how to grade photos before image to video

this post contains a sponsored link to invideo.

grade your photos before you turn them into video. image-to-video tools animate the picture you give them, so the colour of the photo carries straight through into the clip. get the stills right, with one shared look, and every clip comes out matching.

this guide covers why that works, how to grade a set of photos consistently, and what to avoid.

why the photo decides the colour

a text-to-video model invents the whole image, colour included. image-to-video is different: it starts from your picture and adds motion. when you use invideo to turn images into videos, the output "stays visually faithful to that exact image", in invideo's own words.

that's good news for colour. it means the palette, white balance and contrast of each photo mostly survive into the video. if the photos disagree with each other, the clips will too. if they share one look, so will the clips.

so the fastest way to control the colour of image-to-video is to fix it on the photos, before you animate them.

grade the stills, not the clips

there are two more reasons to do the work on the photos.

quality. the photo is the cleanest version of the image you'll ever have. grading it works on full-quality pixels. grading the finished clip works on a compressed video, where heavy adjustments show up as banding.

effort. you grade each photo once. grade the clips instead and you're redoing the work every time you regenerate.

step 1: balance every photo

open the first photo in luttie. jpg, png, webp and heic all load directly, and camera raw files load with pro. working with photos lists every format.

for each photo:

1. fix white balance so neutrals are neutral. photos taken at different times of day are the biggest source of mismatch.
2. set exposure so the subject sits at a similar brightness in every image.
3. check skin if there are people in the set. how to color correct skin tones covers it.

step 2: put one look on the whole set

now apply the same creative look to every photo. that shared look is what makes the finished clips cut together.

1. grade the first photo until you like it, or start from a free lut.
2. in the creative panel, click + save this look and name it. it appears under your looks. this needs a free account.
3. open the next photo and click your look. repeat for the set.

looks are saved to your account, so they are there on any computer you sign in on. a free account keeps 3. to take a look into another app, save it as a .cube file with export lut (pro). see projects and looks.

if one photo still sits apart after the look, color match (pro) can pull it toward another photo from the set: drop the better photo in as the reference and use a strength between 50 and 80 percent.

step 3: save the graded photos

save each graded photo as a jpg or png from export. with a free account the images carry a small watermark; pro saves them clean. use the graded files as your image-to-video input.

what to avoid

• don't lean on grain, halation or bloom here. motion models can treat fine grain as detail and animate it, which reads as noise rather than film. add film texture to the finished video if you want it.
• don't crush blacks or clip highlights. detail you throw away in the photo can't come back in the video.
• don't grade each photo from scratch. that's how a set ends up almost-but-not-quite matching. one preset, then small per-photo fixes.

summary

• image-to-video keeps the colour of the source photo
• grade stills rather than clips: better quality, less repeated work
• balance each photo, then put one preset or lut on the whole set
• save as jpg or png, and leave film texture until the video is done

grade your first photo in the editor →