6 Best Video Color Grading Software in 2025
- Last updated on 2025-04-27
Table Of Content
Color grading is a crucial part of video post-production, elevating the visuals to give your videos a professional and compelling look. In 2025, there are a variety of free and paid video color grading software available for both beginners and professionals. This guide will recommend the 6 best color grading software, comparing their features to help you find the right tool for your needs.
What is Color Grading?
Color grading fine-tunes video visuals by adjusting color, contrast, brightness, and saturation to set a specific mood or style, often enhancing a film's narrative or a photo's aesthetics. Key grading elements include:
- Hue: Altering the basic color to shift the image's temperature.
- Saturation: Enhancing or muting colors for vibrancy or subtlety.
- Brightness: Controlling the image's lightness or darkness.
- Contrast: Manipulating the difference between light and dark areas for drama or flatness.
- Gamma: Influencing midtones without affecting shadows and highlights.
- Color Balance: Ensuring color consistency and correcting casts.
- White Balance: Adjusting for accurate whites under various lighting, impacting color temperature.
With the right colour grading software, your videos can achieve clarity and vibrancy. Let's explore top color grading software that offers both automated simplicity and comprehensive manual control, guiding you to find the best free option for your projects.
6 Best Color Grading Software
| Program | OS | Level | Best for |
| UniFab HDR Upconverter AI | Win | Beginners and professionals | Quick grading or AI color enhancing |
| UniFab Video Converter | Win, Mac | Beginners and professionals | Easy color grading while editing video with advanced features |
| DaVinci Resolve | Win, Mac, Linux | Professionals | Professional editing and color grading |
| Final Cut Pro | Mac | Professionals | Stepping up from iMovie |
| Adobe Premiere Pro | Win | Professionals | Color grading while editing video with advanced features |
| LightWorks | Win, Mac, Linux | Professionals | Advanced and basic video editing |
1. UniFab HDR Upconverter AI
UniFab HDR Upconverter AI is the first AI-powered solution for SDR to HDR conversion. Its unique technology automatically adjusts colors and brightness, enhancing details, contrast, and depth, making the video look more realistic and vibrant. This user-friendly tool is perfect for both novices and experts in color grading.
Price: 30-day Free Trial for full features, without watermark.
Supported OS: Win
Key features:
- Perfect Light and Shadow Balance
UniFab HDR conversion enhances the dynamic range, balancing shadows and highlights for a more natural, eye-pleasing visual experience. - Refined Color Performance
Supports DCI-P3 and Rec.2020 color spaces, delivering vibrant, true-to-life colors with a wider color gamut. - Enhanced Detail Preservation
UniFab retains 300% more detail, revealing fine textures even in dark or bright areas, ensuring greater clarity.
How to Use UniFab HDR Upconverter AI
Step 1
Install and launch the UniFab on your device first. Choose the "HDR Upconverter" module. Then add your video.
UniFab HDR Upconverter AI
- Dynamically adjusts colors and brightness to enhance detail, contrast, and depth.
- 30-day free trial for full features, without watermark – download and start now!
Step 2
You can choose the HDR10 or Dolby Vision, then select DCI-P3 or Rec.2020 color spaces. You can also adjust audio, change output format and video quality based on your needs.
After customization, click 'Start' to initiate the procedure.
2. UniFab Video Converter
UniFab Video Converter is a powerful tool that not only supports over 1000 formats for video conversion but also offers essential color grading adjustments. You can fine-tune brightness, contrast, saturation, and white balance to enhance the visual quality of your videos. Additionally, UniFab provides advanced features for more precise control, including customizable video resolution, bitrate, frame rate, and audio settings. This makes it an excellent choice for users seeking both conversion and color grading capabilities to achieve professional-quality video output.
How to Use UniFab Video Converter
Step 1
Install and launch the UniFab on your device first. Choose the "Video Converter" module.
Step 2
Add your video, and click Editor icon.
Step 3
Select 'Effect', you can adjust the Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, White Balance, and add some filters based on your needs. After customization, click 'OK' to start the procedure.
3. DaVinci Resolve
DaVinci Resolve can be a professional color grading software, enabling you to work with layers, which enhances organization and allows for easy adjustments or disabling of specific grading layers.
A standout feature is its face-tracking capability, which isolates facial features or the eyes for targeted color adjustments. Additionally, it offers auto-balancing effects and a vast collection of FX plugins to enrich your color-grading experience.
Price:
DaVinci Resolve: free
DaVinci Resolve Studio: $295
Key Features
- Top-notch motion tracking and auto-balancing effects
- Advanced color-grading effects
- Offers a vast collection of FX plugins to enrich your color-grading experience
Pros
Advanced color-grading effects
Beginners can achieve good effect on just the free version
A vast collection of FX plugins
Cons
A higher learning curve
4. Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Premiere Pro is a video editing software, that features an advanced color grading programs within its Lumetri Color panel. This tool set rivals Photoshop for video, offering extensive color control with customizable color wheels, curves, and a variety of film and HDR presets. Keyframing allows for precise adjustments to white balance, exposure, contrast, and more. Additional features include Saturation, Vibrance, Faded Film, and Sharpen controls, as well as a Color Match tool with face detection. Adobe claims the tool analyzes an entire clip using its patented Sensei AI technology to improve exposure, white balance, and contrast.
Supported OS: Win
Key Features
- Offers extensive stock library
- Auto reframe for different aspect ratios
- Integrate seamlessly with all Adobe platforms
- Video editing and color grading on one software
Pros
High-quality color correction tools such as curves and color wheel options
Many organization and collaboration tools
Responsive speed and fast rendering
Some techniques require additional applications, such as After Effects or Media Encoder
Cons
Intimidating interface for nonprofessionals
Sensei AI only works on a per-clip basis
Occasionally pumping up saturation too much
The tracking abilities is not very accurate
5. Final Cut Pro
Final Cut Pro offers immediate color correction tools to adjust hues and saturation. A standout feature is the automatic color matching button, which synchronizes the colors of one clip with another for seamless corrections. Additionally, it supports editing in both standard and HLG color spaces.
Price: $299.99
Supported OS: MacOS
Key Features
- It has several color points and wheels for customization
- Many one-click buttons to automatically adjust the color
- The rendering speed is quicker than most other software
Works well for color grading and correction and overall video editing.
Fast rendering speed
The color grading options were a little limited.
Only for Mac
Not suitable for complex projects that require lots of layers and timelines.
6. LightWorks
Though not widely popular despite being free, LightWorks has been a staple in the industry for years. It includes color wheels, curves, basic saturation and hue controls, and a tool for selective corrections. While its interface may not be the most user-friendly for color grading, it effectively accomplishes the task.
Pricing: Free
Pro: $23.99/month
Supported OS: Mac, Windows
Key Features:
- Intermediate color correction tools
- advanced editing feature
Pros
Expert-level color enhancement and grading services, featuring personalized LUTs
Easy-to-use social media templates
Cons
Complex Interface
The Free version only supports up to 720p exports and the most basic coloring features
Not all file formats are supported
Conclusion
A plethora of color grading software for video exists, yet many require proficiency in color grading techniques. For those seeking effortless color adjustments without delving into the learning curve of color grading, an AI-powered video enhancer like UniFab is the go-to solution. Leveraging AI, neural networks, and super-resolution tech, this tool offers a free and comprehensive approach to video enhancement, covering contrast, color, saturation, and detail. If you are a beginner in color grading, UniFab is your first choice.
FAQs about Video Color Grading Software
Which software is best for color grading?
For those looking for a powerful and user-friendly option, UniFab HDR Upconverter AI is highly recommended. It offers automatic SDR to HDR conversion, enhancing colors, contrast, and detail to make your videos more true-to-life. With support for both DCI-P3 and Rec.2020 color spaces, UniFab delivers exceptional color accuracy.
How important are color features like saturation, brightness, and hue in color grading software?
Color adjustment tools including saturation, brightness, and hue are essential for giving your video a polished appearance. Free color grading software that provides sophisticated control over these elements, along with the ability to manipulate saturation and color curves, enables more intricate and refined management of video outcomes.
Are there any free trials for color grading software that cost money?
Yes, numerous color grading software provides free trials, allowing users to test advanced features before making a purchase decision. This includes software like UniFab, giving users a 30-day free trial with full feature access to assess whether the investment suits their particular requirements.