Grading with Filmbox Looks is designed to be super easy. It’s very possible to grade entire projects with nothing but the controls in Filmbox Looks.

If you want to use other operations it’s generally best to do them before Filmbox in the processing chain and to use colorspace-aware tools for changing things like exposure and color balance to maintain emulation accuracy.

Grading workflow

Major color grading operations should take place before the Filmbox node in the camera’s log colorspace just like working with a “Show LUT”.

Accurate exposure and color balance adjustments can be made using Filmbox’s camera controls, or Resolve’s colorspace-aware “HDR Global” tool.

Creative Controls

Filmbox is doing a lot under the hood to reproduce every aspect of photochemical imaging. Looks offers basic control over the main characteristics. Not every Looks preset uses every characteristic, some sliders may appear or disappear depending on the preset. A much greater degree of control over every aspect of this processing is available in Filmbox Pro

Contrast

Contrast Slider: Decreasing contrast reduces highlights and only slightly elevates shadows while maintaining mid-tone exposure.

Vibrance

Vibrance Slider: Increasing Vibrance produces “richer” darker colors than a traditional saturation operation. It saturates skin tones less than other tones and attempts to prevent over-saturation.

Halation

Reproduces the unique spatial rendering characteristics of film - including the diffusion of light within layers of color emulsion that produces the iconic amber-biased halos visible especially in highlights and high-contrast image features.

Halation Slider (Radius): Adjust the size of the halation relative to the current preset. Also controls big halation (Aura) present in some presets.

Grain

Reproduces the texture of film by mapping grain according to the density of the emulated negative.

Grain Slider (Strength): Amplify or reduce the overall perceptual strength of grain

Dust Slider (Strength): Adjust the opacity of the dust particles.

Gate Weave

Reproduces subtle movement between frames at the time of exposure.

Strength: Amplify or reduce the intensity of the motion.