# Colour correction vs colour grading: the actual difference

> One makes the footage correct, the other makes it yours. Doing them in the wrong order is why a grade that looked good on one clip falls apart across a shoot.

Canonical: https://batchtone.com/blog/color-grading-vs-color-correction

20 September 2026 · 4 min read

Correction is technical and objective: neutral white balance, correct exposure, legal levels, and every clip matching every other clip. Grading is creative and subjective: the look. Correction comes first, always, because a look applied to inconsistent footage amplifies the inconsistency instead of hiding it.

These two words get used interchangeably and they are two different jobs, done in a fixed order, with different tools and different success criteria. Knowing which one you are doing is most of what separates footage that holds together from footage that does not.

## The two jobs

|  | Correction | Grading |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Accurate | Intentional |
| Judged by | Scopes | Your eyes |
| Right answer | There is one | There is not |
| Per clip | Yes, individually | Usually once, across all |
| Skippable | No | Yes |

**Correction** is fixing what the camera got wrong or could not know. White balance that drifted between the morning and the afternoon, exposure that moved when a cloud passed, two cameras that disagree about what neutral looks like. It has a correct answer and you can verify it on a scope.

**Grading** is deciding what the footage should feel like. Warmer, cooler, crushed blacks, lifted shadows, a particular film emulation. There is no correct answer, only a choice, and it is applied on top of corrected footage.

## Why the order is not negotiable

A look is a transformation. Apply it to two clips that disagree and you get two clips that disagree, transformed, often more visibly than before, because a strong grade exaggerates the difference rather than covering it.

This is the single most common reason a LUT that looked wonderful on the clip you tested it on looks wrong across the rest of the shoot. The LUT is fine. The footage underneath it was never matched.

The test: pick your best clip and your worst clip from the same shoot, put them side by side, and apply nothing. If they do not already look like they belong together, no grade will make them.

## What correction actually involves

Four things, in this order:

1. **Exposure.** Get the midtones where they belong. A shot that was two stops under is not fixed by brightening it later; it is fixed by grading from a sensible starting point and accepting the noise.
2. **White balance.** Neutral should be neutral. This is where the two-camera problem lives.
3. **Contrast and levels.** Blacks at black, whites not clipping.
4. **Matching.** Every clip against a chosen reference clip, not against your memory of the room.

For log footage there is a step before all of it: converting out of log, which is a technical transform rather than a grade. [S-Log3 to Rec.709](https://batchtone.com/blog/sony-slog3-to-rec709) and [D-Log to Rec.709](https://batchtone.com/blog/dlog-to-rec709) are that step for two common cameras, and the distinction matters here: that conversion is correction, not look.

## What grading involves

Much less than people expect, once correction is done properly.

Often a single LUT and a couple of adjustments. The reason it feels harder is that people are trying to grade their way out of a correction problem. They are fighting a colour cast with a creative tool, which never quite works and takes all evening.

[What is a LUT](https://batchtone.com/blog/what-is-a-lut) covers the mechanism; [free LUTs](https://batchtone.com/blog/free-luts) covers where usable ones come from. The important point here is that a creative LUT expects corrected input and a conversion LUT expects log. Feeding the wrong one the wrong footage is the other half of why results look strange.

## Where it goes wrong on a real shoot

- **Grading clip one, then applying it to clip forty.** Correction was never done, so the look lands differently on every shot.
- **Correcting with a creative LUT.** It changes the colour relationships, so your white balance judgement is now being made through a filter.
- **Matching by memory.** Put the reference clip on screen next to the one you are matching. Every time.
- **Doing both at once, per clip.** Slow, and it guarantees drift across a long timeline.

## How BatchTone handles it

The separation is the point. Drop a folder in and the conversion out of log (the correction half) is applied to every clip identically, from the conversion LUT rather than by eye. A frame is pulled from each clip and previewed with it applied, so you can see the whole shoot agreeing before anything creative happens.

- Strength per clip, for the shots that need less, without touching the rest.
- One `.cube` per batch, the same for every clip by default; a creative look is a second pass over the converted files.
- Originals are never written to.

Correction across a folder is the part that is mechanical and therefore worth automating; the look is the part worth your judgement. There is a [seven-day trial](https://batchtone.com/download) if you want to see it against your own footage.

## Common questions

**Which comes first, colour correction or colour grading?** Correction, always. A grade applied to unmatched footage exaggerates the mismatch rather than hiding it.

**Can I skip colour correction?** Only if the footage was shot in consistent light on one camera and exposed correctly. That is rarer than it sounds, and it is the situation in which a LUT appears to work perfectly.

**Is a LUT correction or grading?** Either, and they are different files. A conversion LUT that takes log to Rec.709 is correction. A creative LUT that adds a look is grading. Applying them in the wrong order gives strange results.

**Do I need scopes?** For correction, yes: eyes adapt and monitors lie. For grading, no; that part is a judgement and scopes cannot make it for you.

**Why does my grade look different on every clip?** Because correction was skipped. The look is doing its job; the footage underneath it does not match.

**About this article.** Written by the team that builds BatchTone, a macOS app that applies .cube LUTs to whole folders of photos and video. Spotted something wrong or out of date? Write to [support@batchtone.com](mailto:support@batchtone.com).

## Read next

Explainers 19 September 2026 · 4 min read

## [What is a LUT? The whole idea in five minutes](https://batchtone.com/blog/what-is-a-lut)

LUT stands for lookup table. In video and photo editing, a LUT is a file that says, for a grid of input colours, what each one should come out as. Applying a LUT means looking up every pixel in that grid and interpolating between the nearest entries.

[Read it](https://batchtone.com/blog/what-is-a-lut)

Comparisons 19 September 2026 · 7 min read

## [Color grading software: the best apps by job, compared](https://batchtone.com/blog/color-grading-software)

The best color grading software depends on the job. To grade an edit, use DaVinci Resolve (free) or the colour tools in Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro. To develop raw stills, use Lightroom or Capture One. For film looks, use a plugin such as Dehancer or FilmConvert. To put one LUT on a whole folder of photos and clips on a Mac, use a batch tool such as BatchTone.

[Read it](https://batchtone.com/blog/color-grading-software)

Explainers 19 September 2026 · 4 min read

## [Free LUTs: where the good ones come from](https://batchtone.com/blog/free-luts)

The free LUTs worth having are the conversion LUTs camera manufacturers publish for their own log formats. Free creative packs are usually an email address in exchange for files, and are worth judging on your own footage before you keep them.

[Read it](https://batchtone.com/blog/free-luts)

## One look. A whole shoot.

BatchTone applies your .cube LUTs across photos and video at once, with a strength dial on every file. Seven-day trial, everything unlocked.

[Download for macOS](https://apps.apple.com/app/batchtone/id6821727167)