The Best YouTube Videos to Learn Color Grading in DaVinci Resolve
The best YouTube tutorials for learning color grading in DaVinci Resolve — four specific videos from working professionals, not just channel recommendations.
DaVinci Resolve has more free learning material available than almost any other piece of professional software — which is both a gift and a problem. The good stuff is excellent. The mediocre stuff wastes your afternoon. This list skips the search and points you directly to the creators and videos worth your time, whether you're just opening Resolve for the first time or trying to build a more disciplined grading workflow.
These are evergreen picks — tutorials that hold up regardless of which minor version of Resolve you're running. Each one is a specific video, not just a channel recommendation, because "check out their channel" is the least useful advice on the internet.
Ben Claremont — DaVinci Resolve Colour Grading Tutorial (Start to Finish for Beginners)
If you're brand new to color grading in Resolve, Ben Claremont's start-to-finish beginner tutorial is the clearest entry point available. Claremont has a gift for making the color page feel approachable without dumbing it down — he walks through the full grading process from import to export without skipping the parts that usually trip beginners up. Start here before anything else.
Cullen Kelly — Pro Colorist Gets You Started in DaVinci Resolve
Cullen Kelly is a working professional colorist, and it shows in how he teaches. This video is aimed at editors moving from Premiere Pro to Resolve, but it's useful for anyone who wants to understand the color page from a professional's perspective rather than a beginner-tutorial angle. Kelly covers the fundamentals quickly and without condescension — you get the framework a colorist actually uses, not a walk-through of every button.
Waqas Qazi — Learn DaVinci Resolve in 20 Minutes! Beginner Tutorial
Waqas Qazi — a senior colorist whose clients include Universal Studios, Prime Video, and Adidas — approaches teaching from a professional workflow standpoint. His 20-minute beginner tutorial moves fast but stays organized, and his broader channel is worth bookmarking once you've got the basics down. We've also covered his thinking on color grading order of operations separately on BRC, if you want to go deeper on his approach.
Casey Faris — Intro to The Color Page (ResolveCon 2022)
Casey Faris's ResolveCon 2022 presentation on the color page is a slightly different format than the others — it's a conference talk rather than a YouTube tutorial, which gives it a more structured, educational pacing. Faris is a clear explainer, and this video is particularly good for understanding how the color page is organized and why, rather than just which buttons to click. If you've bounced off other tutorials because they move too fast, start here.
Also Worth Bookmarking: Blackmagic Design's Official Training Hub
Blackmagic Design maintains a free official training hub for DaVinci Resolve that's more comprehensive than most third-party courses — and it's updated with each major version release. It's not a creator in the same sense as the names above, and it doesn't have the personality of a good YouTube teacher, but as a reference and structured curriculum it's hard to beat. Worth having bookmarked alongside the creator picks above.
DaVinci Resolve Training — Blackmagic Design
The Signal in the Noise
The color grading learning curve in Resolve is steeper than most editors expect, because Resolve's color page is built around professional colorist workflows that weren't originally designed with self-teaching in mind.
These four creators all approach that challenge differently — Claremont and Faris prioritize clarity for beginners, Kelly brings the working professional's perspective, and Qazi pushes toward workflow discipline and speed. Between them, they cover most of what you need to get from "I opened the color page" to "I have a repeatable process."
