Recreate Davinci Resolve 3 Strip Technicolor in Photoshop

[timbeach]

Hi all, I am interested in recreating this 3 strip technicolor look in Photoshop. It was done in Davinci resolve.

3 Strip Technicolor Look in DaVinci Resolve

Technicolor. When you say the name it harkens back to the golden age studio era. It brings to mind the larger-than-life stars of the silver-screen, epic production values, and a hyper-vibrant punch…

web.archive.org

Process as I understand it is:

1) Isolate R,G,B channels in B&W. [Can do this in PS by selecting each individual channel and pasting as new layer.]
2) Tinting R B&W layer > Cyan, G > magenta, and B > yellow. [Can do this in PS by putting a solid colour adjustment layer above each B&W layer, and selecting blend mode 'darken']

Now there are seemingly two things left to do: 3) Combine the C,M,Y layers, and, 4) invert the hue. Inverting the hue is easy with a hue/sat adjustment layer, hue set to +/- 180. But how to combine the C,M,Y layers? My best attempt so far was to merge each of the solid colour and B&W layer combos, and set each of them to blend mode 'lighten'.

This was a success in that it leaves me with only three colours: Pure green, red and blue, but a failure in that it turns the secondaries (cyan, magenta and yellow) to white. In the image demonstrated at the link, this doesn't happen.

Alternatively, instead of one hue/sat adjustment layer above all three C,M,Y layers, I clip one to each layer. The end result just looks like the original image only darker, and could easily be achieved by simply applying a curves layer and dropping the shadows.

So does anyone know how to recreate this process properly?

Much appreciated.

 

[timbeach]

Bumping in case anyone missed it first time round. A little surprised no one here has any ideas.

 

[Ho72]

Add a Color Lookup adjustment layer, select 3Strip.look, tweak to suit.

Here is their example (original_raw) with the CLU adjustment applied in multiply mode, a curves adj layer added to lift the tone and a hue/saturation adj layer to bump the saturation. That last step might not have been needed if the original file hadn't been so strangely desaturated to begin with.

 

[AKoblentz]

There are 3 types of the Three-strip Technicolor - III, IV, V, plus "The Aviator" and "Apocalypse Now Redux"variants.

 

[Bunjo]

There's a YouTube tutorial series just begun which may help. See

 

[timbeach]

I was hoping to replicate the process rather than rely on a LUT. But how did you get the original raw? When I click on the link it downloads the zip, but opening that only gives me a .cpgz

 

[timbeach]

Yes, the one I would most like to emulate is the IV, or as close as digital mimicry can get.

 

[timbeach]

Just 10 hours ago! I'll be following with interest. It helped me refine my two strip method, but two strip is easy.

I tried a slightly new three strip method. Red channel pasted as layer, solid colour cyan, blend mode lighten, merge. Ditto green and blue channels but with magenta and yellow. Then each of the cyan, magenta and yellow layers were set to darken, OR just blend cyan in r channel only, m in g, y in b. This basically gives same result as original image only darker, so not really technicolor. You can create some tints by reducing opacity individually of each layer, but you could just do the same in channel mixer.

Interestingly, it gives quite similar results to the 3strip photoshop lut with blend mode multiply, which is Ho72 recommended to start with above.

 

[Ho72]

I was hoping to replicate the process rather than rely on a LUT. But how did you get the original raw? When I click on the link it downloads the zip, but opening that only gives me a .cpgz

I didn't. The file I downloaded was named Original_Raw.jpg. It's just a small file but I assumed it represented their starting point. I'll attach it here.



As for replicating the process, I suppose there might have been a time when I would have attempted to master it myself, but now that sort of thing holds no interest for me. Good luck.

 

[timbeach]

No worries, thanks for your reply. In the meantime I think nicer saturation is achieved simply by boosting each channel of channel mixer to 200, -50, -50 (where 200 is the same colour slider as the channel):

 

[Dino007]

3-strip Technicolor had a look that you may not be able to recreate without the feature that made it unique. The Technicolor camera captured 3 different color records (R,G, and B) in a very discrete way. There are still cameras that do that today and they are the Sigma cameras with the Foveon sensor. There is one discontinued digital cinema camera that captured color this way and that was the Sony CineAlta F23. You can see results from this camera in this clip from the move "Speed Racer":

It seems to me that the easiest way to replicate the look of 3-strip Technicolor is to shoot with one of these cameras. It would help if the elements (props, clothing, etc.) in your scenes were chosen for their colors in such a way that they help to give you the rich, glowing, highly saturated look of 3-strip. Lighting that is brighter than average (maybe much brighter) and the use of a low ISO camera setting would help too.

Dino W