Best Color Grading Software
Best Color Grading Software
Best color grading software? Which one is it? To answer this question we gonna dive deep into the world of post-production and find out whats the hottest piece of software on the marker!
First of all! Who the hell is this guy? For those who are new to my website, I am a professional film colorist with over 15 years of experience under my belt in color grading, cinematography, and still photography. I am currently working freelance in Los Angeles and San Diego areas! Anyways, enough of foreplay let’s go!
The Kings of Color
Currently, there are few best color grading software giants that could all fight for the “best color grading software” title! I will list them randomly below!
I do want to point out the “nonsense” that I see sometimes being posted about “other” software as “best color grading”. To be fair, you can color grade anywhere, but let’s be honest here, in many other examples that I’ve seen, people just put software for the sake of advertisement and not its intended use.Â
Currently, these are the monsters of color post-production. They are specifically designed for color work and used by industry top professionals and Hollywood blockbusters. Now, let’s break them down in q quick and simple way!
Currently, Assimilate Scratch holds one of the top positions in Hollywood workflow, its fast and highly powerful software remains to be one of the defaults of industry stands for dailies and finishing color grading work. One of the downsides of the software remains to be its confusing interface, despite many available tools and an incredible set of parameters, it might appear overwhelming to learn. Even after working some time with the software I personally still find it very claustrophobic and confusing at times.Â
In recent years Davinci Resolve expanded drastically making it one of the most versatile pieces of software to date! What used to be almost a hundred thousand dollar software is now available only for $300 and contains a complete set of tools to master any audio or video project. Davinci Resolve is currently being used as one of the go-to software for color grading and dailies DI on a film set. With recent add-ons such as a cut page and a fusion implementation, the software now feels extremely clustered, and it’s taking a toll on its performance. Currently Resolve may be one of the most used software for color grading and possibly second or third for video editing after Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro.
Autodesk Lustre part of the Autodesk Flame Package is an interesting mix of Post-production effects and Color Grading combined. The interface is very similar to Assimilate Scratch and is somewhat confusing and counterintuitive. Despite extreme power and an incredible set of tools, it remains at the bottom of the list due to its unpopularity among some professional houses. Even though its widely used by many professionals, the price point is steep, and because of an interesting “special” place in the post-production world it remains to be kind of in the air among the competition.
FilmLight Baselight is currently the king of all for color delivery. It’s preferred by many post-production houses in Hollywood and the skill set is highly appreciated. It’s a layer-based software like Adobe Premiere making it very intuitive to work with. An extremely powerful set of tools allows for precise color reproduction and incredible retouching abilities including warping tools and tracking. The biggest downside of the software is that it doesn’t come as a standalone and is currently being offered as part of Avid Media Composer or Nuke for Mac and PC, and an add-on for Lustre on Linux. Despite the inconvenience, it remains to be the absolute top and mostly used by high-end production houses.
Best Color Grading Software
In conclusion, what did we learn? Which one of the above listed is the best color grading software? Well, it’s impossible to say. It all depends on many various factors such as budget, computer preferences, video colorist skills, the scope of production and etc. At the end of the day, whatever software works for you is the best tool you have to finish the job.
