Colour grading, black and white and the Look
The bottom half of Colour (⌃2) is where a frame gets its character rather than its correction: a cast per tonal range, a black-and-white conversion with a say in how each colour comes out, and the section that files the frame's simulation and tonal sliders as a look of your own.
Colour grading
The colour editor changes the colours already in the photograph. Colour grading adds colour that was not there and chooses where in the tonal scale to put it: warm highlights and cool shadows, the teal-and-orange grade, a split-toned black and white.
- Shadows, Midtones and Highlights each get a wheel with a draggable point. The angle round the wheel is the hue you are tinting toward and the distance from the centre is how far — one drag for both. Dragging past the rim parks at full strength, and dragging back to the exact centre leaves the hue where it was.
- Global is a fourth wheel applied to every pixel at full strength, on top of whichever range the pixel falls in. It lets you warm a whole frame and cool its shadows at once.
- Luminance, under each wheel (−100 to +100), lifts or lowers that range's brightness on its own. A range can be lifted without being tinted at all.
- Blending (0 to 100, starting at 50) sets how much the three ranges overlap: sharply divided at 0, one continuous gradient at 100. Balance (−100 to +100) slides the crossover points together: positive gives the highlights more of the frame, negative gives the shadows more.
Blending and Balance stay dimmed until at least one of Shadows, Midtones or Highlights is doing something; with only Global touched they would change nothing. Which range a pixel belongs to is judged by how light it looks, so a saturated yellow reads as the highlight it is. Unlike the colour editor, grading does tint greys — that is what split-toning a black-and-white frame means.
The reset arrow on the section's header clears all four wheels and both Blending and Balance. The section has an eye.
Black and white
The Black and white section is a colour-to-tone mapping: it decides how bright each colour comes out as grey. A red dress against green foliage can be two very different greys or nearly the same grey, and only a weight per colour can choose.
- Press Convert to black and white. On a colour frame, until you do, the six weights are drawn dimmed with the line Turn this on to convert the frame, then weigh each colour.
- Move the weights — Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, Magenta, each −100 to +100. At 0 every colour contributes what an ordinary conversion would give it, so all six at 0 is a standard black and white, not a black frame. Darken Blue to deepen a sky; lift Red to open up skin.
- Tone the result under tint: Amount (0 to 100) is how much, and Hue (0° to 359°, over a colour ramp) is which colour. Hue stays dimmed while Amount is 0. A sepia or selenium print sits at an Amount of about 15 to 30.
On a frame whose film simulation is already black and white — Acros — the weights have nothing left to weigh, and the section says so in place of the line above. With the switch off it reads The film simulation already converted this frame, so the weights below change nothing. The tint still applies. With it on, This frame is already black and white — the film simulation converted it, so the weights below change nothing. The tint still applies.
The section's summary reads converted · the mix and its tint once the switch is on. It has an eye, and the reset arrow on its header turns the switch off and clears the weights and the tint.
Look: saving and matching
The last section of the tab is Look, with its summary save this frame's interpretation, or match another's. It has no reset of its own.
Saving a simulation of your own
Save as a simulation files the frame's base film simulation and its eight tonal sliders — Exposure through Vibrance, with the offset of any look you started from folded in — as a look of your own, for every frame in this library. Nothing else goes into it: no curve, colour editor, grading, black and white, Clarity, Detail, Lens or mask. The line under the heading says what it will save, in the panel's own grammar: Saves the base simulation and the composed offset — Exposure +0.40 EV · Shadows +18. Type a name, choose a category and press Save.
Saving clears everything else on the frame you saved from. The frame moves onto the new look, and its crop, curve, masks, spot cleans and every other adjustment come off it. Press ⌘Z straight after saving and they all come back, and the look stays saved. To keep a record that outlasts ⌘Z, save a version of the frame in the Changes tab first, and restore it after saving the look.
The steps, where the look appears and what a library that cannot store adjustments does with it are on Looks and film simulations.
Matching another photograph
Match a reference ranks every look in this library — the 24 curated ones plus anything you have saved — by how close its colour lands to a reference, on this frame. The same button is on the top panel among the four violet tools; this row opens the identical sheet. It needs no AI provider and works offline.
- Press Match a reference.
- Choose the reference: any other take in the library, shown as thumbnails, or Choose a file… for an image on disk. A library frame is measured with its own adjustments applied.
- The three closest looks are shown large with their distances, labelled closest / then / then. The rest of the ranking is one disclosure away.
- Press Use this look to store the look's name and base simulation; it moves no slider. Or press Also match tone and colour to write Exposure, Temperature and Tint toward the reference as well — the exact numbers are printed on the card before you press. If the reference's colour is further than Temperature and Tint can reach, it says so and matches only the exposure.
Each button is one ⌘Z step. It matches colour, not composition, and it can only choose from looks this library actually has.