What Is Color Grading? 10 Grades That Changed How Films Look

What is color grading? It is the stage of post-production where a film gets its final look. A colorist works through the film shot by shot, adjusting color, contrast and brightness until every scene feels the way the story needs it to feel.

When the Coen brothers shot O Brother, Where Art Thou? in Mississippi, the fields were, in Joel Coen’s words, “greener than Ireland”. The story needed a dusty Depression summer. So Roger Deakins spent about 10 weeks turning the greens brown on a computer. That film is number 1 below, after what grading does, how it differs from correction and how it works.

What Does Color Grading Do?

A grade has four jobs. The best ones do all four at once.

• Match the shots. A scene is filmed over hours or days, in changing light. The grade makes it look like one moment.
• Set the mood. Cold and blue feels lonely. Warm and golden feels safe. Crushed blacks feel dangerous.
• Place the story in time. A grade can make the 1950s look like a 1950s photograph, or make Mexico look different from Washington in the same film.
• Steer the eye. Brightening a face and darkening the edges of the frame tells the audience where to look.

Color Grading vs Color Correction

Color correction fixes the image. Color grading styles it. Correction comes first, so the look is built on a clean base.

	Color correction	Color grading
The goal	Make footage look natural and consistent	Give footage a look that serves the story
What it deals with	White balance, exposure, contrast, skin tones, shots that don’t match	Mood, palette, era, where the eye goes
When it happens	First	After correction
Main tools	Scopes, white balance, primary color wheels	Curves, secondary corrections, masks, LUTs, film emulation
An example	Warming a shot that came out too blue	Turning a green Mississippi summer into sepia

On a small film, the editor often does both. On a feature, a colorist does both, working with the cinematographer. See where the colorist fits in our list of film crew positions.

“We’ll fix it in the grade” is the most expensive sentence on a film set.

A grade can move color around. It can’t put light where there was none, and it can’t pull detail back out of a sky that blew out to white.

Every hour a colorist spends rescuing a shot is an hour not spent on the look.

So light it on the day. Then let the grade do what it does best: make a good image feel like your film.

How Color Grading Worked Before Computers

Before digital, color lived at the film lab. A color timer studied each shot of the negative on an analyzer and chose printer lights: values for red, green and blue, usually on a scale of 1 to 50 points. One point is about a twelfth of a stop. The job was called color timing.

Labs could also change the chemistry. In bleach bypass, the lab skips the bleach step, so silver stays in the film alongside the color dyes. Contrast goes up and color goes down. Roger Deakins used it on the prints of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), for a look the Criterion Collection calls “50 percent black-and-white”, and Janusz Kamiński used it on Minority Report (2002). Silver retention processes such as Technicolor’s ENR and Deluxe’s CCE did a similar job on release prints.

Then computers arrived. Once a whole film could be scanned, graded and recorded back to film, a colorist could change one color in one corner of one shot. That process is called a digital intermediate, or DI.

10 Color Grades That Changed How Films Look

These 10 color grades count down to the film that moved grading from the lab to the computer. None of them is on our list of movies to watch for cinematic color grading ideas, so read both.

10) Dune (2021)

Dune was shot digitally, then passed through real film on its way to the screen.

• Director: Denis Villeneuve
• Cinematographer: Greig Fraser
• Colorist and lab: Dave Cole, FotoKem
• The look: Bleached desert light, muted color and fine film grain
• How it was done: The finished digital grade was recorded onto film and scanned back in
• What to steal: Texture is part of the look. Decide on it with the color, not after

Fraser shot on ARRI Alexa LF and Mini LF digital cameras. After the grade, FotoKem laser-recorded the whole film onto Kodak Vision3 5254 intermediate stock, then scanned it back in.

Fraser said it “added a depth and substance to the image”. The trip through real film added real grain, the kind a plug-in only imitates. It is O Brother in reverse: computer to film and back.

9) The Irishman (2019)

The Irishman uses the grade to tell you what decade it is.

• Director: Martin Scorsese
• Cinematographer: Rodrigo Prieto
• Colorists: Yvan Lucas (final grade) and Elodie Ichter (dailies), Harbor
• The look: Kodachrome for the 1950s, Ektachrome for the 1960s, silver retention from the 1970s
• How it was done: Custom LUTs built to copy the look of each film stock
• What to steal: Tie your palette to time, and the audience will feel the years pass

Prieto wanted each era to look like the amateur still photographs of its time. The 1950s look like Kodachrome, colorful with strong reds. The 1960s look like Ektachrome. From the first half of the 1970s, the look moves to ENR, a silver retention process that drains color, and it goes further after Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance in 1975.

Prieto described the aim as “less and less color” as Frank Sheeran’s regret grows. The same LUTs went on the 35mm footage and the digital de-aging footage, so both look like one film.

8) Three Kings (1999)

Three Kings made its color look like a newspaper photo.

• Director: David O. Russell
• Cinematographer: Newton Thomas Sigel
• The look: Harsh contrast, heavy grain and colors that burn out
• How it was done: Ektachrome slide film developed as negative, plus bleach bypass
• What to steal: Borrow the look of a real medium your audience already knows

Russell wanted the film to look like the press photos of the Gulf War. Much of it was shot on Ektachrome, a slide film, and developed in negative chemistry, a lab trick called cross-processing. Parts also went through bleach bypass.

Russell said the process meant “when the colors do pop through they get a harsh, blown-out look.” It isn’t pretty, and that is the point.

7) Se7en (1995)

Se7en gave the thriller its black.

• Director: David Fincher
• Cinematographer: Darius Khondji
• Lab: Deluxe
• The look: Deep, inky blacks and drained color
• How it was done: Deluxe’s CCE silver retention process, on a small share of the prints
• What to steal: Protect your blacks. Rich shadows make a dark film feel dangerous, not muddy

Se7en was the first feature to use Deluxe’s Color Contrast Enhancement, or CCE, a process that leaves silver in the print. Khondji called it “more radical” than any bleach bypass he had used. The shadows go deep and the colors go sour, which suits a city where it never stops raining.

CCE was expensive, so only a small share of the prints got it. For the rest, Deluxe built a similar look into the interpositive and internegative. Se7en is also on our list of psychological thrillers from the 90s.

6) Schindler’s List (1993)

Schindler’s List makes one red coat carry the whole film.

• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Cinematographer: Janusz Kamiński
• The look: Black and white, with a little girl’s coat left red
• How it was done: The coat scenes were shot on color film, and every color except the red was removed afterwards
• What to steal: When everything else is grey, one color becomes a symbol

Kamiński shot the film on black and white stock, with color stock for the few color scenes. During the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto, Oskar Schindler watches a small girl in a red coat walk through the chaos. Later he sees the same red coat among the dead.

The coat isn’t the only color. The opening Shabbat candles and the epilogue with the real survivors are in color too. But the coat is what everyone remembers. The film tops our list of movies based on a true story.

5) The Aviator (2004)

The Aviator grades its story like the history of film color.

• Director: Martin Scorsese
• Cinematographer: Robert Richardson
• Colorist: Stephen Nakamura, Technicolor Digital Intermediates
• The look: Two-strip Technicolor for the early years, then saturated three-strip
• How it was done: Custom LUTs that imitate each Technicolor process
• What to steal: A grade can borrow the technology of the era it shows

Scorsese wanted the film’s look to follow the years it covers. In the first act, the grade copies two-strip Technicolor, an early process that could only mix reds and blue-greens. Green grass comes out blue-green, most obviously on the golf course where Hughes meets Katharine Hepburn.

Later, for scenes set after 1935, the look switches to three-strip Technicolor, the saturated color of classic Hollywood. Many viewers never notice why the grass looks strange. They just feel they are watching an old movie.

4) Traffic (2000)

Traffic gives each storyline its own color.

• Director and cinematographer: Steven Soderbergh (credited as Peter Andrews for cinematography)
• The look: Warm yellow for Mexico, cold blue for Washington and Ohio, bright and soft for San Diego
• How it was done: Tobacco filters, uncorrected tungsten film, flashing and overexposure, then an Ektachrome step in printing
• What to steal: Color can tell the audience which story they are in before a line is spoken

In Mexico, Soderbergh used tobacco filters for a hot, sandy yellow. In Washington and Ohio, he shot tungsten film with no correction, which turns daylight cold and blue. In San Diego, he used diffusion, flashing and overexposure for a softer, warmer feel. Then the whole film went through an Ektachrome duplicate step for extra contrast and grain.

The yellow stuck. Traffic is widely credited with popularizing the “Mexico filter”, the yellow tint films and TV keep putting on Mexico. A color that tells the story in one film can become a lazy stereotype in the next hundred.

3) The Matrix (1999)

The Matrix gives each world its own color.

• Directors: The Wachowskis
• Cinematographer: Bill Pope
• The look: Sickly green inside the Matrix, cooler blue in the real world
• How it was done: Green filters and extra green in the color timing, with blue gels in the real world
• What to steal: Give each world in your story a color, and never let them mix

Pope and the Wachowskis picked green as “the most unappealing color”. Inside the Matrix, Pope said, “we sometimes used green filters, and I’d add a little bit of green in the color timing.” In the real world, aboard the ship, he put blue gels on the lights for a colder feel.

The audience reads the code without being told. The green also changed on home video. The 2004 DVD box set and the 2008 Blu-ray gave the Matrix scenes a stronger tint, closer to the sequels. The 2018 4K remaster, overseen by Pope, dialed it back.

2) Pleasantville (1998)

Pleasantville turned color into the story.

• Director: Gary Ross
• Cinematographer: John Lindley
• Color effects designer: Michael Southard
• The look: A black and white 1950s TV town that turns to color, one person at a time
• How it was done: Filmed in color, scanned, then drained of color and painted back in, shot by shot
• What to steal: If color can change in your film, make the change mean something

Two modern teenagers get trapped inside a black and white sitcom. As the townspeople start to feel things, color creeps in: a red rose, a pink bubble of gum, then whole faces.

Lindley shot everything in color. The footage was scanned, the color was removed, then put back where the story needed it. About 1,600 of its 1,666 shots were effects shots, “probably about three times what any other feature film has ever done”, Cinesite’s Bob Fernley told Variety in 1998. It was a digital grade in all but name.

1) O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

O Brother, Where Art Thou? moved color grading from the lab to the computer.

• Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen (Joel took the screen credit)
• Cinematographer: Roger Deakins
• Colorist: Julius Friede, Cinesite
• The look: Dusty sepia, like old hand-tinted postcards
• How it was done: The whole film scanned at 2K, graded digitally for about 10 weeks, then recorded back to film
• What to steal: Decide the look before you shoot, then use the grade to get there

Deakins took the whole film into Cinesite, where it was scanned, graded shot by shot and recorded back to 35mm. The greens became dry browns and yellows, like “old, hand-tinted postcards”. American Cinematographer’s article on the film covers the process.

It was the first Hollywood feature to go through a digital intermediate from start to finish. Within a few years, the DI was normal. Deakins features in our guide to what a cinematographer does.

The Teal and Orange Look

Warm faces, cool backgrounds. That’s teal and orange, and it works for a simple reason. Skin tones sit in the orange range. Teal sits opposite orange on the color wheel, and opposite colors make each other stand out. Push the shadows toward teal, and faces pop.

Digital grading made the look easy, and it spread through Hollywood. In March 2010, blogger Todd Miro called it out in a post that begged Hollywood to “Please Stop the Madness”, using frames from films such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and The Wolfman. Sixteen years on, it is more common than ever. Stephen Follows found the look in 30% of 2025 releases, up from 25% in 2009.

Used with purpose, it still works. Mad Max: Fury Road pushes it to the limit, and it is on our list of movies to watch for cinematic color grading ideas. Used by default, it makes every film look the same.

How to Color Grade: The Process

Every grade, from a phone video to a feature, follows roughly the same order.

1. Shoot for the grade. Log or raw footage keeps more detail in the highlights and shadows. It looks flat and grey on purpose. Lighting still matters more, as our guide to low key lighting shows.
2. Normalize. Apply a conversion LUT or color space transform to bring log footage to normal contrast. See what a LUT is.
3. Correct. Set white balance, exposure and contrast so each shot looks natural. Trust the scopes more than your eyes.
4. Match. Make every shot in a scene sit together.
5. Build the look. Push the palette, contrast and saturation toward the mood you want.
6. Do the secondaries. Adjust one color or one part of the frame, like skin tones, a sky or a window, using qualifiers and masks.
7. Deliver. Export for where it will be seen: a cinema, a streaming service or a phone.

These are DaVinci Resolve’s primary wheels: lift for the shadows, gamma for the midtones, gain for the highlights and offset for everything. Resolve began as a dedicated grading system. Blackmagic Design bought da Vinci, the company behind it, in 2009 and released a free version in 2011. Try our tips for color grading in DaVinci Resolve.

In Premiere Pro, the Lumetri Color panel covers the same steps. Here’s a quick tutorial from our in-house editor, Philip.

Before you touch a color wheel, pick one frame.

Choose a still from a film you love that feels like the scene you shot. Put it beside your timeline and grade toward it.

You won’t match it, and you shouldn’t try to. The point is having a target. Without one, beginners nudge every slider a little and end up with footage that looks like nothing in particular.

O Brother had a target too: old postcards.

For the full step-by-step, start with our beginner’s guide to color grading.

FAQs About Color Grading

The Final Cut on Color Grading

Color grading is where footage stops looking like footage and starts looking like a film. Correction fixes the image. The grade gives it a point of view.

The 10 grades above show how far that can go, from Dune’s trip through real film to O Brother’s dusty postcards.

Here’s an exercise. Take one scene you’ve shot and grade it three ways: warm, cold and bleached. Watch each with the sound on. One will feel like your story. That’s your look.

For the next step, read our beginner’s guide to color grading, then our cinematography guide to see how the look starts on set.