AI-generated clips from different prompts, tools, or sessions rarely match each other. One shot is warm, the next is cold; one is contrasty, the next is flat. Color grading is what unifies them into footage that feels shot by one cinematographer on one day. This guide teaches the essentials — no film-school theory, just what works.
Correction vs. grading (do them in order)
Correction fixes problems: exposure, white balance, contrast — making each clip look neutral and natural. Grading adds style: the teal shadows, the warm highlights, the “look.” Always correct first, then grade. Grading uncorrected footage just stylizes the problems.
Step 1: Correct each clip (Lumetri basics)
- White balance: use the eyedropper on something that should be neutral gray/white. AI footage often skews magenta or green — this fixes it in one click.
- Exposure: get skin tones and key subjects to sensible brightness. Don’t chase histograms blindly; trust your eyes on the subject.
- Contrast: set black and white points so shadows have depth without crushing and highlights have life without clipping. AI footage is often flat — gentle contrast helps enormously.
- Saturation: AI colors can be either dull or neon. Normalize to natural first; style comes later.
Step 2: Match shots to each other
This is the crucial step for AI video. Line up your shots and match them:
- Pick your best-looking shot as the reference.
- Use Premiere’s Color Match (Comparison View) or DaVinci Resolve’s shot-match as a starting point — then adjust by eye.
- Match skin tones first (viewers notice faces before anything), then overall warmth/coolness, then contrast.
- Check on the vectorscope if available: skin tones should fall along the skin-tone line regardless of the shot.
Step 3: Apply one unifying look
Now the grade. The simplest professional approach: one LUT or preset across everything, adjusted per clip:
- Build or choose a single look (subtle is better — a gentle S-curve, slight warm highlights, slight cool shadows is a timeless starting point).
- Apply it to an adjustment layer over the whole timeline, or paste the Lumetri effect to all clips.
- Tweak intensity per clip (50–80% is often the sweet spot — full-strength LUTs usually look overdone).
- Free quality LUTs: search for well-reviewed free cinematic packs; avoid anything that crushes skin tones.
Looks that work for AI footage
- Clean natural: corrected only, minimal stylization. Best for realistic/documentary-style AI video. The safest choice.
- Warm cinematic: warm highlights, slightly teal shadows, gentle contrast. Flatters most content; the most popular look for a reason.
- Cool thriller: desaturated, blue-green shadows, restrained highlights. For tension and night scenes.
- High-contrast punch: deep blacks, bright highlights, saturated color. For energetic social content — survives platform compression well.
AI-specific grading challenges
- Inconsistent skin tones: AI skin varies between generations. Use HSL Secondary in Lumetri to isolate and unify skin across clips.
- Flicker: slight exposure flicker between frames is common. A tiny amount of temporal smoothing (or slight motion blur) hides it; heavy noise reduction makes skin plastic — prefer the lighter touch.
- Oversaturated generations: some tools output punchy color. Pull saturation back in correction before grading, or your look will push it into clownish territory.
- Mismatched lighting: when one shot is warm tungsten and the next is cool daylight, white-balance each toward a middle ground before applying the unifying look.
The 80/20 of grading
Eighty percent of the benefit comes from: correct white balance, matched exposure across shots, and one subtle unifying look. The fancy techniques — power windows, tracked masks, film emulation — are the final 20%. Get the basics right on every project and your AI footage will look intentionally crafted rather than randomly generated.
Grading is step 4 of the full editing workflow — correct, match, unify, then move to sound.