
Take spatial noise reduction, for example. If there are no corrections, the screen will be a uniform grey, but as soon as you add a correction, this will stand out against the grey background.Ī/B is particularly useful whenever you have to set a threshold for an effect.

So what exactly does the A/B mode do? It shows you the difference the corrections in a node are making to the picture. Highlight A/B will show you what you are affecting and where to look, but it’s no substitute for your eyes when deciding how much sharpening to apply! Once you’re found the right balance between Level and Coring, leave the Highlight mode and watch the image to decide how much Radius and Scaling to use. Anything that’s neutral grey is not being affected, anything that stands out with contrast is. Now you can now actually see what you’re doing. That’s where the Highlight A/B mode makes all the difference.Īdd some sharpness by bringing the Radius control down a little, and then activate the Highlight button at the top left of the viewer and switch to A/B mode at the top right. The problem is that it’s never easy to see what you’re doing with these controls and to get the balance between Level and Coring right. “Coring Softness” will create a soft transition around the threshold rather than an abrupt cut-off. Raise it to exclude finer details and keep only the larger ones. Resolve has tools to do this, the “Level” and “Coring Softness” controls at the bottom of the sharpening palette. You rarely want to sharpen all the details in a picture, just some of them – the eyes, for example, but not the skin. The key to precise sharpening and noise reduction in DaVinci Resolve



They don’t often come up in tutorials and I’ve discovered in the course of my teaching that even some confirmed editors and colorists are not aware of them. This short series of articles is about various aspects of Resolve that are important but not as well known as they should be.
