Emboss

Treat Emboss as a compact 2D stylize processor rather than a 3D generator. It reads an ordinary Image, builds light/dark structure from local transitions and returns an ordinary 2D Output. The result can resemble pressing, engraving, stamped metal or a technical edge relief, but the graph data remains an image stream.

The Resolve 21 Inspector exposes six effect-specific controls. Emboss Style selects Relief, Emboss Over, Sobel or Laplacian; Power controls how pronounced the effect becomes; Angle sets the apparent rendering direction; and Use Red/Green/Blue Channel independently determine which source color information participates. The Channels label is an Inspector group header, not a seventh parameter.

Blackmagic's current Resolve 21 Reference Manual lists the four Emboss Styles and their controls but does not publish the exact numerical convolution kernels or formulas used by this Resolve FX. It is therefore safe to describe the visual character of the modes and compare them in the Viewer, but not to claim a specific Sobel or Laplacian matrix as the verified internal implementation without separate live evidence.

Relief is a natural starting point for a classic raised or recessed look. Emboss Over is useful to compare when you want the source to remain more readable within the stylization. Sobel and Laplacian move the look toward more edge-driven graphics. Judge Style on one source with Power and Angle held constant instead of assuming settings transfer equivalently between modes.

Power controls how pronounced the Emboss effect is. It is not a detection threshold and it is not a downstream Blend control. Stronger Power makes the relief/outline response more obvious, and on noisy or highly detailed material it can also make micro-texture dominate the result. Solve source cleanliness or channel selection before treating Power as the only fix.

Blackmagic describes Angle as the apparent angle at which the emboss effect is rendered. Practically it is the main directional control: rotating it changes the orientation of the light/dark pair around transitions and can change whether a shape feels raised or recessed. It is not a real 3D light and does not reconstruct the lighting direction of the shot.

Use Red Channel, Use Green Channel and Use Blue Channel are independent participation switches. They do not tint the final Output and they are not ordinary post-process RGB mutes. Instead they decide which source color components feed the Emboss response, so two regions with similar luminance but different RGB composition can react differently when channels are toggled.

Effect Mask is a separate standard Fusion mask input. It answers where the Emboss contribution is allowed, while the RGB switches answer which source color information participates. Those mechanisms are not interchangeable: a mask does not replace channel isolation, and disabling Red/Green/Blue does not create a spatial object mask.

Emboss Output is a regular image stream. It can feed ColorCorrector, Glow, Merge, Bitmap, Displace or MediaOut, but it should not be called a normal map, Z-depth channel or physically meaningful height field. If a downstream port requires a mask, convert the image pass explicitly through Bitmap or another matte stage.

For transparent graphics and titles, inspect the Alpha Viewer separately. The Resolve FX documentation describes visual response and RGB participation; exact target-build alpha behavior for every input class should be verified rather than inferred from the effect name. Keeping a clean source branch next to Emboss makes Style, Angle, channel and alpha A/B comparisons much easier.

A production-friendly order is: choose Style first, then Angle, then Power, then A/B the three channels, and only after that solve spatial masking and downstream blending. This prevents Power from becoming a catch-all correction for the wrong Style and makes it clear why a particular detail appears in the relief pass.

What the two archived PNGs actually prove: Controls has Relief selected, Power 1.0, Angle 0.0 and all three RGB switches enabled. This is one saved tool state, not a universal default. In the expanded Emboss Style menu the other three entries look grey; a screenshot alone cannot establish that these modes can be selected in the installed Resolve build.

Evidence boundary: both captures show Inspector Controls and the Style dropdown, not the Node Editor. Image and Effect Mask port types come from the project registry and Fusion conventions, but the physical sockets in the target installation remain unverified. The Settings tab is visible but never opened; its actual fields must not be invented.

Sobel and Laplacian are documented names within Resolve FX Emboss. Historical Fusion Filter tools discuss similarly named operations, but that does not license copying their exact convolution matrices, a Blend control or different channel options into Emboss. This article documents the six effect-specific controls actually photographed.

For the Effect Mask experiment, create a synthetic Background + Text+ image, feed the same image to two Emboss nodes, match Relief/Power/Angle/RGB, and connect Rectangle.Mask only to the second Emboss. Use Dissolve to compare 0 against 1: the mask should change spatial contribution, not source-channel selection. The topology passes static validation; the physical socket and resulting pixels require a Resolve run.

Alpha must be evaluated independently of perceived effect brightness: a black region in RGB is not necessarily transparent. For a title, compare RGB and Alpha before Emboss, after Emboss, and after Merge over footage. If fringes appear, inspect the upstream alpha and premultiplication rather than randomly changing Power or the RGB switches.

The acceptance order is: confirm Style availability in the target UI, inspect RGB/Alpha at 100% and over 20–30 moving frames, isolate Power, Angle and R/G/B differences, then run the separate mask A/B. Record the Resolve build and before/after frames. Typed graph checks prove connections only, not rendering behavior.