Color Grading & Color Management

Color grading is its own craft. The standard tool is so dominant that this page is mostly about the workflow around it. For NLE picks see Video NLE Editors. For VFX see VFX & Compositing. For HDR delivery codecs see Encoding & Codecs.

Grading software

• ★ DaVinci Resolve (free) — closed source, free tier; the industry standard for color. Node-based grading, primary + secondary correction, qualifier/key, tracker, OFX, ACES native. Studio unlocks DCTL/CUDA acceleration on multi-GPU, HDR Dolby Vision tools, Magic Mask AI, noise reduction.
• Baselight (FilmLight) — paid; Hollywood feature finishing; rental-grade.
• Adobe SpeedGrade — discontinued; Premiere Lumetri panel is the in-house replacement.
• Premiere Lumetri — bundled with Premiere; fine for quick grades, not full finishing.
• FilmConvert Nitrate — paid plugin (Premiere/Resolve/FCP); film-emulation LUTs + grain.
• Dehancer — paid plugin; analog film emulation; popular in 2026.

Color spaces & standards

• Rec.709 — broadcast HD / web; the safe default.
• sRGB — basically Rec.709 with a different transfer curve; web stills.
• DCI-P3 — digital cinema; what modern Apple displays show; wide-gamut iPhone capture.
• Rec.2020 — UHD / HDR container; rarely fully covered by displays.
• Rec.2100 — HDR transfer functions: PQ (HDR10) and HLG (broadcast HDR).
• ACES (Academy Color Encoding System) — scene-referred working space; the right pipeline for multi-camera or VFX-heavy projects. Resolve has ACES 1.3 / 2.0 transforms baked in.

HDR delivery

• ★ HDR10 — open, royalty-free, static metadata; the broad-compatibility default.
• HDR10+ — Samsung-led dynamic metadata; royalty-bearing but free for most.
• Dolby Vision — best dynamic-metadata HDR; paid licensing for delivery; Resolve Studio handles authoring.
• HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma) — broadcast-friendly HDR; backward-compatible with SDR.
• AVIF / HEIC — HDR stills; relevant for thumbnails, see OG Images.

LUTs & transforms

• Free LUT packs: Lutify.me free pack, IWLTBAP free LUTs, Resolve's built-in DaVinci YRGB Color Managed transforms.
• Cube / 3DL formats — .cube is the lingua franca; use Resolve / FFmpeg lut3d filter to apply.
• Camera LUTs — Sony S-Log3 → Rec.709, ARRI LogC → Rec.709, Canon C-Log, RED IPP2; download from manufacturer sites.
• Build your own — Resolve color page → File → Export LUT.

Calibration & monitoring

• See Photo Workflow for DisplayCAL on stills displays. For video grading: hardware probes (X-Rite i1Display Pro, Calibrite ColorChecker Display Plus), Resolve calibration.
• Reference monitors: Flanders Scientific, Sony BVM (broadcast), Apple Pro Display XDR (graded reference for many indies in 2026).
• Scopes — always grade against waveform / vectorscope / parade, not your eyes. Resolve scopes are excellent.

Color charts on set

• X-Rite ColorChecker Classic / Passport Video — paid; the standard reference chart; shoot one frame at the start of each setup.
• DSC Labs ChromaDuMonde — broadcast-grade chart.
• Datacolor Spyder Checkr Video — alternative.

Patterns

• ★ Shoot LOG, deliver Rec.709 / HDR. LOG preserves dynamic range for grading.
• Use ACES if mixing multiple cameras. It removes the "which camera was this?" problem.
• Calibrate your monitor monthly. Drift is real.
• Always grade with scopes visible. Eyes lie; numbers don't.
• Bake the look into the master, not the proxy. Re-grade for HDR vs SDR deliveries.

Pick this if…

• Default grading tool, free or paid: DaVinci Resolve. Period.
• Plugin film-look: FilmConvert or Dehancer.
• HDR delivery, broad reach: HDR10. Dolby Vision if budget allows.
• Multi-camera / VFX project: ACES workflow in Resolve.
• On-set reference: ColorChecker Passport Video.