Australia’s homegrown video editing software DaVinci Resolve has added still photo editing capabilities in its latest version.
DaVinci Resolve was already an industry-standard tool for Hollywood movie editors and content creators alike. The new functionality brings sophisticated colour grading tools to still images.
DaVinci Resolve 21 is currently in public beta so there’s still some bugs to iron out, but once it’s fixed the software will be a likely candidate to replace Adobe Lightroom for many users.
If you’d like to try the beta for yourself, you can download it from the Blackmagic Design website.
What are the new features?
Before the new update, it was difficult to deal with still images in DaVinci Resolve. The software lacked tools for cropping and levelling, and there was no dedicated pipeline for still images.
The new Photo page solves a lot of these issues, adding crop sliders, RAW colour grading, and photo album tools to help streamline your workflow across multiple files.
It provides access to a wide range of hardware-accelerated tools to help refine your images. AI processing tools like inpainting, automatic masking and relighting effects give you powerful flexibility when processing your photos.
Best of all, the edits are non-destructive so you can always return to the original file.
What’s the catch?
DaVinci Resolve is a powerful video-first industry tool, so it does have more of a learning curve than one-touch solutions like Canva.
It doesn’t have the full set of features you’d find in a tool like Photoshop either (but there’s a free Australian-owned alternative for that, too).
Once the software is out of beta and matures a bit, it seems likely that Adobe users might make the switch across to DaVinci Resolve.
We’ve heard reports that Lightroom is the one app a lot of users stick with an Adobe subscription for. With prices starting at $18.99 per month and free alternatives becoming more prominent, it might be time to see if the grass really is greener on the other side.
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