Real After Effects cinematic grades, rendered in the cloud on your clip. Teal and orange, warm aura, dark contrast. You get back a watermark-free MP4 without installing or licensing After Effects. For the full preset catalogue see color correction.
The looks
Teal and orange
Shadows and background pushed cool, skin held warm. The complementary contrast trailers are built on.
Dark cinematic base
Crushed shadows and lifted contrast, without dragging skin tone down with them.
Warm cinematic aura
Soft warmth through mids and highlights. The gentlest of the four on faces.
Multi-pass dark grade
Contrast built in several layered passes rather than one curve. The heaviest look here.
Why it works
The difference is whether the image is treated as one flat surface or as separate tonal ranges. Everything below is what these presets are doing under the hood.
01
A filter shifts every pixel by the same amount, so the face drifts with the wall behind it. A grade splits the image into shadows, midtones, and highlights first, then moves each one separately.
02
Skin sits in a narrow band of hue. Protecting that band is what lets shadows go properly cool while faces stay human, which is the single thing that separates a film look from an Instagram filter.
03
Teal and orange sit opposite each other on the colour wheel, so pushing one into shadow and the other into skin makes the subject separate from the background without touching sharpness or contrast.
Step 01
Drop an MP4, MOV, or MKV up to 2 GB. Straight from your camera roll works.
Step 02
Tap one of the four cinematic grades. Each is a real After Effects preset.
Step 03
Cloud machines render it and hand back a graded MP4. No watermark, any plan.
Also useful: the full color correction tool, the free effects library, or the AI video upscaler.
Questions
What makes a grade cinematic, which looks do it, and what your footage needs to be first.
Separation. A phone filter shifts the whole frame at once, so faces drift with the background. A cinematic grade treats shadows, midtones, skin tones, and highlights as separate ranges, then pushes them in different directions. That is why film stills have cool shadows and warm skin at the same time, which a single flat filter cannot do.
Four of the built-ins are built for it: Aquaman CC for teal and orange, Dark CC for a dark cinematic base, Aura CC for a warm cinematic aura, and Dark Knight CC for a layered multi-pass dark grade. All four are real After Effects presets, not overlays.
Yes, that is Aquaman CC. It pushes shadows and background toward teal while holding skin in the warm range, which is the complementary contrast most film trailers use. You upload a clip, pick it, and download the graded MP4.
No. Log footage has more room to push, so it takes a grade further, but these presets are built to work on normal phone and camera footage as shot. Nothing needs converting first.
That is the thing multi-node grading is for. Skin sits in its own range, so a cool shadow push does not drag faces with it. Heavier looks like Draco CC and Green CC are stylised on purpose, so use those when you want the push to be visible.
Yes, and most of what goes through it is phone footage. Upload straight from your camera roll, pick a look, download the result. There is a dedicated mobile layout, so you never need a desktop.
No. The grades are genuine After Effects presets, but they render on our cloud machines. You never install After Effects, never license it, and never open a timeline. You get back a finished MP4.
Yes. Free monthly credits come with every account and nothing we return carries a watermark, on any plan. Paid tiers exist for volume, not to unlock the cinematic looks.