情感反应谱系就越丰富。The point is, whether you're making a horror movie, an architectural documentary, a sales video, or an automotive advertisement, you're using the tools and techniques of color correction to create a subjective representation of the imagery. The more control you can exercise over this representation, the larger the palette of emotional response you'll have to draw from.

迈向高端制作Evolving Toward High-End Work

如果你想学习并保持竞争力，尤其是打算承接商业项目而非个人创作，了解当下的风格与趋势十分必要。你一定听过"想写好文章就要多读多写"这句话，调色也是如此。多看电影、电视剧、音乐 MV 和网络短片；看电视时也留意广告。熟悉 DaVinci Resolve 的调色控件之后，你会开始发现不同观感其实对应着你在自己项目中可以做出的具体调整。If you want to learn and stay competitive, and especially if you intend to work on client projects rather than your own, it's good to make yourself aware of current styles and trends. You've no doubt heard that if you want to write, you should read (and write) as much as you can, and the same holds true for color grading. Watch movies, television, music videos, and web shorts. And if you're watching television, make yourself watch the ads. Once you've had a chance to learn the grading controls that DaVinci Resolve offers, you'll start to see how different looks correspond to adjustments you can make in your own projects.

最后，走出去看看其他视觉作品。翻阅时尚杂志、参观美术馆、去林中徒步并细心观察。让各种图像充盈你的头脑并加以分析，看它们能给你哪些灵感。你对其他视觉领域了解得越多，带入自己作品中的创意也就越多。Finally, get out into the world and look at other visuals. Flip through fashion magazines, go to art galleries, take a hike in the woods, and observe. Fill your mind with diverse images and analyze them to see what inspires you. The more aware you are of other visual disciplines, the more ideas you'll bring to your own work.

还有一个值得思考的现象：平价调色对电视行业产生的影响。如今大多数电视剧的画面风格已能与电影比肩，这种画质的飞跃使电视节目达到了前所未有的水准。A last issue to consider is the effect that affordable color grading has had on the television industry. In most current episodic television productions, the visual style is now as good as in a feature film. This dramatic change in quality has made television programming better than ever.

这一变化带来一个意外好处：顶级电影演员可以自由地在电视与电影之间穿梭，因为电视不再是低一等的媒介。同时，高水准的电影制作团队和公司也能同时承接电视剧和电影项目，并保持其高端定位。考虑到流媒体等高质量作品分发平台的持续增多，这无疑是一个令人振奋的时代。整个行业正以前所未有的速度扩张，这意味着有才华的剪辑师和调色师比以往任何时候都更受青睐！An unintended benefit of this change is that top-level feature film actors now move into television work and back to film with amazing freedom because television no longer looks like an inferior medium. Also, high-level film crews and facilities can do a wider range of both television shows and feature films, while still retaining their premium status. It's an exciting time when you consider the additional increase in the number of distribution platforms for high-quality work, such as streaming services. The industry is growing more quickly than ever, which means talented editors and colorists are more in demand than ever!

调色的目标The Goals of Color Grading

色彩校正可以理解为：从原始图像数据中选取要呈现的内容，从而为观众构建一幅赏心悦目的画面。Color correction can be considered the process of choosing which parts of the raw image data to display to create a pleasing image for the viewer.

画面的开发Developing the Image

最新一代的数字电影摄影机几乎都能拍摄 raw 色彩空间的图像数据，或者至少能以 log 编码曝光记录 RGB 图像数据。这样做能在色彩校正阶段为后期处理保留最大限度的图像信息。The latest-generation digital cinema cameras are almost all capable of either shooting raw color space image data or, at the very least, recording RGB image data with a log-encoded exposure. Doing so preserves the maximum amount of image data for manipulation during the color correction process.

以这种方式获取素材虽然有利于工作流灵活性和高质量调整，但你必须额外地把它转换（transform）成可编辑、可输出的画面——这跟胶片底片需要经过冲洗和印片才能看到画面的道理是一样的。While this is great for flexibility in workflow and for making high-quality adjustments, acquiring media in this way forces you to take the extra step of transforming it into a viewable image for editing and finishing (in much the same way that film negatives required development and printing to yield a viewable image).

DaVinci Resolve 内置了 camera raw 控件、DaVinci Resolve Color Management（RCM）以及 LUT 支持，简化了这一步，让你能够快速把素材调整到一个扎实的起点，再在这个基础上继续做调色。DaVinci Resolve simplifies this task with built-in camera raw controls, DaVinci Resolve color management (RCM), and LUT support, so you can quickly get your media to a solid starting point upon which to build the rest of your grade.

让每条素材都呈现最佳效果Making Every Clip Look Its Best

摄影指导的职责是用光与曝光来表达艺术意图；而你作为剪辑师与调色师，则要通过调整每条素材的色彩和反差（contrast），把这种意图还原出来，尽可能贴近导演和摄影指导的设想。在这个过程中，你还可以修正那些拍摄时不可避免的曝光和白平衡（color balance）偏差，甚至可以微妙地调整画面的暖调和反差，做出拍摄时未能实现、但导演和摄影指导一直想要的风格。While the job of the cinematographer is to light and expose the image with an artistic intent, your job as an editor and colorist is to realize this intent by adjusting the color and contrast of the image of each clip so the result is as close to the director's and cinematographer's intentions as possible. In the process, you can overcome inconsistencies with exposure and color balance that were otherwise unavoidable. Furthermore, you can subtly adjust warmth and contrast to realize looks that were not achievable during the shoot, but that the director and cinematographer would have liked.

当然，有些时候你可能需要处理色彩和曝光问题更严重的素材。在这种情况下，工具也允许你对画面进行更大胆的修改，不过最终的画质会非常依赖素材本身的质量和宽容度（latitude）。例如，Blackmagic URSA Mini 摄影机使用 raw 或压缩很低的格式录制，能够保留大量图像数据，使你做出消费级摄影机素材所无法承受的极端调整。无论哪种情况，Color页面都提供了多种图像处理工具，帮助你把画面调成更好的样子。Of course, in some situations, you may find it necessary to fix media that has more substantial problems in color and exposure. In these cases, the tools exist to make far more involved changes to the image; however, the quality of your results will depend heavily on the quality and "latitude" of your source media. For example, Blackmagic URSA Mini cameras record quite a bit of image data within raw or minimally compressed media formats, allowing you to make extreme corrections that would be impossible with data from consumer cameras. Happily, in either case, the color page provides the tools to process images in many ways to adjust the image to achieve a better look.

质量控制Quality Control

在你大展身手做创意时，请务必记住一点：无论 DaVinci Resolve 能带来多少创意可能，最终交付给客户的成片必须符合分发要求所规定的信号电平。面向影院、广播或流媒体的分发格式通常对 luma、chroma 和 gamut 都有明确的外限值，一旦超出，成片就可能因违反 QC 标准而被退回。While you're doing all this, it's important to keep in mind that for all the creative possibilities that DaVinci Resolve affords, it's still important that the deliverables you provide to your client have appropriate signal levels relative to their distribution requirements. Programs destined for cinema, broadcast, or streaming usually have very specific outer boundaries of luma, chroma, and gamut that you must not exceed, or you'll risk having a show kicked back to you for quality control violations.

DaVinci Resolve 提供了一系列专门用于监控画面数据变化并精细调图的工具，尤其是示波器（scopes）功能，可以显示标准的 Waveform、Parade、Vectorscope 和 Histogram 波形图，让你能客观地分析画面数据。这些示波器让你看清可操作的范围边界，既便于发现细微问题，也方便对比不同画面之间的差异。DaVinci Resolve provides tools specifically designed to help you keep an eye on how the image data is affected and to fine-tune the image. In particular, the scopes display the standard Waveform, Parade, Vectorscope, and Histogram graphs that you can use to objectively analyze image data. These scopes let you see the boundaries of what's possible and make it easy to spot subtle problems and compare the characteristics of one image to another.

场景之间的平衡Balancing Scenes

未经调色的镜头之间很少能够完美衔接。即便是曝光最严谨的覆盖镜头之间，也会存在细微的差异需要抹平。例如，一些抢拍（run-and-gun）节目依靠现场光拍摄，剪辑时常常出现镜头与镜头之间光线和色彩剧烈跳动的情况。It's rare for uncorrected shots to match one another seamlessly. Even the most carefully exposed angles of coverage can have small variances that should be evened out. For example, run-and-gun programs using available light often result in edited scenes with huge changes in lighting and color as one shot cuts into the next.

无论差异大小，镜头之间的不一致都会让剪辑显得突兀，把观众从观众席里抽离出来。把这些差异调平，也是调色师的一项基本功。判断标准很简单：当一个场景里每个镜头看起来都像发生在同一时间、同一地点，且你做的色彩与反差调整从一个素材顺滑地过渡到下一个素材时，就算完成了。Whether small or large, variations between shots can call undue attention to the editing and jar the audience in ways that distance them from the program. Balancing these differences is another fundamental task of the colorist. You know you're finished when every shot in a scene looks like the same time and the same place, and the color and contrast adjustments you've made flow unnoticeably from one clip to the next.

加入风格或自定义 LookAdding Style or Custom "Looks"

当然，调色并不只是做细腻的修正。给作品注入强烈的视觉风格，往往也很合时宜——比如音乐 MV 和广告片。在这方面，DaVinci Resolve 也提供了大量功能，可以对画面中你意想不到的部分进行操作。例如，你可以通过自定义曲线（custom curves）来模拟化学 cross-processing 效果。Of course, it's not all about subtlety and correction. It's often appropriate—when grading music videos and commercials, for instance—to bring some radical visual style to a piece. Here, too, DaVinci Resolve provides an abundance of features for manipulating unexpected aspects of the image. For example, you can use custom curves to create an illusion of chemical cross-processing.

好莱坞使用的工具The Tool Hollywood Uses

DaVinci Resolve 已成为全球大型后期制作公司的首选工具。与此同时，由于它易于上手，近几年也被众多小型精品后期公司和独立艺术家广泛使用。仅看近期完成的项目，《火箭人》《疾速追杀 3：帕拉贝鲁姆》等商业大片，以及《大病》《鬼故事》等独立制作，乃至 HBO《西部世界》、AMC《行尸走肉》、Amazon Prime《了不起的麦瑟尔夫人》等剧集，都采用了 DaVinci Resolve 进行调色。If all that isn't enough incentive to plunge forward into the next few lessons, keep in mind that DaVinci Resolve has become the tool of choice for some of the largest post-production facilities in the industry, worldwide. And yet, thanks to its accessibility, within the last several years, DaVinci Resolve has also become the go-to tool for a wide variety of smaller boutique post companies and individual artists. Considering only projects completed recently, DaVinci Resolve was used to grade blockbusters such as Rocketman and John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum, along with indie productions such as The Big Sick and A Ghost Story; not to mention television shows including HBO's Westworld, AMC's The Walking Dead, and Amazon Prime's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

无论你是想打下基础、进入后期行业成为一名合格的调色师，还是希望用自己的方式完成个人创作，接下来的课程将带你进入一个比普通非编软件（NLE）所提供的更广阔的影像处理与艺术表达的世界。Whether you're looking to build a foundation of skills to enter the post-production industry as a contributing artist or you want to develop the ability to finish your personal creative work in your own way, the following lessons will usher you into a much larger world of image manipulation and artistic expression than has ever been available in the average nonlinear editing (NLE) application.

最后，色彩调校本身就是一件有趣的事！把手放在轨迹球上，把画面的情绪握在手里的感觉令人兴奋：你可以实时调整、即时看到结果，并在心里感受到情绪的冲击。我们认为色彩校正是一项更偏向创意而非纯理性的工作，它每天都会带来惊喜，并让人回想起最初热爱影视行业的初心。Lastly, color grading is just fun! The feeling of resting your hands on the trackballs and holding the emotion of your images in your hands is exhilarating. It's like no other feeling in the world; you can make adjustments in real time, instantly see the results, and feel the emotional impact in your heart. We believe that color correction is one of those tasks that is more creative than cerebral. It's also one of those jobs that surprises you every day and has an emotional connection that reminds us why we fell in love with the film and television industry in the first place!

祝你学习愉快！Enjoy the journey!