Why grading happens in a graph

A stack of adjustments, with a structure

Most editing software applies effects as a list: filter one, then filter two, then filter three. A colour page applies them as a graph — a set of connected operations where you choose what feeds what.

The reason is that colour work is not a single chain. You want the exposure correction to apply to everything, the skin-tone adjustment to apply only to the face, and the film look to apply after both but before the vignette. A list cannot express that. A graph can.

Resolve's colour page is node-based and free. If you are working in Kdenlive, Shotcut or CapCut, you are stacking filters in order, which does the first half of this and not the second — that is a real limitation and it is worth knowing which half you are missing.

Serial nodes

The default. Each node receives the output of the previous one and passes its own output on.

Node 1 → Node 2 → Node 3

A sensible starting layout for a shot:

1. Balance. Neutralise the white point and set black and white points.
2. Exposure. Set the mid-tones where faces sit.
3. Look. Contrast, saturation, colour shifts.
4. Secondary. A key or window for one specific area.
5. Output. A final small trim, vignette, grain.

Five nodes, named. Naming them takes ten seconds and means you can come back in a week and change the exposure without hunting through an unlabelled stack.

Why order matters, mechanically

Each node operates on the values it receives. Put a heavy contrast node before your balance node, and the balance node is now working on an image whose shadows have already been crushed — it has fewer distinct values to work with, and the correction it applies is different.

The practical rule: subtractive and corrective operations first, creative operations after. Fix, then style. It is the same principle as correction before grade, applied inside a single shot.

Parallel and layer nodes

These exist for the case where you want two adjustments to apply to the same input and then be combined, rather than one feeding the other.

Parallel mixes the outputs of several branches evenly. Useful when you are correcting two different areas of the frame independently — the sky in one branch, the ground in another — and neither should affect the other.

Layer stacks them with a blend mode and an opacity, like layers in an image editor. Useful for compositing a look over the corrected image at a chosen strength.

Most grades never need these. Use them when a serial chain is forcing an adjustment through a correction you did not want it to pass through.

Keys and the alpha input

Every node has an input for the image and an input for a key — a mask that says where the node applies.

A key comes from a qualifier (select a colour range), a window (draw a shape), or an external matte. Feed it in and the node's adjustment applies only inside it. This is the mechanism behind every secondary correction, and the next-but-one lesson uses it.

The still store, and why it changes everything

This is the feature that makes shot matching possible, and it is free.

Grab a still from a graded shot — in Resolve, right-click the viewer and Grab Still, which stores both the frame and the entire grade. Then:

• Wipe the still against another shot to compare them directly, split screen, in the viewer.
• Apply the grade from the still to another shot with a middle-click, which copies the whole node tree.

The workflow that follows: grade one shot properly, store it, apply it to every other shot from the same setup, then adjust each individually. On a ten-shot scene this is five minutes rather than an hour.

Copying grades

Three mechanisms, each for a different case:

• Still store middle-click — copies one grade to one clip.
• Ripple all — applies a change to every selected clip at once. Useful for a look across a finished scene.
• Groups — Resolve lets you assign clips to a group and grade the group's pre-clip and post-clip levels, so a change to the group affects all its members while each keeps its own individual grade. This is the correct structure for a scene: individual corrections per shot, one shared look for the group.

Versions

Each clip can hold several complete grades as versions, switchable from the right-click menu. Before trying something different, make a new version rather than modifying the one that works.

It costs nothing, and it means the answer to "can we see the other one again" is two clicks rather than an afternoon.

Today

Grade one shot with five named nodes in the order above, grab a still, and apply it to a second shot from the same setup. That is the whole workflow of the block in ten minutes.