A colour grade
Cool office
by Takehound
A modern office: whites a touch cool, crisp blacks and quiet colours around you, with your skin as it was shot.
Aims for this colour
One frame of a real talk, as shot and graded toward Cool office by the editor. Slide to compare. Worked out from frames across the whole recording, the grade came to:
- Light on the face
- +0.85 of a stop, the highlights held
- Contrast
- 1.2 (the most it allows)
- Blacks
- Pushed under by 2.8% of white
- Temperature
- Cooler by half the dial (as cool as it allows)
- Colour strength
- 0.85 times as shot (the least it allows)
When to use it
Use it on a talk recorded in an office, or in a studio lit by daylight bulbs, where a warm cast on the walls would look like a mistake. It takes what should be white or grey in the room nine tenths of the way to a white that is slightly cool, deepens the blacks for a crisp picture, and never makes colours richer than they were shot. It sits well beside screen recordings, where the cool white of a monitor and the white of your room then agree.
Who it suits
It suits a creator who teaches systems or sells to companies: the operator explaining a process, the consultant with a business-to-business offer, the founder showing the software. Skin is kept out of the cooling, so your face does not turn grey or pink while the room around it cools. On a warm room, like the one in the frame above, it cools the walls as far as it is allowed: half of the dial.
What it changes
Where Cool office takes the picture and how far the editor may move it to get there, beside Natural, the grade a talk gets when nobody names one. Levels run from 0, black, to 255, white. What is not listed is as in Natural.
| What | Cool office | Natural |
|---|---|---|
| Blacks, toward | 20 of 255 | 30 of 255 |
| Colour strength, toward | 0.15 | 0.17 |
| Whites and greys | Blue over red by 8 | Red over blue by 6 |
| Taken toward that | 90% of the way | 50% of the way |
| Contrast | 0.9 to 1.2 | 0.9 to 1.15 |
| Cooler, at most | Half the dial | Three quarters of the dial |
| Warmer, at most | Half the dial | Three quarters of the dial |
| Green or magenta | Left as shot | Up to 0.06 either way |
| Colour strength, range | 0.85 to 1 times as shot | 0.9 to 1.1 times as shot |
The middle tones go half of the way to their aim and highlights are only ever opened. Your face is exposed first, and skin keeps the colour it was shot in.
How it works
- Get free accessThe editor is opening from a waitlist, and access is free.
- Open the editor on this gradeAdd your talk and your own footage. The editor opens on this template.
- Watch it workStop it at any point. Every change it makes can be undone.
