Overview
A colour grade for a talking head video has two phases: primary correction (making the image technically accurate — white balance, exposure, contrast) and creative grade (adding a consistent look or mood). For most YouTube and interview content, a clean primary correction with minimal creative grade is the right approach.
What You Need
- DaVinci Resolve (free) with your footage in the timeline
- A calibrated monitor, or at minimum, accurate headphones to judge skintones with your eyes
- Optional: a colour calibration card shot at the beginning of your recording
Steps
Set up the Color page
Switch to the Color page in DaVinci Resolve. You'll see the timeline at the bottom, the viewer in the centre, and scopes (Waveform, Parade, Vectorscope) in the upper left. Enable View → Show Scopes if they're not visible. Switch the scope to Parade (RGB waveform side by side) — this is the most useful scope for primary correction. The Color Wheels and Curves are your primary tools.
Correct white balance with Temperature and Tint
In the Color Wheels panel, you'll see Temperature and Tint sliders at the top. Watch the Parade scope: if the red channel sits higher than blue, the image is warm — reduce Temperature (drag left). If blue is higher than red, increase Temperature. Tint corrects for green/magenta casts. Aim to balance the three channels in the Parade scope in the areas representing white or neutral grey in the image. A person's white shirt or the whites of eyes are useful reference points.
Set exposure and contrast with Lift/Gamma/Gain
Switch to the Waveform scope. Lift controls the darkest areas (shadows) — drag the Lift wheel down to deepen blacks until the bottom of the waveform just touches 0. Gain controls the brightest areas (highlights) — set the top of the waveform to around 70–80% for a face to avoid clipping. Gamma controls the midtones (the face itself) — adjust until the face reads as the correct exposure. These three controls together give you a clean, technically correct starting image.
Check and protect skin tones
Switch the scope to Vectorscope. There is a line pointing toward the "Skin Tone Indicator" at about 10 o'clock on the vectorscope. All human skin tones — regardless of ethnicity — should fall on or near this line. If they don't, your white balance is slightly off, or you have a tint issue. Adjust Temperature and Tint until skin tones sit on the skin tone line. This is the most reliable objective check for portrait-style colour correction.
Apply a subtle creative grade
For YouTube and interview content, keep creative grading minimal. A common approach: slightly cool the shadows (shift Lift wheel toward blue/cyan) and slightly warm the highlights (shift Gain wheel toward orange). This creates a warm-shadow contrast reminiscent of cinematic grades without looking processed. Alternatively, apply a LUT from a subtle pack at 30–50% opacity. For all creative decisions: if your viewer notices the grade, it's too heavy.
Pro Tips
- Grade one representative clip first, then use DaVinci's still feature to copy the grade to all similar clips: right-click the graded clip in the timeline → Grab Still, then apply to selected clips via the Gallery.
- Use our Color Grading Palette to extract a colour palette from a reference frame before grading.
- Work from Log footage if your camera supports it — Log captures more dynamic range and gives you more flexibility in the grade than Rec.709.