Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve 21 takes on Adobe Lightroom with a brand new Picture web page

Many creators have already switched from Adobe Premiere to DaVinci Resolve, and now the developer, Blackmagic Design, goes after Lightroom and Photoshop. The Australian firm simply unveiled DaVinci Resolve 21 in beta on the NAB 2026 broadcast conference with a model new web page known as Picture designed to allow you to do issues like crop and color-correct nonetheless pictures. On the similar time, the brand new model introduces video AI instruments that may age a topic or reshape their facial options.

DaVinci Resolve has at all times allow you to edit photographs as clips on a video timeline, however now it is drastically simplified with the Picture web page. You may import and handle images, together with RAW information, instantly into the brand new web page. Then, you modify them utilizing the node-based Shade web page that provides related and arguably much more highly effective instruments than Adobe’s Lightroom.

Simply as with video, the Shade web page contains main colour correction, curves, qualifiers and energy home windows (together with noise discount, sharpening and extra). Nonetheless, the place Resolve’s node-based workflow actually shines for photograph modifying. You may add nodes in collection or parallel to construct advanced grades, then save them to use to different pictures or a whole photograph album. You can even reframe and crop pictures at their unique supply decision and side ratio, with out affecting the unique picture high quality.

The LightBox view enables you to see a whole album with grades utilized. “Choose any picture and grade it dwell whereas seeing the outcomes replace throughout the entire assortment in actual time. Filter by graded, ungraded, star score, flag and clip colour,” Blackmagic Design explains in a press release. Albums, in the meantime, allow you to construct collections such as you do in Lightroom. These additionally seem as timelines within the Shade, Lower and Edit pages for straightforward entry.

For professional photographers, the Shade web page contains digital camera controls that allow you to tether a Sony or Canon digital camera to Resolve for dwell picture seize, whereas adjusting settings like ISO, publicity and white stability. It can save you seize presets to “lock in a constant look earlier than clients shoot,” based on Blackmagic.

Different Resolve instruments additionally work with the Picture web page, just like the AI Magic Masks that allows you to make one click on choices of an object or individual. It is also attainable to do superior VFX on nonetheless photographs utilizing Resolve’s Fusion web page, or add OpenFX or FusionFX filters instantly on the Picture web page. Lastly, you possibly can collaborate with others utilizing Blackmagic Cloud, thought that does require a paid subscription.

I briefly examined the colour software and, as somebody who’s admittedly conversant in DaVinci Resolve, I discovered it simple to understand. It is easy to import and arrange pictures (simpler than Lightroom for my part) and is as highly effective as Lightroom’s Develop web page for many changes, although I actually missed the latter’s “Readability” software. The node primarily based workflow is highly effective, and Resolve makes it simpler to use changes to a number of pictures. While you’re able to export, that is carried out by means of a particular photo-only model of the “Export” web page and is comparatively intuitive as properly. Whether or not or not I am going to cancel my Photoshop/Lightroom subscription stays to be seen, nonetheless.

On prime of the Picture web page, Blackmagic Design introduced quite a few new instruments for video and VFX as properly. Among the many most attention-grabbing ones are a collection of AI instruments for facial changes. The AI Face Age Transformer instruments enables you to analyze a face, enter the topic’s age and modify the age offset slider so as to add issues like wrinkles and facial fullness. You can even change the best way a topic appears to be like by means of the AI Face Reshaper software that allows you to modify the eyes, nostril, mouth, eyebrows and total face form. Plus, you get an AI Blemish Elimination function that reduces the looks of superficial pores and skin imperfections like pimples, discoloration and enormous pores, whereas retaining the pores and skin’s pure texture.

One other software that may little question get used so much is AI UltraSharpen that may upscale video “to make beforehand unusable footage sharp in larger resolutions,” based on the corporate. It may also be used to enhance slight focus errors. In the meantime, the AI Movement Deblur fixes barely blurred pictures, making it significantly helpful for sluggish movement and freeze body photographs.

Different key new upgrades, to call just some, embody the power to edit Fusion results from throughout the Lower and Edit pages, the addition of the Krokodove library of compositing instruments and new immersive VR instruments for supply to platforms like Meta Quest and YouTube VR. A lot of the new options can be found in Blackmagic Design’s free model of DaVinci Resolve, although a few instruments (AI Magic Masks and Movie Look Creator) are solely out there with the paid, $295 DaVinci Resolve Studio model. An entire checklist of latest options is here and you may obtain the free and paid variations here.