Lift, Gamma, and Gain are the foundational color wheels in Davinci Resolve that help video creators perform professional-level color correction. The Lift, Gamma, and Gain color wheels are designed to help video creators perform professional-level color correction.
The Lift, Gamma, and Gain wheels are designed to help video creators perform professional-level color correction. Lift, Gamma, Gain is a set of color wheels designed for primary color correction. Unlike secondary color correction, which involves working with isolated colors, primary color correction helps you change the entire color tone composition of the video. The tricky part is that by using either of these controls, you aren’t only correcting shadows, highlights, or midtones: the changes made with the Lift, Gamma, and Gain wheels affect the entire spectrum of tones. Each wheel controls a range of tones.
To correct colors for a selected range of tones, use the control point in the center of the wheel. Notice that as you’re moving the control point of the selected wheel, the RGB color values under that wheel are automatically changing, too. Now, what’s the difference between applying changes to dark tones, bright tones, and midtones? To help you answer this question, we’ve prepared a visual comparison. Although it’s the same color component, the results vary significantly because the changes apply to different ranges of tones.
Pro tip: the little tumbler in the bottom left corner is called Maintain luma level, and it keeps the overall level of brightness, regardless of the changes you make. Here is how they work. When you toggle the dark tone slider, all the dark tones below the selected value become darker.
Finally, the black & white threshold sliders decrease the level of contrast and saturation in the video. The next important part of the toolset is the Black point and White point. For example, if you have an overexposed image, it usually means that all colors are too bright, and there’s a lack of contrast. To fix that, select Black point from the panel and click on the object or area that’s supposed to be black. Click on the eyedropper icon and select the area you’d like to work on. Notice that by default, the eyedropper selects a range of tones, not an exact color (the long white extension tails on the Hue graph visualize exactly that). If you want to do the opposite and select a specific color with no range, press and hold the Ctrl key while using the eyedropper.
If you want to master the art of color correction, it’s crucial to have the right tools to practice. With the Lift, Gamma, Gain color wheels being added to VSDC, you now have everything you might need to perform both primary and secondary color correction. But most importantly, this toolset is available in the free version of VSDC and it works even on computers with limited processing power.
Color correction is subjective, so there is no correct way to do it. The operations described here are a reasonable starting point. Lift primarily affects shadows, gamma primarily affects the midtones, and gain primarily affects highlights. There are several variations, but the typical interface is three color wheels. You can also use the levels tool, although it is a pain to use for delicate correction because you have to constantly shift back between the RGB panels.
- Understand the order: gamma before lift and gain is a common approach, with gamma applied after lift and gain in some pipelines. This allows gamma to raise image values by a power while keeping the 0% and 100% values stable.
- Use pivot points when available: some color correctors provide adjustable pivot points for filmic workflows, though not all workflows in linear TV space support this natively.
- Leverage the classic three-wheel interface: Lift (shadows), Gamma (midtone), and Gain (highlights) provide intuitive control over the entire tonal range.
- Consider the LUT workflow: to speed up production, these primary operations can be baked into a LUT, but be mindful of dynamic range and clipping in whites or blacks.
The typical workflow with Davinci Resolve includes understanding the relation of lift, gamma, and gain to the overall luminance and color balance. Lift pivots around the white point, while Gain pivots around the black point, and Gamma is applied after Lift and Gain, affecting midtones with a power function. This means that adjusting gamma does not change the 0% or 100% values of the image, preserving some of the extreme tonal relationships while shaping the midtones.
In practice, when you work with a color-managed workflow, you may want to translate these operations into a LUT for speed. One obvious issue is dynamic range: baking multiple primary operations into a curve can result in too much precision in the whites and insufficient detail in the blacks. The original filmic tonemapping approach often uses a cineon-like curve with a log transformation, followed by a filmic curve and a display gamma. If you need to apply these curves in a shader, you can optimize the number of instructions by combining steps where appropriate. It’s common to implement a log-space contrast or a combined curve to preserve details in highlights and shadows while delivering a pleasing tonal response.
Resolve’s Lift/Gamma/Gain approach has numerous names and implementations in the broader color correction community. The concept is simple: all parameters affect the entire curve, but lift primarily affects shadows, gamma midtones, and gain highlights. There are many variations, and some practitioners prefer to apply gamma first and then use it as a lerp between the shadow and highlight color. The advantage of color wheels is the intuitive spatial manipulation of color: moving a control point changes both color and luminance in a coordinated way.
Some users report that the same instinct can be achieved with levels or curves, but the three-wheel interface provides a more direct, painterly approach to color grading. In some workflows, a dedicated hardware control surface or panel, such as the Blackmagic Design Davinci Resolve Micro Panel, can improve speed and precision. However, a well-tuned on-screen workflow remains perfectly viable for many projects, including Netflix-ready and theatrical deliverables with appropriate color management settings.
When preparing for deliverables, you might encounter the need to adjust lifts and gains without affecting the overall luminance structure of the image. The pivot point behavior and the interaction of lift, gamma, and gain with the scene’s luminance require careful testing across shots to maintain consistency. In practice, many colorists adjust shadows first, then midtones, and finally highlights, using the three wheels to balance the image while preserving skin tones and overall tonal integrity. If selective color editing or hue shifting is required, you may need to move beyond a simple 3-wheel primary correction and introduce targeted tools or 3D LUTs to manage color relationships without cross-talk between channels.
In addition to primary correction, the forum discussions and community resources emphasize that matching skin tones consistently across different shots often benefits from a calibrated approach to lift, gamma, and gain, combined with a well-tuned monitoring path. The goal is to achieve a coherent look that translates well to the target delivery and viewing environment while respecting the source material’s intent. For collaborations with clients in remote review sessions, Resolve supports clean feed and screen sharing, enabling review of lift/gamma/gain changes in real time during online sessions.
In sum, Lift, Gamma, and Gain remain the core tools for primary color correction in Davinci Resolve, offering a robust framework to shape the entire tonal and color balance of each shot, whether working on a Netflix-ready master or a theatrical delivery. The technique can be implemented manually or efficiently baked into a LUT for larger projects, while keeping in mind the limits of dynamic range and the importance of skin tones.