DaVinci Resolve 21: The best Adobe Premiere Pro alternative can also edit photos now

Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve video editing tool has slowly become the best alternative to Adobe Premiere Pro, and now they’re going after Photoshop and Lightroom. They have just announced DaVinci Resolve 21, and this brings new features such as a photo editing tool, AI features and workflow improvements all around.

The headline feature is a new Photo page, which adds still image editing directly into Resolve. Users can import, organise, and edit photos using the same node-based colour grading tools used for video, including LUTs, curves, and power windows. Photos can also be batch edited using album workflows, while supported Sony and Canon cameras can be tethered directly to the software for live capture.

Resolve 21 also expands its AI toolset. New features include IntelliSearch for searching clips by objects or faces, CineFocus for adjusting depth of field after shooting, and several face editing tools such as age adjustment, reshaping, and blemish removal. Video quality tools like UltraSharpen and Motion Deblur are also included to improve soft or blurry footage.

On the visual effects side, the Fusion engine now includes the Krokodove toolkit, adding more than 70 new motion graphics and compositing tools. Meanwhile, Fairlight introduces folder tracks that allow multiple audio tracks to be grouped and collapsed, making large projects easier to manage.

“The new Photo page in DaVinci Resolve 21 brings Hollywood’s most advanced color tools to still photography for the first time. Professional colorists and photographers now have access to the full DaVinci color toolset and are able to build complex grades in a node based workflow that goes far beyond the layer based approach.

They can also use all the DaVinci AI tools, ResolveFX and FusionFX and collaborate globally in real time. It’s going to be amazing to see creativity flourish with these tools,” – Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO

If you’re keen on checking out DaVinci Resolve 21 for yourself, the public beta build of it is already available for download, free-of-charge, fromt he Blackmagic Design website.

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