ColorGain

ColorGain [Clr] is a built-in 2D Fusion node covering per-channel Gain, Lift, Gamma, Saturation, color Balance and Hue. Compared with Color Corrector it uses a smaller Inspector; the manual says it may render faster, not that speed improvements are guaranteed on every timeline.

Its Flow has one mandatory orange Input, an optional blue Effect Mask and one RGBA Output. Inspector Ranges does not add another input; it controls the tonal classification of shadows, midtones and highlights.

Five authentic project screenshots show Gain, Saturation, Balance, Hue and Ranges. They document visible field names and defaults; they do not prove rendered pixels or show native Flow sockets. The Settings tab is not expanded in these captures.

Gain, Lift and Gamma are different transforms. Gain linearly scales values around black, so zero stays zero. Lift moves lower values around white, leaving pure white unchanged. Gamma reshapes midtones nonlinearly while preserving the black and white endpoints.

Gain and Gamma are neutral at 1.0; Lift is neutral at 0.0. Red, Green, Blue and Alpha each have controls. Lock R/G/B links RGB adjustment handles, while Alpha remains independently editable: it is not an automatic alpha-protection toggle.

Channel-specific Gain corrects casts but strong changes hit bright pixels hardest and can clip highlights. Excessive Lift washes out blacks; extreme Gamma can flatten skin and tonal texture. Watch RGB Parade/Waveform and the picture, not just the field values.

Saturation has independent Red, Green and Blue controls, each neutral at 1.0. Zero removes the corresponding component’s chroma contribution; values over 1 intensify it. This is not an HSL qualifier or color-based object selector: the whole image can change.

Balance contains three zones: High, Mid and Dark. Each zone has Red/Cyan, Green/Magenta, Blue/Yellow and Brightness. Zero is neutral; positive and negative values favor opposing color directions, with the current range splines determining tonal weighting.

Hue has High/Mid/Dark shifts. Positive values rotate from red toward yellow, negative values toward magenta; ±1 completes one full revolution. Unlike Balance it rotates hue rather than independently pushing three opponent axes.

Ranges uses four points with Bézier handles to define shadow and highlight transitions. Midtones are calculated from values not assigned to either end: there is no separate editable Mid spline. X/Y refer to the currently selected point or handle.

Simple and Smooth reset the range boundaries to linear or smoothed presets, respectively; Smooth is normally the default. Hard tonal divisions can cause visible grade boundaries. Ranges is luminance-based tonal weighting, whereas the blue Effect Mask is spatial.

Pre-Divide / Post-Multiply helps when the incoming RGB has already been multiplied by alpha. The node divides RGB by alpha before grading and multiplies again after it, reducing fringes on keyed and CG edges; it cannot recover hidden color where alpha is fully zero.

For a local face or product correction connect Rectangle/Polygon.Mask to ColorGain.EffectMask. The mask gates the correction but does not automatically cut the image’s source Alpha. Animate or track the shape for moving subjects.

The shared Blend and output RGBA selectors belong to the common Fusion Color Node Settings tab, not to an extra ColorGain-specific panel shown in these screenshots. Do not claim exact closed-tab defaults without checking the installed Resolve build.

A reliable order is neutral Gain/Lift/Gamma first, then Saturation/Balance/Hue, followed by gentle Ranges shaping and a local effect mask if needed. Finish with multi-frame A/B, alpha inspection, working-space/HDR checks and final output review.

The four interactive Flow examples below are typed editorial exercises. They have schema checks but are NOT downloadable .comp/.setting compositions and do NOT constitute proof of a live DaVinci Resolve render.