From Demo to Licensed

The demo is the whole plugin, with every stock, preset, and slider on the same GPU path at the same quality. It withholds delivery: a watermark on every frame, and the file operations that only matter once you can deliver.

What the demo gives you

• All 29 looks and every stock. Build the look you would deliver and test it on your own footage for as long as you like.
• The complete control set. Simple and Advanced halation, the Lab tab, per-stock grain, Effect Strength.
• Full render quality. Extreme, High, and Performance all behave the same as on a licensed machine.
• No time limit. The demo does not expire. Test it on the shows you are grading now.

The watermark

The demo composites a watermark onto every rendered frame, in the viewer and in any export: a grid of dots across the frame, two faint diagonals running corner to corner, the PixelTools mark along the sides, and a logo-shaped frosted region in the center.

It is built to let you judge the look through it. The dots are light enough that grain and halation read around them, and the frosted center is small enough that skin and highlights stay readable. You cannot strip it off afterward. The center region discards color and tone rather than overlaying it, so there is no way back to the clean frame.

There is no watermark on a licensed machine and no trace of it in the node settings. The same node, once activated, renders clean.

What activation changes

Two things: the output goes clean, and the three file operations in the Presets group on the Camera tab start working. The buttons are always visible; they need a license to run.

Clean output

The watermark goes away on every node in every project, including nodes you built on the demo. If Resolve is open with a demo node on screen, the frame clears within a few seconds of the installer writing the license. You do not need to restart Resolve or re-add the node.

Export LUT (.cube)

Type a name in Preset Name, choose a LUT Folder, and click Export LUT (.cube)…. The file holds the Adjustments, Negative, and Print stages as set on the node, with the Lab settings folded in. A LUT samples the look rather than reproducing it exactly.

Halation and grain are not in the file. Halation reads neighboring pixels and grain depends on where each pixel sits in the frame; a LUT can only map one color to another. The cube carries the look, and for the texture the plugin has to be on the node.

Preset files

Export Preset… saves the node’s look as a .filmemulsion file you can hand to another suite. Import Preset… loads one on any licensed machine. There is no file browser: put the file in the presets folder (or on the Desktop), type its name in Preset Name, and click the button. Older .ptfe files import too.

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/PixelTools/FilmEmulsion/Presets
• Windows: %APPDATA%\PixelTools\FilmEmulsion\Presets

A preset file carries the look and leaves the setup alone. Color Management, Quality, Effect Strength, the per-stage Opacity sliders, and the halation mode stay as they are on the node. The Overview lists exactly what a look owns. An imported preset sets the Film Look menu to Custom rather than adding itself to the list.

Activating

Activation happens in the PixelTools Installer, not in Resolve. Sign in with the email you used at checkout, find Film Emulsion on the OFX Plug-ins tab, and click Install. A successful install activates the license on its own; if the card shows Activate, click it. Install & Activate covers the steps, plus how seats and machines work and what to do when you retire a workstation.

What a license does not change

A license does not add stocks, presets, or controls that the demo lacks, and it does not render at a higher quality. If a look is not working for you in the demo, activating will not change it. Test the demo on real footage until you are sure, then activate.

Next: Overview maps the five stages, the six tabs, and the three master controls.