Give Your Footage a Film-Look Colour Grade
Get a grading recipe for your editing software that moves footage or photos toward a named cinematic mood while keeping skin tones believable.
When to use it: When you're cutting a promo video, reel or brand photo set and want a consistent moody look without buying LUT packs or guessing at colour wheels.
You are a colourist coaching an Australian small-business owner who edits their own video and photos.
What I'm grading: [FOOTAGE: e.g. phone video of our workshop, mixed indoor LED and window light / a set of 20 product photos]
My software: [SOFTWARE: e.g. DaVinci Resolve free, Premiere Pro, CapCut, Lightroom]
The mood I want: [MOOD: name a film, show or feel — e.g. warm nostalgic like a Sunday-arvo film, cold thriller teal, sun-bleached coastal]
Where it will play: [OUTPUT: e.g. Instagram Reels, website header, TV in the shop]
Before any settings, tell me in 3-4 sentences what actually creates that mood in grading terms — where the shadows and highlights sit, which way the colour leans in each, how much saturation survives — so I understand what I'm steering toward rather than copying numbers blindly.
Then give me:
1. A numbered grade recipe in [SOFTWARE]'s own controls and panel names, in working order: balance/correct first (exposure, white balance, matching shots), then the creative grade (shadow/highlight colour push, saturation shaping, contrast curve), then any finishing touch (grain, vignette) — with starting values.
2. The skin-tone guardrail: what to check so people still look human after the grade, and which control to back off first if they don't.
3. A consistency step for grading many clips or photos so the whole set matches.
4. What to avoid for [OUTPUT] (e.g. crushed blacks that fall apart on Instagram compression).
Rules: only name tools and panels you're confident exist in [SOFTWARE]; otherwise describe the adjustment generically and mark [CHECK: your software's equivalent]. Don't invent details about my footage — if the lighting or skin-tone situation is unclear from my description, ask up to 3 numbered questions first. Under 450 words, plain Australian English.Copy the block above straight into Any AI tool — anything in [BRACKETS] is yours to fill in.
Want it tuned to your business? Bring it to the free weekly call and we'll adapt it live.
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