Overview

Prime/Grade™ is a primary grading tool: exposure, flare, fill, contrast, balance, saturation, and specular control in one node. It does the primary correction a colorist reaches for first, and it carries its own on-screen checkers so you can read exposure, white balance, and skin while you grade instead of switching to a separate scope. This page covers what runs where, the five groups in the inspector, and the controls to set before anything else.

What Prime/Grade does

Prime/Grade works in your image’s own encoding, before any creative look. You tell it the color space your image arrives in, then correct exposure and tone, balance the color, and set saturation. The point is a clean, neutral starting grade: the shot exposed where you want it, neutrals reading neutral, skin sitting where it should. A look, a film emulation, or a LUT goes on a later node, on top of what Prime/Grade hands off.

Everything is one node with one set of controls. You are not stacking a curve node, a color wheels node, and a scope; the correction and the tools to judge it are in the same place.

The order to work in

Work the controls in a simple order, and set the input before anything else.

1. Set the input first. Prime/Grade works in your image’s own encoding — it doesn’t convert it to a working space. Input Transfer Function tells the plugin which log or gamma curve the image is in, so its tone math and stop references are correct; Input Gamut tells the Saturation checker which primaries you’re in. Every move after this assumes that curve is right.
2. Brightness first. Set Exposure to place the shot in stops, then shape it with the tone controls — Flare and Fill for the shadows, Contrast and Pivot for the curve, Speculars for the brightest highlights.
3. Then color. Balance the image with Temp and Tint, then set Saturation last, once tone and balance are settled.

The grading controls guide covers Tone and Color in detail.

The five groups

The inspector is organized into five groups.

• Color Management sets the Input Transfer Function and Input Gamut, so the plugin knows what it is looking at.
• Tone holds Exposure, Flare, Fill, Speculars, Contrast, and Pivot.
• Color holds Temp, Tint, the Temp/Tint axis, and Saturation, plus a neutral-sample eyedropper in the OFX version.
• Advanced changes the math behind the main controls: how Exposure, Flare, Contrast, Balance, and Saturation are applied. The defaults are the right starting point, so leave this group alone until a shot needs it.
• Tools & Charts holds the on-screen checkers: false color, skin, white balance, middle gray, saturation, and invalid-value checks, plus a grade-curve overlay. These read the image; they do not change it.

What to set first

Three things carry most of a correction.

1. Input Transfer Function. Set this to match how your image arrives; Prime/Grade uses it to linearize for its tone math and to reference exposure in stops. Guessing here is the most common cause of a grade that will not sit right. The Resolve Quick Start covers how to pick it.
2. Exposure. Get the shot sitting where it belongs before you touch anything else, so every later control works on a correctly exposed image.
3. Temp, Tint, and Saturation. Balance the color to neutral, then set saturation. The white-balance and skin checkers in Tools & Charts tell you when neutrals and skin are where they should be.

Two ways to run it

Prime/Grade ships in two forms. The DCTL version runs in DaVinci Resolve Studio. The OFX version, currently in beta, runs in both Resolve Studio and the free edition. Both are installed and licensed through the PixelTools Installer. Install & Activate covers setup and the difference between them.