Have you ever applied a filter to your picture before posting it on social media? Well, that’s Color grading in its most basic form.

Color grading is more than just changing the colors or making color adjustments. It is an editing technique used to stylize videos or photographs to achieve a unified look. This post-production process allows visual artists to use colors to tell a story or convey a message.

Grading is integral to content creation as it denotes the mood, tone, or character traits. It is a vital part of storytelling. In this article, we will give you a basic understanding of this process by explaining what color grading is, how it is different from color correction, and the need for color grading in video editing and photo editing.

Color grading is a post-production process for photo and video editing. Here, editors alter the appearance of images or films to get a visual effect. It is often used in filmmaking or other contexts where the end product is to be displayed or presented.

Grading colors is about creating and conveying a visual tone for your image. Like giving an image a reddish or bluish hue, for example. Editors tweak or enhance contrast, saturation, color, black levels, white balance, and other attributes to get the desired look.

Back in the day, color grading was known as color timing. It was termed such because editors adjusted colors by changing the duration of light exposure using different filters. Today, software editors use software to match images and videos with a color palette.

The professionals who do color correction also do color grading. They even use the same tools and software for both processes. For example, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, and DaVinci Resolve.

So, what is the difference between the two?

The main difference between color grading and color correction is the creative team’s approach. While the latter is a technical approach, the former is a more creative one. Let’s take a deeper look at the two processes and learn their differences in depth.

First, let’s look at color correction.

Color correction is a technical process where editors correct imperfections in an image or video. The imperfections could be dust, spots, or scars. Cropping and compositing an image also fall under this process.

The goal of color correction is to make a product technically perfect so that it looks as natural as possible. Editors aim to make it appear as it would in real life.

In color correction, editors also ensure the footage or images from different cameras match. This ensures a consistent look after grading. They can also correct issues with the lighting in a scene to ensure consistency.

Then, how is it different from color grading?

Unlike color correction, grading is a creative process. It is about achieving a particular stylistic effect by adjusting the colors in an image or footage. This process takes place after color correction, once all imperfections are removed.

The goal of grading is to produce a unified look throughout the image series or footage. Editors grade a video or image by enhancing its visual tone and atmosphere. There is always a color palette that professionals must follow when grading colors. These color palettes are usually prepared by the director or person in charge of the project.

Currently, cameras cannot produce images or videos exactly as our eyes perceive the world. That is why grading is vital to creative projects like cinematography and photography. It allows you to unify the style across all aspects of your project. It can also help you enhance a concept, set a mood, or incite a particular response from the viewer.

Now, let’s look at the film industry. All filmmakers, whether good or bad, are visual artists at the end of the day. Filmmakers use colors to evoke emotions, draw focus to details, show changes in character traits, and more. If they want to convey a change in seasons, they set different color palettes for each season.

The cold and melancholy of winter can be conveyed through a blue color scheme. The warmth and happiness of summer can be expressed through an orange palette. Colors can also help build tension or bring harmony to a scene.

Many Hollywood directors have used color as a storytelling aid. They have used it to suggest mood, set the tone, and depict changes in time and character traits. Some are Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, M Night Shyamalan, and Greta Gerwig.

Filmmakers determine a color palette as part of their production design. And grading helps them color their films to match their color palettes.

Grading also helps tell stories through still images. It can also improve the appeal of an image by enhancing the hues and tones to highlight certain elements. For example, greener hues in a food photo can make a salad look more appetizing. It can make a sunny day warmer or a rainy day more melancholy.

Filters on apps like Instagram and Snapchat are a basic form of color grading. When applying these filters, you consciously adjust the image to better depict your ideas. Another time you may have used grading is when you click photos in black-and-white mode. In the past, photographers had no choice but to shoot black-and-white images. But choosing to do so in the modern age is entirely an artistic choice, and color editing images and footage is all about making aesthetic choices.

Grading is also crucial for photos of important days like graduations, wedding photos, and others. The right color palette can enhance still images and bring life to your memories.

You may have come across the term “LUT” when researching color grading. Short for “lookup table”, LUTs are the quickest way to grade your footage after color correction.

So, what does LUT mean?
A lookup table is a broad term that refers to a predetermined array of numbers that gives you a shortcut for specific computations. In color grading, LUTs transform color input values to the desired output values. It means that the LUT will transform every color value input into a different value.

In simple terms, it is a preset color look you can apply directly to your videos. It makes grading faster, but it should only be used by those who have a strong understanding of color grading.

Many people use color correction and color grading interchangeably, but they are different. They are both post-production processes. But, as we have seen in this article, color correction is a technique to make an image or video look natural. Grading is an artistic process where the footage or image color is graded or edited to match a color palette.

We hope this article helped you get a better understanding of color grading.