Featured Articles
Article in App of the Week category.
Grain Let’s You Grade Video on iPad like a Pro
I’ve seen quite a few video editors on iPad and iPhone. Apple makes its own with iMovie and from third parties I’ve been fond of…
I’ve seen quite a few video editors on iPad and iPhone. Apple makes its own with iMovie and from third parties I’ve been fond of LumaFusion. While editing on a desktop though, there is a crucial step that is often missing on mobile. That’s adjusting the color and effects of the video. LumaFusion and iMovie have some rudimentary controls, but nothing like what pros and creators need. With Grain, that’s exactly what we’ve got.
With Grain, users can pull in their video from the Photos app. Multiple clips can be edited at once, or they can be edited individually. Once imported to the app, you can choose any of the included templates, your own looks, or any that you’ve favorited. Each look then can be edited, duplicated for further tweaking, faved, or exported.
Editing an existing look (or creating a new look), is where things open up. It is broken down into categories for the look — color, overlays, and effects. I want to go into a bit more detail on each of these because there is quite a bit to touch on. This level of intricacy is what I love so much about this app. For color grading, you can start with just importing any existing LUTs you may have. Any desktop LUTs, LUTs you’ve created, or LUTs you’ve purchased can be ingested right into the app.
If you don’t have any LUTs, multiple are already there for you to use or tweak. You can adjust multiple slider, user curves, HSL sliders, or full-on color wheels. As you adjust, your changes are reflected in real-time on your film.
With the effects, I’m not talking about replacing Adobe’s AfterEffects but there is plenty to work with in adjusting the visuals. You can apply film grain effects, light leaks, blurs and more. Each of these effects has its own adjustment panels for further dialing in of the look.
Lastly are the overlays, which seems a bit of a misnomer. It isn’t necessarily something that overlays on top of your video, but various border or film effects. These will play particularly great on social. Film overlays can split the video into multiple windows, inlaid in a black background with a touch of flickering to mimic the look of old school film. Or a classic look that does overlay your video onto what looks like linen paper. Text, date, time, and even film sprockets can be added to your liking.
This incredibly powerful app has so much potential to create amazing videos all on mobile. Creators can now import videos directly from drones, their iPhones, or dedicated cameras straight into iPad (or onto external storage), color grade, apply effects and overlays, edit, and master the finished product without needing a Mac. This was never possible before and Grain is instantly part of my mobile workflow going forward.
But enough about other people's apps.
