Practical Beauty Color Grading Level One – Quick and Effective

Do you have 50 shots that need quick and effective beauty work (but no budget or time)? In my previous Insight on this topic I shared the benefits of offering beauty work. It’s now time to see the different levels of beauty work in action with my most practical beauty work advice.

In this Insight you learn about my ‘Level 1’ beauty work

What do I mean by level 1? It’s work that you can apply cookie-cutter, across most shots with minimal effort. For me, in DaVinci Resolve it’s a combination of using the face refinement and soften/sharpen tool in ResolveFX.

It’s usually a very practical approach, and often makes the biggest difference in the daily grind of color work.

When Is Level 1 Most Useful? This cookie-cutter setup is aimed at clients that don’t have a budget for beauty and retouching and are not 100% happy with the on camera-look of the actors. It’s an effective approach that has a clear before-after appeal and doesn’t drag you down in nitty-gritty detail work. But it gives you a fair amount of tools at your disposal to attack the most objectionable elements of any particular setup.

Most important – this practical beauty color correction approach takes the reality off the image and gives the actor a slightly more complimentary feel without becoming obvious (if you keep a light touch on it).