Pigment switches to DaVinci Resolve for HDR and IMF grading

Faced with the growing demand for content in IMF, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision formats, the Madrid post-production company installs Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve Studio in its two state-of-the-art grading rooms.

The Madrid post-producer Pigmento Color Grading has started using DaVinci Resolve Studio of Blackmagic Design as part of an improvement of its facilities aimed at carrying out the high dynamic range image grading (HDR) and deliver content in IMF format.

Founded by Fernando Martínez y Pepe Abellan, colorists with over 20 years of experience in audiovisual projects, Pigmento has quickly gained a reputation for providing bespoke services to both broadcasters and streaming platforms across Europe.

The team's merits include internationally renowned series, such as The pier, Dream to dream y The Money Heist, winner of an Emmy Award.

Given the growing demand for content in IMF, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision formats, Pigmento has installed DaVinci Resolve Studio in its two state-of-the-art grading rooms, as well as two additional workstations, for conforming, visual effects compositions and final deliveries.

These rooms have equipment that includes two Intel Xeon SuperMicro processors with RTX2080ti and Tesla K80 graphics cards (Nvidia) respectively, reference monitors BVM-HX310 (Sony) y PRM 4220 (Dolby), and devices DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel, in addition to a shared storage capacity of 180 TB and another 600 TB in NAS systems.

At the same time, the post-production company plans a total renovation to add two additional rooms that allow project 4K and HDR content before the end of 2020.

Work dynamics

“Before starting a new project, we review our work dynamics to ensure that Pigmento can offer the best opportunities to future clients,” says Pepe Abellán, colorist and co-founder of the company.

"Previously we used other tools, although we were not satisfied with their development capacity, especially when adopting new technologies, such as IMF and HDR formats. Our clients expected us to be able to deliver content in these standards, but the team did not have enough support from the IT point of view. We began to look for different alternatives, and Resolve turned out to be the best."

"We now use OpenFX plugins to remove flicker or the dead pixel filter almost daily, as well as tools from the Color module that allow us to apply adjustments to a specific part of the program in a matter of minutes. The program has revolutionized the speed with which we work," adds colorist David González.

"We have not had any problems during the transition to DaVinci Resolve. Not only from a technical perspective, thanks to the simple and well-organized interface, but also the user community and the support of the Blackmagic support team have been invaluable in finding answers when we face a problem," says Fernando Martínez, colorist and co-founder of Pigmento.

"It is difficult to beat DaVinci Resolve. Its high quality, together with its sales price and flexibility, make it the ideal tool for post-production companies like ours and allows us to update when necessary in order to adapt to new technologies," concludes Martínez.