Why Do This in Your Browser?
Color grading lives at the intersection of art and math — and the math has been the same for thirty years. Lift, gamma, gain. Saturation. Hue rotation. Color temperature. The controls are well-defined and the math runs comfortably on a modern CPU. The reason 'color grading' implies a desktop app isn't the underlying math; it's the realtime preview that 4K timeline work demands.
For short-form social content (60 seconds at 1080p), realtime preview works perfectly in a browser. The tool renders a small live preview to a canvas (50–100ms per frame on a recent laptop), then runs the final pass through FFmpeg.wasm's color filters when you're happy with the look. The grading parameters map 1:1 to FFmpeg's eq, hue, and curves filters, so the preview and render are mathematically identical.
How It Works
Six core controls: exposure (overall brightness, -2 to +2 stops), contrast (-100 to +100), saturation (-100 to +100), hue rotation (-180° to +180°), gamma (0.1 to 3.0, midtone shift), and temperature (-100 cool to +100 warm). Each control updates the live preview canvas in real-time. When you're done, click 'Render' and FFmpeg.wasm applies the same parameters to the full video at full resolution.
Six built-in presets cover common looks: Cinematic (teal-orange split), Vivid (boosted saturation), Moody (lowered exposure, cool tint), Warm Vintage (warm temp, lifted shadows), Bleach Bypass (reduced saturation, high contrast), and Bright & Clean (neutral, lifted shadows). Presets are starting points; tweak from there.
Tip: Grading is non-destructive at preview but bakes into the final render. To compare before/after on the full output, render a clip with no grading first as a reference. Pair grading with the Video Stabilizer for action-cam recovery — fix the shake, then fix the color.
Common Use Cases
How We Compare
Honest read on free, paid, and self-hosted options for this kind of job:
See also: Stabilise first, then grade: the Video Stabilizer smooths shake using vidstab two-pass analysis.