Tone mapping in wide gamut is UNUSBALE compared to Resolve.. Please fix!

I will say that I’m not a big fan of the tone mappers Premiere offers, but neither Resolve’s. But before comparing to others a little extra context would be necessary. Resolve’s default CST setting of “DaVinci” tone mapping is a per channel DRT. This behaves similar to the By Channel method inside Premiere when it comes to overal rendering especially in the highlights. Premiere’s default setting of Hue Preservation is in my opinion not very suited for camera log to SDR display other than perhaps creating a ‘typical phone look’.

DaVinci/Premiere by Channel introduce hue skews by design but are generally accepted/expected in relation to film and/or human vision like fire turning from red to yellow. Hue preservation attempts to stay hue linear but not as much visually linear depending on the context.

When you are changing exposure in Resolve (from the video you shared) you are using offset. This is not the same as raising exposure in Premiere which uses linear gain. You will see a difference in that using offset also raises the blacks softening the entire image because the log working space has a toe towards black where it stops being equally spaced out stops. Linear gain will keep it more anchored in that area.

Premiere’s output gamut compressor impacts how much you can ‘fill’ the display gamut too much. It creeps in too far into the ‘normal’ range making it difficult to create strong looks with solid safety rails. Especially given the fact that many of the color tools have limited ranges too requiring stacking them to get more out of it.

I think there’s room for improvement, but the problem is that these tone mappers already exist in current release and are likely not going to change because of this. It also takes quite some development effort to make a good one that can also do inversion from display back to scene non destructively. (something they’re still working on).

If they want to provide a better one in the future it would have to be ‘yet another option in a list’ unless they cleverly hide old ones but keep them for backward compatibility.

I think it would make most sense for Adobe to focus on providing users methods to use their own rendering, DRT, LUTs, through systems like OCIO which AE already has for example. That way you are not locked into whatever they’re providing. I’m hoping this is something that will follow closely after Color Mode has had it’s release as it will benefit many users and workflows.

You’re double-dipping the tone and gamut mapping. If you use the detect log/raw up top, do not also tell the Sequence to apply input tone and gamut mapping.

Next … Lumetri will soon be relegated to an effect from the Effects panel as it will no longer be a Panel itself. The new Color Mode in the public beta, although not with all it’s final features yet, will replace it for main use. That will be getting LUT applications, full surface controls, and some form of libraries for saving grades, applying them to any project, even to selling grade packs.

​Hey ​@R Neil Haugen, could you take a look at this thread? Like I mentioned before, I've been comparing Resolve's color capabilities against Premiere's. I try to push the image as much as possible, but it always ends up breaking. Then I compare to Resolve and get a much richer image. I'm not sure if it's the transforms mapping the data or tone mappers limitation. Open some of the comments too — there's a car example in Resolve worth seeing.

On this right image i added saturation though the color page and on the left image i added vibrace though lumetri BEFORE the color page.. i get a much balanced shot this way and avoid the awful yellow skin tone look. a lot closer to davinci. 

On the right image, I added saturation through the color page. On the left, I added vibrance through Lumetri before the color page. The left shot is far more balanced and avoids that awful yellow skin-tone look much closer to Resolve.

The takeaway: the color page needs a vibrance option, either replacing the saturation knob or sitting right next to it. Vibrance protects skin tones by boosting the less saturated colors more than the already saturated ones, whereas the current saturation control pushes everything equally and blows out skin. Having to route vibrance through Lumetri beforehand just to get a clean result is a workaround it should be native to the color page.

Testing the other tone mapping methods.

Max rgb:

Hue preservation:

By channel:

Adjusting the highlight saturation and knee where possible doesn't help either.. too much detail is lost.

No grade — just the input transform. I tried both Apple Log and Apple Log Wide Gamut, same issue either way. Resolve looks noticeably richer. You can see the scopes barely reach 100 in Resolve, while Premiere doesn't get there at all.

Here's another clip with only the input transform applied though the rec 709, no grade yet. It holds up somewhat, but there's that yellow cast in premiere.

now with the grade: 

The Resolve version preserves far more detail when I try to hit that same look. The more I push exposure in Premiere, the more the image loses punch, and the colors flatten out.. less gradient, less subtlety in the transitions.

In Resolve, the colors hold their gradient and the image keeps its punch as I push it up. Resolve simply doesn't fall apart this way when I need to lift the image.

As I mentioned before, every tone mapping option in Premiere seems to produce this same washed-out result. This isn't a one off with a single clip it's consistent across footage.

Here’s a side by side comparison of the artifacts that i get with all the tone mapping options in premiere vs davinci.