GradeMatchHow GradeMatch works
Drop in a photo. Press one button. Get it back graded, with everything except the colour exactly as you shot it.
GradeMatch is a colour grading tool for photographers and filmmakers. It runs in your web browser, so there is nothing to install and nothing to set up. You give it a photo or a video, and it gives you back the same file with a finished colour grade on it.
What you actually do
- Drop in your file Photos, video and RAW files from a camera all go in the same place. GradeMatch works out which is which, so there is no mode to choose first.
- Press the button Describe the look you want in a sentence, or say nothing at all and let it choose one for you. It takes a few seconds.
- Take the result Download your file at full resolution, or take the grade away as a LUT and use it somewhere else. Most people do both.
Why only the colour changes
This is the thing that separates GradeMatch from every other AI photo tool, and it is worth being plain about.
Other tools give you a new picture. It has been redrawn from scratch: detail is invented, edges move, and the face in the photo is not quite the face you photographed. It looks close until you compare the two properly.
GradeMatch never redraws your photo. An AI is asked what the shot could look like, and its answer is treated as a suggestion rather than a result. GradeMatch reads the colour out of that suggestion, puts that colour onto your own file, and throws the AI picture away. It is never the thing you download.
Your photo comes back with your detail, your framing and your faces untouched. Only the colour is different.
What stays on your computer. Only a small preview is ever sent out for the AI to look at. Your full-resolution file never leaves your browser, and nothing is kept once your grade is finished.
What you get back
- Your own file, graded
- Full resolution, same detail, same crop, same faces. Only the colour is different.
- A LUT you can keep
- Every grade exports as a .cube file, the standard format for a look. Load it into DaVinci Resolve, Premiere or Lightroom and put the same grade on the rest of the shoot.
- Video that holds together
- One look goes onto every frame, so the grade cannot flicker or drift from shot to shot the way frame-by-frame AI video does.
- RAW, straight off the card
- Drop in a RAW file and it behaves exactly like a JPEG, LUT export included.
If the grade is close but not right
Say what you want changed in ordinary words. Warmer. Less contrast. More teal in the shadows. You can also pull the whole grade up or down with a single strength slider, and compare against your original at any point.
Using it without an account
If you already have an AI-edited version of a photo from somewhere else, ChatGPT for instance, GradeMatch will take the colour off it and put that colour onto your full-resolution original. No account, no limit, no waiting.
It is also the clearest way to see what this tool is for. The grading is the product. Where the idea for a grade came from matters far less than what happens to your file afterwards.
What GradeMatch does not do
It does not retouch skin, upscale, sharpen, remove objects or reframe your shot. Those are different jobs and this is the wrong tool for them. What GradeMatch protects is exactly what generative editing costs you: your own pixels.
Accounts and limits
A free account gives you a few grades every week. The paid plan raises that to 100 a month and is billed monthly through Polar, which handles the sale. The free mode described above sits outside all of it: no account, no limit.