The audience never saw the negative. What they saw was the release print: a positive stock printed from the negative, often through intermediate copies, then developed and run through a projector. That step decides the contrast of the finished picture, where its blacks sit, and how its colors separate. The Print tab is where you choose the print stock and time it, the way a lab timer did with printer lights.
What the stage does
The Print stage takes the developed negative from the Negative stage, exposes it through the printer lights onto the chosen print stock, and passes the result to Halation and Grain. The Lab tab’s Process control acts here. It applies a lab process to the print, with Process Amount setting how far it goes, or Crossover in its place when the process chosen is cross-processing. The Lab guide covers them.
Black Level, on the Camera tab’s Adjustments group, is applied inside this stage as a shadow fill. It follows the print’s Enable and Opacity like every control on this tab, so switching the print off or fading it to zero takes Black Level with it.
Print Stock
Print Stock picks the positive film.
- Kodak 2383. Kodak’s Vision Color Print film and the default. Start there with a Vision negative.
- Kodak 2393. Kodak’s Vision Premier print film. The Vintage 35mm look prints on it.
- Fuji 3510. Fuji’s release print stock, with its own dye set.
A print stock does not have to match the negative’s manufacturer. The plugin lets you pair either negative family with either print, and each combination is its own look.
Every Film Look sets this menu, and changing it under a look reads Custom.
Print Intensity
Print Intensity scales how much of the print stock’s rendering is applied. At the top of the range the negative is printed in full. Lower it and the image moves back toward the developed negative, so the print’s contrast and color fade while the printer lights, the processing, Matte Shadows, and Black Level keep working. This is the slider the Resolve Quick Start points to when a look is right but too strong, because it eases the print without changing the negative it was built on.
Printer lights
Printer Master, Printer Red, Printer Green, and Printer Blue are the lab’s printer lights, in printer points. Master moves all three together and is the overall print exposure. The three channels trim the color of the print. One point is a small step, and in the plugin twelve points is a stop of print exposure.
They are applied before the print stock’s response, so they behave like exposure onto the print rather than a brightness offset. The shadows stay anchored near the stock’s black, the highlights roll off through the shoulder, and the midtones move the most. Their effect follows Print Intensity, since it is the print’s response that shapes them. A print timed a few points down still has a full black, and one timed a few points up still has a shoulder. That is the difference between timing a print and adjusting a gain.
With Laboratory Mode off, the default, the sliders read the way a colorist expects a digital control to read: plus on Master is brighter, plus on Red is redder. Switch Laboratory Mode on and the same sliders read the way a lab timing sheet reads. More printer light means more exposure onto the print, so plus on Master prints darker and plus on a channel prints its complement. Plus Red goes cyan, plus Green goes magenta, plus Blue goes yellow. It is the mode to use if you are matching notes from a real timing session. Only the direction changes. The film response underneath is identical either way, and the switch does nothing while all four sliders sit at zero.
Printer points change the signal before the print stock’s response is applied. If a shot needs a half-stop of print exposure, use Master here rather than Exposure on the Camera tab, which would re-expose the negative instead.
Matte Shadows
Matte Shadows sets the print’s density floor, the last thing the Print stage does. At zero it leaves the print as the earlier controls rendered it. Pull it negative and the deepest shadows are drawn down toward black, tapered so the midtones and highlights stay put, and they never crush to nothing. Push it positive and a veil lifts the deepest blacks. Black Level, on the Camera tab’s Adjustments group, is a shadow fill applied inside the same stage. Both controls follow the print’s Enable and Opacity.
Opacity and Enable
Opacity blends the complete Print stage against its input, including the printer lights, the Lab processing, Matte Shadows, and Black Level. At zero the developed negative passes through as if no print had been made.
Enable takes the stage out of the chain. With the print off you are looking at the image before the print, which no audience ever did. It shows what the negative is contributing and is the right view for judging a stock change on the Negative tab. Halation and Grain stay active if they are enabled. Black Level goes with the print, since it is applied inside it.
Controls
| Control | Range | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Enable | on / off | on |
| Opacity | 0-100 | 100 |
| Print Intensity | 0-100 | 100 |
| Printer Master | -12 to +12 points | 0 |
| Printer Red | -12 to +12 points | 0 |
| Printer Green | -12 to +12 points | 0 |
| Printer Blue | -12 to +12 points | 0 |
| Laboratory Mode | on / off | off |
| Matte Shadows | -100 to +100 | 0 |
| Print Stock | Kodak 2383 / Kodak 2393 / Fuji 3510 | Kodak 2383 |
Working with the print
Time the print last. Choose the negative, choose the print stock, then reach for the printer lights, in that order, because each choice changes what the next one has to work with. A Master trim that was right on 2383 usually needs re-timing on 2393.
Use Printer Master for exposure and the three channels for balance, and keep the channel trims small. A few points of red or blue is a strong correction on a print.
When a look is too much, ease Print Intensity before Opacity. Intensity keeps the print’s timing and floor and softens the stock’s rendering. Opacity fades all of it, including the printer lights you set.
What the Print tab cannot do
There is no bleach bypass control on this tab. Print processing lives on the Lab tab as Process and Process Amount.
There is no control over the print’s own halation. The plugin renders one halation, on the Halation tab, over the finished image.
The print does not add grain. The Grain stage uses the Film Stock and Film Gauge on its own tab.
Print Split Tone is built into the plugin but hidden in this release. It blends the print stock’s own split toning against a neutral rendering of the same stock and sits at 100, the full Legacy print, so nothing changes until it returns as a visible control in a later update.
Next: Halation covers the warm halo around highlights and the tab that controls it.