Photoshop skills I carry over to Resolve

I bring a lot of my thinking from Photoshop into Resolve – especially around layers, separation, and how light interacts with color. My years of working with high-end skin retouching in Photoshop taught me how to control tone with precision, and that carries over into my grading work.

I also bring my understanding of blending modes – not in the literal sense, but in how they’ve trained me to see the relationships between contrast, hue, and luminosity. That kind of layered thinking helps me shape contrast, colour and light in a more intentional way.

When I white balance, skin is always my starting point. I aim for a neutral enough base to build on, but I make sure skin still feels believable in the context of the scene – not blurred but still clean

I also know how easily a small distraction in the face – a color cast, an uneven tone, a shift in warmth – can pull the viewer out of the image. That’s why I treat skin with extra care. It’s not about perfection, it’s about guiding the viewers eyes.

And when I need to/want to separate skin from background, I do it in a way that supports the image without making it feel artificial. It’s always about subtlety and control, not just style. I base a lot of my colour grading on how film stock handles light and colour beacuse most of us really like how film stock looks.