What The Heck Is Preferential Color Mapping?

This is a term that originated with film stock engineers, who, through extensive R&D, found that accurately reproducing colors isn’t enough to create pleasing images. Humans have certain memory colors — including skin, sky, and foliage — which we store an internal “ideal” for. But interestingly, this ideal often doesn’t align with reality! Enter preferential color mapping: this process was designed to map one or more hues in our image to better align with these ideals. It can also be used to create greater color separation and a more harmonized palette.

In this Insight, I’ll show how to create your own preferential color mapping using Resolve 17’s Color Warper:

• Compressing and saturating skin hues into their ‘sweet spot’
• Creating greater separation between skin and neighboring yellow-greens
• Creating density in primary blues to reds to add a subtractive color feel to our look

Preferential color mapping is a subtle but powerful way to add greater depth and harmony to your images, and the Color Warper makes it easier than ever to create your own. For a more in-depth look at this powerful new tool, be sure to check out Peder Morgenthaler’s Color Warper 101 series.