Colour · the moves

Grading techniques, one node at a time.

Six moves for an Asian wedding grade. Each one is the mistake beside the correction. The picture is a screen approximation. The node order is what you build.

A node is a step, not a slider.

In a node graph the grade is a chain of pictures. Each node takes the image from the node before it and hands a new one on. Switch one off and the rest remain. Skin and red run in parallel off the balance, so neither inherits the other’s correction.

Temperature, tint, exposure. A white shirt becomes white, and you expose for the darkest face you need. Every node after this one sees this picture, not the raw one.

Sliders against nodes

Same intent on the same frame: calm the skin, keep the lehenga. The slider does both with one control. The node does them apart.

Golden-hour couple with global saturation pulled down, so the lehenga fades with the skin — Sliders

The same couple with skin saturation eased and the burgundy lehenga held — Nodes

What you touch
One stack. Saturation, contrast, and warmth all see the whole frame.
One job per node. Balance, then a skin key, then a red key, then the look.
Skin and lehenga
Calmer skin means less red. The dress fades with the face.
Skin saturation comes down. Cloth red, in its own window, stays or comes up.
Taking it back
Resetting contrast does not restore a hue you moved underneath it.
Switch off the red node. The skin correction is still there.
Two cameras
A look copied onto each clip drifts every time you trim one.
Match the bodies in a group. One show node sits after both.
When it is enough
A speech, a single room, no red cloth, no second body.
A fourteen-hour wedding, a family of complexions, and a dress that must stay red.

Slider · Skin

#8d5524 → #735a44

Node · Skin

#8d5524 → #84572e

Slider · Lehenga red

#8c1c1c → #5b2929

Node · Lehenga red

#8c1c1c → #961618

A look on an unbalanced shot is a different white point in every room. Correct the hall first. The show grade is the second node, and it is small.

Look on a blue wash. Ballroom reception used to show white balance before a creative grade — Look on a blue wash

Ballroom reception used to show white balance before a creative grade — Balance, then density

Contrast and a teal shadow on a London hall that was never balanced. Faces go grey. The lehenga goes brown.

Warm the white balance until the faces are faces. Then add contrast around them, not through a preset.

Hue line · teal to cloth red

SkinRed

The mistake

SkinRed

The move

01Node 1 — primary: temperature and tint until a white shirt is white and a face is not green.
02Node 2 — exposure for the darkest face you need in the shot.
03Node 3 — the show look. Contrast no more than you would dare on the nikah.