How to Grade Luma Ray3 HDR Footage in DaVinci Resolve

To grade Luma Ray3 HDR footage properly, import it as a 10-bit clip, set the project to a color-managed HDR timeline, and tone-map down for SDR delivery. Skip that and your highlights will clip the moment you push a curve.

AI video’s HDR output is the feature most people ignore, mostly because their editing pipeline treats everything as 8-bit Rec.709. That throws away the whole point. Here’s a workflow that keeps the range intact.

How Do You Import Ray3 HDR Correctly?

Export from Ray3 as HDR10 or a suitable 10-bit format. In Resolve, create a project with color management enabled, set the timeline color space to Rec.2020 HLG or PQ depending on your export, and let Resolve recognize the clip’s metadata.

If Resolve tags the clip wrong, the image looks washed out. Fix that before touching any grade — a wrong starting point ruins every correction downstream.

What Is the Right Node Structure?

• Node 1: color space transform from the source space into your working space.
• Node 2: primary correction — exposure, contrast, white balance.
• Node 3: tone mapping to SDR for standard delivery, or a trim pass for HDR delivery.
• Node 4: the creative grade — the look.

Keep the technical and creative passes separate. When a client says “the look is wrong,” you disable one node instead of rebuilding the grade.

How Do You Handle SDR Delivery?

1. Add a tone-mapping node (Resolve’s HDR tools or a custom curve).
2. Set the output to Rec.709 gamma 2.4 for broadcast or 2.2 for web.
3. Check highlights on a scope — if they flatline at 100 IRE, your tone map is too aggressive.
4. Export a versioned LUT so the same look applies to future Ray3 batches.

Why Bother with HDR at All?

Because the extra range is creative headroom. You can recover a blown sky, hold window detail in a night shot, and push contrast without the image falling apart. With 8-bit AI video, those moves produce banding and clipped whites almost instantly.

If your final delivery is a phone-sized social clip, the payoff is smaller. The workflow earns its keep when footage goes to a screen that shows the range.

What Trips People Up?

Consistency across clips. Ray3 generations vary in exposure, so a sequence can flicker if you grade each clip in isolation. Establish one base transform and apply it to every clip in a scene before any per-clip tweaks — this is the same discipline as matching camera footage, just with a model instead of a camera.

Quick Summary

• Import Ray3 HDR as 10-bit and verify the color space tag before grading.
• Use four nodes: transform, primary, tone map, creative look.
• Tone-map to SDR for web, keep HDR masters for capable screens.
• Grade a whole scene from one base transform to avoid flicker between clips.