Color Grading

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part of Post-Production · tier 2 · 0 pieces of work carry it · 3 crafts it is confused with

The craft, and who hires it

Hired to give a film its final look: grading commercials and brand films to a cohesive palette, matching shots across cameras and sources, delivering broadcast-ready masters. The industry couples it with finishing — sold as 'Finishing' or 'Color & Finishing' (alias seeds per the vendor benchmark).

The craft of shaping the color, contrast, and tonal palette of footage or photography in finishing — from technical shot-matching and correction to a signature applied look that carries the mood of the piece.

Tag it when…

Tag when a deliberate, applied color treatment is visible on captured footage or photography: a signature palette, stylized tonal shifts, evident shot-to-shot color matching, or a grade doing expressive work the camera alone would not produce.

Never tag it when…

Never tag palettes that were DESIGNED rather than graded — the color system of an animation, illustration, or layout belongs to Animation/Illustration/Design craft. Never use this tag to name the resulting look — the look words ride the facet stores (LOOK descriptors like photoreal/illustrative on the content_material junction; the single dominant style on visual_style; mood words on tone — DN-199 v2.1), not this craft. Local pixel-level repair of stills goes to Retouching. In-camera color achieved by lighting/filtration is cinematography (Video Production) — when in-camera vs graded is indistinguishable, prefer the capture craft and omit Grading unless the applied grade is unmistakable.

Easily mistaken for 3 other crafts

Every other page suggests neighbours by similarity. This one navigates by difference: each line names the craft this is confused with, and the rule for telling them apart.

• post production retouching — Retouching is LOCAL pixel-level repair/enhancement, mostly on stills; Color Grading is a GLOBAL tonal/color treatment, mostly on footage.
• visual style / content material / tone facets — The grade is the craft; the look it produces is facet territory (photoreal/illustrative → content_material junction; the dominant style → visual_style; mood → tone — v2.1 stores). Describe the look on the facets, tag the craft here.
• video production live action cinematography — Color born in capture (lighting, filtration, lens) is cinematography; color applied in finishing is Grading. Tag Grading only when an applied treatment is evident.

At what size it applies

Asset tag — a grade normally covers the entire piece. Moment tag only when a color treatment is confined to one beat (e.g. a flashback or dream sequence that shifts palette mid-film).

Where to look next

• The whole services tree — the services index.
• Every other vocabulary — the vocabulary index.
• How work gets credited to a craft — the entities chapter.