Colour Grading

What this is about

Grading starts where correction has finished its work. A colourist decides whether shadows carry a cool cast, how far the contrast is pushed, which colours in the frame are allowed to dominate and which are pulled back. Secondaries isolate parts of the image — a wall, a jacket, a sky — so they can be treated separately, and vignettes or subtle glows steer the eye. The work is only meaningful on a calibrated display in the target colour space, because everything decided here is judged by appearance rather than by measurement.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• Grading follows correction; a look on an unbalanced image inherits every problem underneath
• Secondaries isolate individual areas — useful for skies, brand colours and wardrobe
• Book the session on a calibrated display in the delivery colour space, not on an office monitor

With TillyGen

A grading pass planned as its own step in TillyGen gets a date and an approval round instead of being squeezed into the last evening before delivery.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.