The Best Video Color Grading Apps for iPhone and iPad

Caleb Babcock @cameracaleb

March 29, 2024

Let loose in your color grading playground with these top 5 iOS and iPad apps.

Color grading is an exciting practice of patience, skillful tinkering, and an eye for a vibe.

Creating stellar looks for either photo or video is a fun way to craft a visual experience while maintaining artistic integrity. While advanced artists might prefer more extensive software programs, like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve — simplistic iOS or iPad-only applications are made entirely with the beginner in mind.

You don’t have to be a beginner to use these applications, as many utilize more manual controls for a precise edit. The readily available advancements on iOS and iPad are stellar, and we’re here to help steer you in the right direction. Whether you want a quick edit for Instagram, a revised workflow on the go, or a simplified way to grade your footage — below are our top 5 favorite apps to do just that.

1. FiLMiC Pro

Price: Starting at $14.99

Best For: Medium to high-level professionals needing an on-the-go editing tool for manual controls.

This app has everything a color-loving cinematographer might need, hovering at the top of our list. One can manually control shutter speed, exposure, ISO, focus, and zoom, and also edit your footage to get the best video compilations. Beginning at a very reasonable price, this app will allow you to craft delicious basic color grading for any video clip, including their coined “Firstlight Film Emulations” for mobile photos.

Accelerated Workflow

The Cinematographer Kit, an optional in-app purchase for FiLMiC Pro on iOS and Android, provides mobile shooters with an insanely powerful FLAT and LOG shooting experience that maximizes dynamic range for unparalleled control in post-production. With the release of our official deFlat and deLOG LUT pack, you can quickly convert your footage to a rec.709 color space and instantly take advantage of the increased dynamic range.

Compatible w/ Other Apps

The official FiLMiC Pro LUT pack uses the .cube format, ensuring it is ready for use in Adobe Premiere Pro, Davinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro X, and other industry-standard editing solutions for desktops. Prefer to edit on the go? The FiLMiC deFlat and deLog V2 LUTs are pre-bundled with LumaFusion and Video LUT on iOS, making grading on mobile a breeze.

Good Price

Professional-level controls for an insane price point; available on iOS and iPad.

2. Grain by Moment

Price: Starts at $4.99

Best For: Photo preset makers or socially curious creatives who make/use photo presets are now getting into video.

Made by filmmakers, Grain is an editing tool for making your own pro-level presets. It starts with the workflow; we made Grain super fast to import, create, and export into your favorite editing app. The user experience is as simple as editing a photo, using your fingers to dial in the texture, color, grain, light leaks, and overlays you want. The effects library is dialed, giving you a starting point for making your video look. We even made saving, updating, and modifying your work simple.

Super Fast

It makes it so that your workflow expedites itself tenfold.

From Professional to Beginner

Made for all creatives alike, from beginner to professional.

More Granularity

Controls to tinker with an existing look to your liking.

3. Darkroom

Price: Starting at $4.99

Best For: A populace group needing quick edits on the fly.

One of the more popular editing apps for iOS and iPad — Darkroom offers stunning editing features for photos and video. Their easy integration between the camera roll and the application makes workflows simple. There are existing presets users may use for slight, quick tweaks to mobile videographers, making it a breeze for those just starting. You won’t find lift, gamma, or color wheels that you might expect for typical color correction, but you’ll find RGB curves and sliders to make tinkering easy. You have exposure, color temp, and tint, which alone can get you most of the way to correct a video clip, plus more tools to create almost any creative look. You can also insert the video to add borders and work in whatever aspect ratio you need for social media.

Simplicity

The app strongly correlates with beginners in need of quick fixes for tinkering.

Amazing Integration

Your workflow is made easy with camera roll and application integrations.

Variety of Exportations

When exporting, you have complete control over metadata, and you can even add custom watermarks. Exports are simple; videos can be rendered to H.264 or H.265 in the source video clip resolution but at a percentage of its source bit rate.

4. VideoGrade

Price: Starts at $5.99

Best For: Creatives needing a fast, simple, yet efficient color grading tool for their footage.

VideoGrade is a fast, easy-to-use color-grading App for iOS. Whether you want to radically change the look of your videos or subtly enhance them, VideoGrade has the tools you need. Even better, VideoGrade can now process your live photos, too. It offers the same functionalities on all devices, and the user interface looks beautiful on all the existing screen sizes and orientations. VideoGrade provides more than forty different adjustments grouped into fourteen categories that can be used with your videos, photos, or live photos. All the adjustments are highly flexible and can be applied for subtle corrections or to cause dramatic changes to your video’s look. VideoGrade also includes a preset functionality that lets you save your favorite adjustments, give them a name, and reuse them quickly with any of your videos — all with just a few taps of your finger.

4K Rendering

VideoGrade’s smart rendering engine takes advantage of the latest technologies.

Universal

VideoGrade is a Universal App, meaning that you can enjoy it on any of your iOS devices, and you only need to buy it once.

Includes Tilt Shift Effect

TiltShift Video is a fast, easy-to-use Universal App for iOS. It provides all the necessary tools to turn your videos or pictures into excellent miniatures with the incredible Tilt-Shift effect.

4. Prequel

Price: Starting for Free

Best For: Instagram enthusiasts, influencers, trendsetters, and creatives wanting a fresh, quick twist on beautifying their footage.

Prequel is a fan favorite amongst creative influencers and young folk who want to make it look like their footage came from 1975. Focusing primarily on aesthetics and fancy overlay features, this app is entertaining for just about anyone. Input light leaks, hundreds of various effects, pop of color to mimic old cameras, VHS looks, and more. I’ve used this app for fun personal projects and Instagram posts over the years, and I’m pleasantly surprised by how realistic their features are. Props to their engineering team!

The Fun Never Stops

800+ effects and filters to match any style.

Keep Up With Trends

Like creating amazing 3D moving pictures without any hustle, add any trendy effect you want.

Manual Adjustments

While there are automatic overlays, looks, presets, and effects — they include various tools to tune your content and get the desired result.

How We Tested

Our team, specifically our stellar app team and talented filmmakers, knows what it takes to properly color grade your video footage. We've done the industry research to know what controls take priority over the others, including the knowledge of colorways gained from tinkering with our video footage for years.

I talked with our team members for their say on their favorite apps, and after testing each one on my phone with a silly clip of my dog running through a sprinkler, I’d say they are correct.

Thanks to this team for their outpour of wealth of knowledge.