Recently I've moved from Final Cut Pro, to Adobe Premiere and now with Davinci Resolve. It's super powerful and I'm enjoying it. I just wonder, does anyone know of some intermediate to advanced tutorials or courses I can sign up for? I would love to really dive deeper (pun intended) in colour grading, dynamic KeyFrames, power windows panel, etc. I also find underwater videos quite different from land-based videos so most of the tutorials on YouTube are a bit hard to follow (land-based videos)

What would I like to achieve? I would go up a few levels from basic colour grading like what I have here of some manta rays.

I shoot with a Sony A7V, most of the time with slog3. Any recommendations welcomed!

Edited May 26May 26 by Paulkzk
Adding some camera specs

Hi Paul,

Honestly, the best starting point is right on the Blackmagic Design website. Their official training section has free dedicated video lessons just for the Color Page. You can even download the Colorist Guide PDF along with the original media files so you can practice on the exact same clips they use.

For YouTube channels that show real industry workflows:

Cullen Kelly or Darren Mostyn. their tutorials are very technical and professional. But if you need something a bit more accessible, Casey Faris is great for beginners and intermediate users.

But I agree with you, underwater color grading is indeed an entirely different discipline. Water acts as a massive cyan filter that selectively absorbs light.

Most generic underwater tutorials fail because they simply push the temperature slider towards orange. This breaks the image by introducing artificial color noise into channels that contain zero actual data.

When dealing with 10-bit Log files shot underwater, you have enough data depth to rebuild the image, but you need a specific approach rather than standard primary wheels.

Usually I get that magenta fringe while trying to remove the green. What happens is actually color math. Magenta is the exact opposite of green on the color wheel, so when you use the global tint slider to subtract the green, the software automatically pushes the entire image toward magenta. Because your underwater footage is already missing all that red information, this adjustment will not give you a neutral white balance. It just ends up turning your background water purple.

Another thing to keep in mind is that relying on the primary temperature and tint wheels will often just break the image. Instead, open the curves panel and use the Hue vs Hue curve. Select the specific green wavelength of the water and shift that point slightly toward blue. This changes the green cast into a standard water color without bleeding magenta into the rest of the frame.

You can also use the Color Warper for this, which lets you do really precise vector manipulation without messing up your global white balance. Just grab the control points in the green and cyan regions and pull them directly toward the blue region to neutralize the green.

Hope this helps.

Ciao

Wow! Thanks for the response Davide! I guess I'll have to dig into to the top-side tutorials to try learn and understand the basics of color grading and see how to apply that to underwater footages. What you mentioned with not using the standard primary wheel totally makes sense. I was wondering why my footages ended up with such crazy "noise" pixels and what you said makes sense. One thing that I feel like I'm missing though is using a red filter when shooting - do you use one or is it just me that I find "bringing back the reds" quite artificial because of the absence of it through the lens

I don't really count because in the Mediterranean I do deep dives using only artificial lights.

I could have used the red filter in my last project, which I did entirely at 3 meters, and I regretted not using it.

Anyway, if you dive with natural light, I absolutely recommend using a good one along MWB.

We have a long and detailed article on theory and practice. If you also use lights and find yourself in what is called mixed light, the article covers that too.

@bghazzal is the Jedi od this technique.

I've used all three of the editing packages mentioned, and at this point, DaVinci Resolve is by far my preferred choice. Adobe Premiere has become far too buggy and unreliable for my liking, and I feel Apple really dropped the ball after Final Cut Studio 7.

As David mentioned, YouTube is an excellent resource for DaVinci Resolve tutorials. There’s a huge amount of information available covering everything from colour grading and compositing to masking, tracking, effects, and more. Resolve has become an incredibly powerful all-in-one platform, particularly when it comes to colour and finishing.

@Davide DB — In your previous post, you mentioned using a red filter. If you're shooting with a camera that doesn't give you much control over colour temperature or white balance, then yes, I would definitely recommend using one. It can make a significant difference underwater and give you a much better starting point in post.

I shoot on a RED Helium, which gives me extensive control over the camera settings and produces excellent results underwater. Pairing that with the flexibility of shooting RAW is where it really shines. In post, you have tremendous control over colour temperature, tint, exposure, and the overall colour balance of the image, allowing you to recover and bring out colours that would otherwise be difficult to work with.

This is also where DaVinci Resolve really excels. Its RAW workflow and colour-grading tools give you an incredible amount of control over underwater footage, particularly when you're dealing with the colour loss and shifts that naturally occur as you go deeper.

4 hours ago, Paul said:

I shoot on a RED Helium, which gives me extensive control over the camera settings and produces excellent results underwater. Pairing that with the flexibility of shooting RAW is where it really shines. In post, you have tremendous control over colour temperature, tint, exposure, and the overall colour balance of the image, allowing you to recover and bring out colours that would otherwise be difficult to work with.

This is also where DaVinci Resolve really excels. Its RAW workflow and colour-grading tools give you an incredible amount of control over underwater footage, particularly when you're dealing with the colour loss and shifts that naturally occur as you go deeper.

It must be an incredible tool to work with - on average, how much data do you come back with after a shooting day?

And how do you work with it in terms of storage? Do you basically just keep anything that could be useful for future projects, or do you shoot for a specific project, after which the rushes are discarded?

I was upgrading my camera rig recently, and was tempted by the Nikon ZR for its RAW shooting capabilities, precisely for the reasons you mention, but after looking into file sizes, I concluded I probably wouldn't be shooting in N-RAW 90% of the time, since I archive my footage with a dual backup.

I'd love to hear about your RAW footage workflow, especially when it comes to data management.

Thanks!
Ben

15 hours ago, bghazzal said:

It must be an incredible tool to work with - on average, how much data do you come back with after a shooting day?

And how do you work with it in terms of storage? Do you basically just keep anything that could be useful for future projects, or do you shoot for a specific project, after which the rushes are discarded?

I was upgrading my camera rig recently, and was tempted by the Nikon ZR for its RAW shooting capabilities, precisely for the reasons you mention, but after looking into file sizes, I concluded I probably wouldn't be shooting in N-RAW 90% of the time, since I archive my footage with a dual backup.

I'd love to hear about your RAW footage workflow, especially when it comes to data management.

Thanks!
Ben

Yeah, RAW workflows can be challenging, especially when they first came onto the scene. Back then, most editing packages couldn’t handle RAW footage natively, so you had to render or transcode everything into a workable format before you could even start editing. It added a whole extra step to the workflow and took up a lot of time and storage.

If I’m shooting stock or working on my own projects, I’ll usually go through the footage, dump anything that’s unusable, and back up everything worth keeping. I have several RAID 5 systems that I use to store my footage, and when you’re dealing with RAW files, that storage gets expensive pretty quickly. :)

When I’m shooting for a production, it’s a different story. I generally hand the footage over to the production team and they take it from there. They’ll dump and back up everything, then catalogue and detail each clip before it makes its way into the edit.

Working with RAW today is definitely much easier. Most modern editing packages can handle multiple codecs and formats on the same timeline, which makes life considerably easier than having to transcode everything into a single format before editing.

That said, you still have to be smart about your workflow. Just because you can edit everything at the highest possible resolution and quality doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Start throwing multiple streams of high-resolution RAW footage, effects, colour grades, and graphics onto a timeline and things can get complicated—and demanding on your system—very quickly. Proxies and optimized media can still be your best friends.

On 5/26/2026 at 4:43 PM, Paulkzk said:

Recently I've moved from Final Cut Pro, to Adobe Premiere and now with Davinci Resolve. It's super powerful and I'm enjoying it. I just wonder, does anyone know of some intermediate to advanced tutorials or courses I can sign up for? I would love to really dive deeper (pun intended) in colour grading, dynamic KeyFrames, power windows panel, etc. I also find underwater videos quite different from land-based videos so most of the tutorials on YouTube are a bit hard to follow (land-based videos)

What would I like to achieve? I would go up a few levels from basic colour grading like what I have here of some manta rays.

I shoot with a Sony A7V, most of the time with slog3. Any recommendations welcomed!

DaVinci Resolve Youtube channels I use.

https://www.youtube.com/@LearnColorGrading

https://www.youtube.com/@MrAlexTech