Blackmagic Design has announced DaVinci Resolve 21 and crammed over 100 new tools into what is fairly major new release for the multi-faceted post package.
True to form, Blackmagic Design has kept to its usual release cadence and announced the latest public beta of DaVinci Resolve ahead of NAB 2026. If matters hold true to previous years, we should now see a steady influx of new features as it works through its beta releases before a final finished release drops around the time of IBC2026.
Headlines are the new Photo page, which enables colorists and photographers to use advanced color tools for still photos; new AI tools such as IntelliSearch for fast content searching, CineFocus for focal point adjustment, tools for facial refinement, and more.
And, as usual, the new software is available to download with immediate effect from the Blackmagic support page.
There's a lot to unpack from a data-heavy dump, and we'll add more to this soon. But here are the initial highlights for those that want to dive right in.
Photo editing
The new Photo page integrates directly with the existing Color page workflow, allowing photographers and colorists to apply primary corrections, curves, qualifiers, power windows, and node-based grades to still images. Grades can be built in series or parallel, with shared nodes enabling a single look to be applied across an entire album. LightBox view shows the full album with grades applied and updates in real time as adjustments are made.
New Camera Controls are interesting too. These let customers tether a Sony or Canon camera directly to DaVinci Resolve for live image capture, and allows them to adjust camera settings such as ISO, exposure, white balance, monitor with live view and save capture presets to lock in a consistent look before a shoot. Images save directly into an album.
There's a definite sense in online forums that Resolve has been slower to implement AI tools than other NLEs. If so, Resolve 21 is valiantly playing catch-up.
AI additions across the application include IntelliSearch for object- and face-based media pool searching using natural language or dialog keywords; CineFocus for synthetic depth-of-field adjustment with keyframeable rack focus; Face Age Transformer for aging or de-aging a tracked subject; Face Reshaper for adjusting facial feature shape and position on moving subjects; Blemish Removal for skin retouching; Slate ID for automatic metadata extraction from clapperboards; Motion Deblur for reducing motion blur artifacts; and AI Speech Generator for creating voiceovers from text using a custom voice model built from as little as 10 seconds of source audio.
There are over 100 updates in the software. Here's the list:
As previously mentioned, the latest public beta free versions of Resolve 21, the paid Resolve Studio 21, and Fusion Studio 21 are all available as of now from Blackmagic support.