Motion & effects
Color grading: definition and examples
What is Color grading?
Color grading is the post-production step of making deliberate creative adjustments to a video's color, contrast, and tone to establish a particular visual mood or aesthetic. It builds on a technically corrected image and uses tools like color wheels, curves, and LUTs to shape how the footage feels to the viewer.
When you'd use it
- 1When raw corrected footage looks technically fine but feels flat or generic.
- 2When a campaign needs a signature look that carries across every clip in the series.
- 3When the brief calls for a specific tone, such as warmth for lifestyle content or cool tones for tech.
- 4When matching a new clip to the established look of an existing brand video.
Example
A skincare brand shoots five product tutorials over two days in different rooms. Both shooting days have different color temperatures, so each clip looks like a different world. Applying a warm, desaturated LUT after correcting white balance on each clip ties them together, and the resulting videos all read as the same brand aesthetic even though one was filmed at noon and another under fluorescent light.
Use cases
- 1Applying a warm, high-contrast grade to a lifestyle brand's product reveal series.
- 2Giving a tech product walkthrough a desaturated, cool-toned finish that matches the brand's visual identity.
- 3Using a LUT to grade every clip in a campaign so the feed reads as one set.
FAQ
What is the difference between color correction and color grading?
Color correction fixes technical problems: wrong white balance, uneven exposure, or skin tones that look green under fluorescent light. Color grading is what happens after that neutral baseline exists. It applies creative choices, like pushing footage toward a warm golden tone or desaturating greens for a moodier look. You can skip grading if you want a clean, neutral look, but you should never skip correction on footage that will appear on screen.
Make on-brand short-form video from the footage you already have.