Colour grading is the process is adjusting and modifying the colour of your videos image. whether it is simply rendering accurate colour, or establishing a look and tone through a colour palette. It is a crucial step of the process and once that should not be rushed.

The footage from the camera is often quite flat, slightly low in contrast and almost gray looking. Cameras often have picture profiles to counteract this, essentially do the grade for you in camera.

But then you lose all control of what the image looks like and you have less flexability in how much you can change the image once a picture profile has been applied. Thats where shooting as neutral and low contrast an image as possible is very important. Some Cameras can shot in what is called LOG video. This is essentially a form of picture profile that saves as wide a dynamic range as possible. So whilst LOG will give a very flat gray image, it holds more colour information than non-Log video. Thus giving you more freedom in the grade.

These stills are example of the before and after stages of this process, from LOG footage to the first step of a grade being applied. Sometimes that is enough, sometimes for a more cinematic and stylised colour pallette a LUT can then be applied.

A LUT (or Look Up Table) is essentially a preset that changes the colour for you, it is at its most crude, an instagram filter for editing platforms. At its best, it is a way of creating mood and tone through adjusting the bias of colour in different areas of the image.

How and teal should be exagerated in the shadow tones, and oranges and coppers in the midtone for example.I personally find that LUTS are sometimes seen as a magic bullet, when they are only another tool or step int he grading process. I do use them, but I feel that there needs to be a specific reason as to why a LUT is being used beyond “It looking good”.

In these still for example, I was try to bring out the colours of the muir burn, thus exagerasting the impact of the burn on the landscape. so shadows have more teal pushed through them and green puleld out and more yellows and orange tones in the mid ranges.