Grading with Film/Emulsion™
The other guides in this section cover what each tab does. This one covers the order you do things in, across a real scene with more than one shot.
Where the node sits
Film/Emulsion™ wants a clean, scene-referred image, the way real film was exposed by scene light rather than by a graded picture. Give it its own node, after your balance and primary correction and before any output transform or creative LUT. Color Management covers why display-referred input drifts the look, and the Resolve Quick Start covers the node-tree placement in more depth.
Finishing windows and keys usually go after the plugin. The film chain reads the whole frame, so a window placed downstream isolates part of the finished print, while one placed upstream changes what the stock sees. Put a polish window after Film/Emulsion™, working on the print the film chain already produced. A window that is correcting the light reaching the negative, an over-bright sky or a hot practical, belongs upstream where it can do that job.
Where Resolve’s own color management sits relative to the node matters too. In DaVinci YRGB Color Managed, the plugin’s node sits inside the managed pipeline, between the input transform and the output transform, and it hands back the image in the same working space it received. In an ACES timeline it sits the same way, inside the working space, without touching the ODT. In an unmanaged or hand-built log timeline, the node sees whatever the clip’s own encoding is, unless an upstream LUT, transform, or correction has already changed it. Color Management covers all three setups and how to tell the plugin what it is receiving.
A per-shot workflow
Grading a scene with Film/Emulsion™ works best as three passes, done in order.
1. Pick the look first, or build one from Negative and Print. A Film Look sets the whole chain at once: negative stock, lab treatment, print stock, halation, grain, and most of Adjustments. Because picking a look overwrites the Adjustments, choose it before you balance rather than after, or your balance is wiped the moment you switch looks. Starting from a look and opening each tab is the fastest way to learn what the plugin is doing under it. Building from scratch means choosing a negative stock, then a print stock, then the Lab tab if the shot needs a push, a pull, or a process treatment. Overview covers the menu, and Print covers timing the negative onto a stock in the right order.
2. Balance the scene as the camera would have. Correct what a cinematographer would have corrected on set: exposure, white balance, a mismatched light source. The cleanest place for this is a node upstream of the plugin, because balance done there survives a change of look. You can also use the plugin’s own Adjustments, on the Camera tab, as long as you remember a later look change replaces them. Either way this is scene work, done before the stock records the image. Adjustments covers what belongs here.
3. Match the rest of the scene with the balance, not the film settings. Once one shot is graded, match later shots in the same scene by moving the balance, not by touching the negative stock, the print stock, or the Lab controls. Two shots on the same film settings but different balance still read as one chain, because balance runs before the stock and the stock treats every input the way film would.
That last point is worth dwelling on. Reserve the Negative, Print, and Lab controls for changing the film itself, a different stock for a flashback, a different print for a dream sequence. When a correction belongs to the print rather than the stock, Printer Master and the printer channels are the right tools for it. Match camera exposure and white balance in the balance pass, so the scene reads as one reel under different light rather than as inconsistent stock.
Easing a look
Four controls fade a look, and they are not interchangeable.
Effect Strength, on the Camera tab, is the master. It scales the Opacity of Negative, Print, Halation, and Grain together, so those four stages ease off as one thing while keeping their internal balance. Your scene Adjustments stay fully applied underneath it. Reach for this first when a preset is simply too much. Overview covers it.
Print Intensity, on the Print tab, eases only the print stock’s rendering. Lower it and the image moves back toward the developed negative while the printer lights, Matte Shadows, and Black Level keep working. Use it when the negative is right but the print stock is fighting you.
Print Opacity, also on the Print tab, blends the whole Print stage, printer lights and Lab processing included, against its input. It is a stronger fade than Print Intensity because it takes the timing with it, not only the stock’s rendering. Print covers the difference.
Negative Opacity, on the Negative tab, blends the whole Negative stage against the scene that fed it. Fading here reaches back further than a print fade, so a heavy negative stock reads more true to the scene underneath it.
If a look feels strong across the whole scene, start with Effect Strength. If only the print stock’s color or contrast is the problem on one shot, reach for Print Intensity before Print Opacity, and reach for Negative Opacity only when the negative itself, not the print, is what needs easing.
Judging the image
The Enable switches on Negative, Print, Halation, and Grain are the fastest A/B tool in the plugin. Turn one off, look, turn it back on. Viewing with Print off shows the developed negative, which is the right view for judging a negative stock, a push or pull, or the layer coupling on its own. Keep Print on to judge a Lab Process, since CCE, ENR, ACE, and Cross-process all act inside the print stage and go away when it does. To isolate the color stages, switch Halation and Grain off as well. Print covers what that view shows and does not show.
Judge halation and grain at 1:1 rather than in a scaled-down viewer. Both are spatial and fine-grained, and a scaled preview hides exactly the detail you are trying to evaluate. Judge them at the Quality setting you plan to render with, too. Quality changes only halation and grain, not the color chain, so color decisions carry over between settings, but the texture itself does not. A grain amount that looks right on Performance can read differently at Extreme. Overview and the Quick Start both cover grading on a lighter setting and confirming on Extreme before you deliver.
Common mistakes
Grading after the film stage with lifted blacks. A node placed downstream of Film/Emulsion™ that lifts the black point works against Matte Shadows and Black Level, which already set where the print’s floor sits. The result is a shadow that looks fine in isolation but does not match how the stock actually renders black. Set the floor with Matte Shadows on the Print tab, or Black Level in Camera’s Adjustments group, then judge any downstream lift against that. A downstream black adjustment is a fair creative choice, as long as it is a choice and not an accident of stacking.
Double-applying a print LUT downstream. A .cube exported from the plugin already carries the print stock’s rendering, including its contrast and color. Loading that LUT on a node downstream of the full live plugin, or stacking it under a second Film/Emulsion™ node with its color stages on, prints the stock twice. An exported LUT is meant to replace the plugin’s color stages. If you want the LUT and live texture together, run the plugin with Adjustments, Negative, Print, and Lab off, leaving Halation and Grain on, so only the texture stacks on top of the LUT.
A mismatched Transfer Function. One way a look drifts from shot to shot. If one clip’s node has the wrong Transfer Function, that shot’s film chain is exposing to the wrong signal, and no amount of Adjustments will bring it back in line with the rest of the scene. Check it first whenever one shot looks off and the others do not. Color Management covers the two failure patterns and how to tell them apart.
Using Exposure as a brightness slider after the look is set. Exposure runs before the negative, so raising it once a look is dialed in re-exposes the stock rather than brightening the finished picture, and it can push the shot into a different part of the stock’s curve than the one the look was built for. If a graded shot needs to read brighter, that is a Printer Master or Print Intensity decision on the Print tab, not an Exposure change on the Camera tab. Adjustments covers the distinction.
Next: Presets & LUT Export covers saving a look as a preset and sampling the color chain into a .cube LUT.