Inside a complete film look

Tell it what it is looking at

Start with Step 1: Timeline Setup. Input Profile describes the pixels arriving at this node, not necessarily the original file. Select the exact camera curve and gamut for supported log footage, or Already converted if Resolve colour management, RAW decoding or an earlier CST has already converted it. Helios does not detect the camera or the timeline colour space for you.

Working / Output Space chooses Rec.709 / sRGB or DaVinci Wide Gamut / DaVinci Intermediate. Technical camera profiles convert into the chosen space before the effects; their Rec.709 output uses Gamma 2.4. With Already converted, this setting must match the incoming signal. DWG output still needs your project's display transform. For DJI D-Log M, apply the camera maker’s conversion LUT upstream and choose Already converted with Rec.709 / sRGB.

What matters either way is that the setting matches the signal. Hand it log while it is set to Rec.709 and the thresholds will all read the wrong levels — highlights that are not highlights, shadows that are not shadows — and every module will behave strangely for reasons that look like bugs and are not.

What each module is touching

Every effect module can show you its own mask — the lighter the pixel, the more that module is affecting it. It is the fastest way to tell whether an effect is doing what you think, and it is worth switching on before you touch a slider rather than after. Tap through them:

The rest of the recipe

The remaining modules have no mask to show because they work on the whole frame. Anything not listed in these panels is sitting at its default.

Colour science and split tone

Colour density at 0.085 and nothing else — vibrance, the individual CMY densities and bleach bypass are all at zero. The colour in this frame is coming almost entirely from split tone, which is the one place a big number appears: split amount 0.636, a warm khaki in the highlights against a blue-grey in the shadows, additive blend. That single pairing is doing most of the work people would credit to a LUT.

Print, vignette and grain

A Kodak 2383 print profile at 0.217 — blended in, not full strength, so it gives the image a stock personality without taking over the grade underneath. Vignette at 0.178, which you will struggle to see on its own and would miss if it were gone. Grain is IMAX 65mm at a strength of 0.040, weighted into the shadows and midtones and largely kept out of the highlights, with edge protection at 0.500 so the fine grass detail does not turn crunchy.

Now look at the numbers again

Eight of the nine amounts are under a quarter. The heaviest effect in the entire look is a diffusion pass at 0.226, and the halation everybody associates with a film look is at 0.054 — about a twentieth of the way up its range.

That is the actual lesson, and it is worth more than the numbers themselves. The temptation with a panel full of controls is to turn things up until you can see them working. But an effect you can point at has usually gone too far: the frame stops looking photographed and starts looking processed. Ten modules at a tenth each is a completely different image from two modules at full strength, and the first one is the one that holds up on a big screen.

The current versions of these tools are in Helios Grade, our film-look plugin for Resolve's Color page, and so is the mask view on each module — being able to see what an effect is touching before you commit to it is most of why it exists. It runs free and watermarked with no expiry, so you can put this whole recipe on your own footage before deciding anything.