5 Best Video Color Grading Software in 2025
- Last updated on 2024-12-26
Giving your video a professional look is essential and color grading software can help you do just that. In this article, we’ll cover the 5 best color grading software options available right now – covering both free and paid options so you can find the perfect one 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 color grading tool, 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.
5 Best Color Grading Software
| Program | OS | Level | Best for |
| UniFab HDR Upconverter AI | Win, Mac | Beginners and professionals | Quick grading or AI color enhancing |
| 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 |
UniFab HDR Upconverter AI
UniFab is your one-stop solution for all video enhancement needs, making high-quality video editing accessible to everyone. This user-friendly tool is perfect for both novices and experts in color grading, offering a 30-day free trial that allows you to color grade up to 5 videos with full functionality.
Besides the basic color correction, UniFab also offers a powerful tool to automatically enhance your video to HDR. It's the first AI-powered solution for SDR to HDR conversion, allowing you to adjust colors and brightness and enhance detail, contrast, and depth, making videos more true-to-life.
Top Benefits:
- Edit your videos by cropping, trimming, or adding effects or changing colors.
- Enlarge video resolution up to 4K and upscale it to HDR.
- Supports both DCI-P3 and Rec.2020 color spaces for exceptional color accuracy.
- Accept all formats of videos like 3gp, avi, flv, m2ts, mp4, mov, mkv, ogm, ts, etc.
- Supports batch video editing.
How to use UniFab
Step 1
Install and launch the UniFab on your device first. Choose the "Video Converter" module.
UniFab HDR Upconverter AI
- Dynamically adjusts colors and brightness to enhance detail, contrast, and depth.
- 30-day free trial with full feature access – download and start now!
Step 2
Add the video you want to colorize into UniFab and select 'Effect'.
Step 3
You can adjust the Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, and add some filters based on your needs. After customization, click 'OK' to start the procedure.
DaVinci Resolve
DaVinci Resolve employs a node-based system for color grading, 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
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Premiere Pro is a video editing software, that features an advanced color grading system 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
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.
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 video color grading tools 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
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.