Honorable Mention: The ability to pop out tools is a gift.

Not anchoring to a principle-based workflow is a good way to paint yourself into a corner. I do worry that having such beginner-friendly tools like the Color Warper can be dangerous to burgeoning colorists who may be tempted to approach an image in a look-specific way. There are so many different selection options, it’s interesting to think of the applications for all of them. It’s great to have a tool on top of the vectorscope trace rather than the histogram in the curves. It makes so much sense to base a color tool around the HSL wheel, which is the most intuitive way to understand color. The Color Warper is an even more fun piece of engineering. Changing the wall from bluish to purplish using ‘the spider'

You can see where the tonal ranges correspond to the histogram of your image and even add your own zone with a corresponding wheel. The most impressive element about the HDR panel for me is the zones tab that allows the user to adjust the placement and falloff of the specific tonal ranges they are adjusting. It comes down to flexibility and intuitiveness. I’m not a dedicated colorist, but I know well-written tools when I see them.

Resolve 17