With this new landscape in mind, I present to you, three amazing applications you can download for free to do sophisticated color grading and finishing. Producers are aware that for another five-hundred dollars they can add a layer of polish on a low-budget spot without ever leaving the post-house. In color grading and finishing, it’s done the opposite: it’s made the high-end more accessible while rates have stayed relatively high, and it’s created a new position in small post houses using NLE’s and plug-ins. For two decades, we’ve all watched as digital technology collapsed and obsoleted many different post roles (and good paying jobs). What is interesting, to me, is that the proliferation of low (and no) cost color correction tools has created a new class of post-production workers. This practitioner comes equipped with a suite of plug-ins, but many small post house and editorial boutiques stay up to date with the latest so this is becoming less of an issue. Sometimes there is a colorimetric accurate monitor, often not, and the editorial specialist uses color bars and adjustments to get a display close to something that approximates a true representation. They come into the edit suite after picture lock, work directly inside the timeline, create a color balanced images, post-relighting and make everything look qualitatively better. On the other side are what you can call “editorial specialists”. They live in DaVinci Resolve and they are awesome, and very expensive. There is science in their work, a deep understanding of cinematography and a workflow centered around the job of color grading.
There are still the high-end Resolve artists, working on expensive hardware with multiple GPUs, colorimetric accurate displays, nice sofas and espresso machines. The work of color grading exists in two very different realms now. So now the “free DaVinci” was actually a free version of DaVinci Resolve. To drive the point home, Blackmagic released a free version called Resolve Lite. This was a color grading environment you couldn’t touch for less than a hundred thousand dollars the year before. In 2010, worlds collided when Blackmagic Design acquired DaVinci (the industry leader in high-end color grading) and released the latest version of Resolve (their flagship application) for the shockingly low price of US $995. There was no need to move out of the NLE to a dedicated grading application, it was possible to finish right there inside of Final Cut. Simultaneously, NLE based color correction plug-ins (like Red Giant Colorista and Magic Bullet Looks) were getting more powerful, allowing sophisticated color correction and grading right in the timeline.
Free grading software for mac professional#
However, for the dedicated, the free copy of Color allowed for a shot at developing professional color grading skills. Many editors opened up Color, took one look around and then went straight back to the timeline. It turns out that what was going on in those expensive DI suites was more than just tweaking colors, there was a real color science happening. Suddenly, editors everywhere were given the power of a complex, robust color grading application in all its arcane and indecipherable beauty. The joke at the time was that you got a “free DaVinci” in every box of Final Cut. Then Apple, Inc bought Final Touch, renamed it Color and gave it away for free with every copy of the Final Cut Suite.
The idea of a proper “color grade” was really just a pipe dream. Most producers instead relied on their editors to do a basic “color correction” to the clips sitting in the NLE timeline using the small, limited set of filters at their disposal. This final “finishing” step in post-production was a luxury that many producers simply could not afford. There was a time, not long ago, that getting a complex, subtle look for your video meant spending thousands of dollars a day in a DI suite. Image from Blackmagic Design Color Grading: In the Beginning Professional color grading tools are within reach – either as free downloads or built into the video editing app you already use!
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