Blackmagic Design announced DaVinci Resolve 21 at NAB 2026, introducing nine AI tools that span voice generation, face manipulation, intelligent search, and optical corrections alongside a new Photo page that brings the full DaVinci color toolset to still photography. The public beta is available as a free download now. Blackmagic is demonstrating the release at NAB booth N2502.
AI Tools Across the Board
The nine new AI tools in Resolve 21 cover territory that previously required third-party plugins or standalone applications.
AI IntelliSearch lets editors search across their media pool for specific people, objects, faces, and dialog keywords. Rather than scrubbing through hours of footage manually, operators type a search query and IntelliSearch surfaces matching clips based on visual and audio content.
AI CineFocus adds post-production focus control. Click a point in the frame to refocus, then adjust virtual aperture, depth of field, and bokeh characteristics. Keyframeable rack focus turns a locked-off shot into one with selective focus pulls.
AI Speech Generator converts written text into spoken voice. Feed it a 10-second voice sample and it builds a custom voice model, with controls for speed, pitch, and inflection. The tool targets ADR scratch tracks, temp narration, and placeholder dialog.
Three face tools handle on-screen talent. AI Face Age Transformer ages or de-ages faces for flashback and continuity work. AI Face Reshaper fine-tunes facial features on moving subjects, adjusting eyes, nose, and mouth. AI Blemish Removal reduces skin imperfections while retaining natural texture.
AI Slate ID auto-detects slate clapperboard metadata and populates clip information, working even on dark or out-of-focus clips where manual reads would be tedious.
Two optical correction tools round out the set. AI UltraSharpen upscales and sharpens footage, recovering detail from soft focus and focus errors. AI Motion Deblur removes motion blur streaks and improves the quality of slow-motion and freeze frames.
These additions build on the AI features introduced in Resolve 20, which brought the first wave of AI-powered tools to the platform.
Photo Page Brings DaVinci Color to Stills
The new Photo page extends Resolve's color tools to still photography. Photographers get the same node-based grading workflow used in feature film color, with support for LUTs, ResolveFX, and the full DaVinci AI toolset.
A LightBox view displays entire albums with grades applied. Albums organize shoots at source resolution, and tethered capture supports Sony and Canon cameras directly. Blackmagic Cloud integration enables real-time collaboration on photo projects.
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.
Fusion, Fairlight, and the Rest
The Fusion page gains Krokodove, a library of over 70 motion graphics tools. Fairlight adds folder tracks for simpler audio track management. IntelliScript now supports Final Draft screenplay imports.
Immersive and VR workflows gain foveated rendering and Panomap rotation tools for VR180 and VR360 delivery. The update adopts USD SDK 25.11 with the Hydra 2.0 API for Storm renderer. MultiMaster trim passes allow grading a single timeline across multiple deliverables.
Availability
DaVinci Resolve 21 is a free public beta download from Blackmagic Design's website. For teams already grading on Resolve, the Photo page means one node tree, one set of LUTs, and one cloud across both stills and motion, while the AI tools extend the pipeline approach we covered in our AI film production walkthrough.
