Dehancer OFX Plugin for DaVinci Resolve
Add some spice to your edit
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Watch on YouTube
Have you ever found yourself in a creative rut while editing? You have an established workflow for editing and grading, which is generally a good thing, but your clips are all starting to look the same. You like your look, but perhaps it's time to try something new. Dehancer is a unique and powerful tool that offers film-like controls over your image. It can emulate film stock, add film grain, apply old school film coloring techniques, and add physical film characteristics. I was contacted by the team at Dehancer.com about making a video about their plugin, and I was happy to oblige. Give it a watch by clicking the image above.
If you’ve used Filmconvert Nitrate you already have some idea of what Dehancer can do. However, Dehancer’s suite of tools go well beyond what FilmConvert can do. The Dehancer team has put a lot of effort into emulating the analog film processes to create this powerful plugin. You have the standard film stock emulation, which currently features 53 different types of film. These aren't just a simple color lookup table adjustments. Dehancer's engineers have spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort to research and build realistic film profiles. They've detailed that complicated process along with many other processes in articles on their website. They're definitely worth a read: https://blog.dehancer.com/articles.
The Tools
Dehancer is broken down into sections of tools that have individual control over their features. Each section can be collapsed with the up/down arrow to reduce visual clutter and to make it easier to see just the tools you are using. Conveniently, each tool has an impact slider to adjust the overall influence of the tool and a toggle switch to turn it on or off.
The Input Section
The input section is where you tell Dehancer what kind of color space to expect. The choices are Rec.709, Rec.2020 (HDR), ACES, and "Choose Camera". By selecting "Choose Camera", you get a list of camera vendors such as Canon, Sony, Blackmagic, RED, etc. By choosing your particular camera and colorspace, Dehancer knows how to work against your footage. You can also adjust exposure compensation here.
The input section also features a Defringe tool that can help reduce chromatic aberrations like purple fringing.
The Film & Expand Tools
This is where the magic happens. Dehancer currently has 53 film emulations developed from analog mediums. The list has some recognizable names like Agfa, Fujifilm, Kodak, and Polaroid. It also has some more obscure ones, particularly some Russian or Eastern European types that I've never heard of. There's a push/pull slider which emulates the response of film when you over or under expose it.
The Film tool works in conjunction with the Expand tool below it. Expand's two sliders allow you to establish the base black and white points of your image. You can quickly bring your image to the boundaries of your luminance range. There's also an auto-expand option which will do this for you.
@fairlyfantasticcosplay is cosplaying Odyssey Jinx.
The Print Tool
Analog film is a negative and requires processing to produce a positive image with the contrast and color we expect. This process is called printing. The Print tool in Dehancer has some controls that carefully emulate the historic printing process. Sliders for Exposure, Tonal Contrast, Color Density, and Saturation give you a great amount of control over your image. I found the Tonal Contrast slider to be particularly effective. While it works much like the native contrast control in Resolve, I think there's something a special about it and the results are excellent. It enhances the contrast of both luminance and color and makes my footage really pop.
The Color Head Tool
Color Head is also a film printing process. It historically involved color filters applied against the film which would affect the color of the print. Once again, Dehancer has a nicely detailed article about this process: https://blog.dehancer.com/articles/color-head/.
These images show how easy it is to apply a dramatic color shift with a single Color Head slider.
Film Grain
What would a film emulation be without some film grain? Dehancer's implementation offers a number of controls to tailor the grain to your liking. Size, amount, and sliders for shadows, midtones and highlights allow you to adjust the grain with fine control.
The Halation Tool
The Halation tool emulates a unique characteristic of film where a red halo forms around highlights and high-contrast areas. The Halation tool offers eight different sliders to control the character of halation. This is truly an effect unique to Dehancer.
The Bloom Tool
The Bloom tool adds a soft hazy glow to brighter parts of the image. It offers seven sliders to give ample control of the appearance of the bloom. I've cranked the sliders up pretty hard to get the effect in the image below.
The Vignette Tool
The Vignette tool does just what you think it does. However, it gives you a lot of fine control over the size, shape, and position of the vignette. Use the feather slider to soften the edge and make it more subtle. The last example below shows clearly just how much you can manipulate it.
The Film Breath and Gate Weave Tools
Film Breath and Gate Weave are best shown off in video, so definitely give my YouTube video a watch to see what they do. You'll recognize them when you see them. Film breath emulates the random change of brightness you see when watching film projected onto a screen. Gate weave is where the film moves around loosely as it passes by the lamp. That path is called the gate. You can adjust the parameters of both of these effects to suit your taste.
False Color, Output, LUT Generator
As if to throw in the kitchen sink, they added a false color tool to the suite. Resolve 17 added this feature as well so this is redundant now, but it is implemented nicely.
Output simply allows you to adjust the overall impact of the plugin. I like that they use the term "impact". It just makes sense. LUT generator lets you output 17x or 33x LUTs. LUTs can only carry luminance and chrominance information. This means things like film grain, film breath, and gate weave can't be contained in the LUT. The last two buttons at the bottom check for software updates and open up the dialogue window where you enter your license key. Without a key you can still use the plugin, but it leaves a watermark and won't export LUTs.
Future Updates
The Dehancer team has plans to update the plugin and add new features:
- Currently Dehancer only supports Mac OS. Dehancer plans to add support for both Windows and Linux.
- Additional camera support in the input section.
- A highlights compression tool.
- A soft edges tool.
How to Buy
Dehancer can be purchased directly from the manufacturer's website. You can purchase the entire suite, called Dehancer Pro, a smaller suite, or even individual effects.
Be sure to use promo code "FLANNEL10" to save 10% on your purchase!
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