Color Grading Intent
Using colour treatment (temperature, saturation, curve) with intent that serves the image's mood and honesty, not mere effect.
The five levels
Each anchor describes what separates one level from the next — not a general description of quality. This is the text the evaluator itself reads.
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Level 1 Below Standard
Random, overdone grading that breaks the image's honesty and distracts.
Example Excess saturation rendering skin unnatural.
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Level 2 Approaching
Generic grading with no clear intent serving the image.
Example A preset applied without fitting the scene.
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Level 3 At Standard
Grading that supports the mood (warm nostalgia, cold solitude) consistently.
Example A gentle temperature drop lending the scene calm.
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Level 4 Above Standard
Grading builds a visual signature that distinguishes your work and unifies your series.
Example A warm analogous palette recurring across a body of work.
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Level 5 Excellence
Grading becomes the image's language; it is unimaginable in another colour.
Example A colour treatment inseparable from the work's meaning.
Where does your own work sit on these levels?
Submit one work to be read against this criterion alone: your position across the five levels, why you are not higher and why not lower, three literal quotes from your own work, and one exercise with its success check. Your first card is free.
Price: 7 SAR · Included in Pro & Artist Plus · First one free — Pricing details
Read my work by this criterionOther criteria in the same art
Ability to capture the most expressive and impactful moment
The five levels →Reading the light's direction and its hardness or softness and using it deliberately — such as Rembrandt lighting or golden-hour light — rather than accepting whatever light happens to be available.
The five levels →Choosing what enters the frame and what's excluded, and distributing elements
The five levels →Deliberate control of aperture and focus distance to isolate the subject from its background or root it in context, serving the concept rather than accident.
The five levels →Using natural or artificial light to serve subject and image mood
The five levels →Clarity of what image wants to say and its ability to convey it
The five levels →Embedding meanings and symbols that grant the image a reading deeper than the literal
The five levels →Building a figurative meaning linking the image to an idea beyond its frame
The five levels →