Color grading in one sitting
Everything you need to grade acme-launch-v3.mp4 — or at least to give precise notes to whoever does. Correction first, then the creative look. Play with the frame below until the sliders feel obvious.
The mental model
1 · IngestFootage arrives "flat" (log) — grey and washed out, on purpose. It preserves detail.
2 · CorrectFix exposure & white balance so it looks real. Boring, essential, first.
3 · GradeAdd the look: contrast shape, color bias, mood. This is the creative part.
4 · MatchMake every shot in the cut agree, so the video feels like one piece.
The vocabulary ladder
Exposureoverall brightness
How light or dark the whole image is, measured in "stops" (each stop doubles/halves the light). Wrong exposure = detail lost in blown highlights or murky shadows.
"the interview shots look a half-stop underexposed — bring them up"
White balancecolor temperature
Whether white things actually look white. Measured in Kelvin: low = warm/orange (tungsten), high = cool/blue (daylight). Mixed lighting is the classic gotcha.
"the office footage reads too warm — cool it toward neutral, protect skin tones"
Contrast curvetone response
The S-shaped curve mapping shadows→highlights. Steeper = punchier; flatter = softer, more "filmic". You bend the curve, you don't just crank a slider.
"add a gentle S-curve — richer blacks but don't crush shadow detail"
Lift / Gamma / Gain3-way correction
Independent color+brightness control over shadows (lift), midtones (gamma), and highlights (gain). This is how pros push "teal in the shadows, warm in the highlights".
"push the lift slightly teal and the gain slightly warm — subtle, not music-video"
Saturation vs vibrancecolor intensity
Saturation boosts all colors equally (skin goes orange fast). Vibrance boosts only the muted colors and protects skin. Almost always reach for vibrance first.
"use vibrance not saturation — the UI screenshots can pop but faces stay natural"
LUTlook-up table
A saved color transform file (.cube) that applies a whole look in one step — either technical (log→Rec.709 conversion) or creative (a stylized grade). Apply after correction, then dial its intensity down.
"apply the Rec.709 conversion LUT first, then a creative LUT at ~60% strength"
Feel it — grade a frame
acme-launch-v3.mp4 · frame 01:47:12 · drag the split to compare
Corporate clean: slight lift in exposure, near-neutral temperature, modest contrast — trustworthy and bright. The default for product launch videos.
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What good looks like
- Skin tones stay believable. Every creative look bends around faces, never through them. If the founder looks seasick or sunburned, the grade is wrong.
- Blacks are rich but not crushed. You can still read detail in dark areas (hair, the navy hoodie at 00:42). A histogram slammed against the left edge means lost information.
- Whites don't clip. The Acme UI screens are mostly white — if they blow out to pure 100%, button borders and text vanish. Keep highlights just under the ceiling.
- Shot-to-shot consistency. Cutting from the office interview to the screen capture shouldn't feel like changing channels. Shot matching is half the job.
- The look serves the story. A launch video wants clean and confident, not moody thriller. If viewers notice the grade before the product, dial it back.
- Check on more than one screen. Your laptop lies. Preview on a phone and, ideally, a TV before signing off — and confirm you're exporting in Rec.709 for web delivery.
The payoff
Prompts you couldn't have written an hour ago
An hour ago the best you had was "make the video look nicer." Now you can say:
"The interview footage was shot in log — apply the camera's Rec.709 conversion LUT first, then grade on top of that, not on the raw flat image."
"Give the whole cut a restrained teal-orange look: push the lift slightly teal, gain slightly warm, keep gamma neutral so midtone skin stays natural."
"Shot 14 is about 2/3 of a stop underexposed and too warm versus shot 13 — match its exposure and white balance to shot 13, then A/B them at the cut point."
"Add a soft S-curve for contrast and lift color intensity with vibrance rather than saturation, so the product UI pops without turning faces orange."