I digress though; if you were less disrespectful, there is an eloquent argument to be made here. It is that color correction tools being more readily available is great and all, but the reason you pay a colorist isn’t for his tools/software, but rather for his knowledge and artistry. FCPX/Resolve/Premiere/whatever may have all the tools required to color grade and finish James Cameron’s next film, but the skill of the individual doing the coloring will make all of the difference. As is stated in the text of the article though, if you are on a low budget it is great that anyone CAN access these tools now. Is it likely going to yield better results to hire a skilled and experienced colorist to grade your film? Certainly, but if you don’t have that sort of budget, and you do have a passion for learning all you can about color correction and grading, the tools are now fully democratized so that anyone can at least give their film “a look” that makes them happy with it. Especially given that Davinci is now offering a full free version, nearly anything is possible if you learn the skill set for film grading. A plethora of high end films, commercials, and documentaries have used these tools to grade their final product, and if it is good enough for them, I think our pretentious and uptight commenter might want to take it easy with all the accusations.

Honestly Steve, I think you took a semi-sensational title personally and responded in kind. If the article were titled, “Color grading is more accessible to all” and the text said “a colorist is still the best way to go if it is in budget, but if not you have a veritable wealth of high end choices for coloring on your own at a price tag of free” you likely wouldn’t have said much anything at all.

This sentence exposes how little you know about professional colour grading. Which wouldn’t be a problem if you didn’t write your article to come off as if you had all this experience.

The only other video editing option IS NOT PREMIER 6. If you’ve ever used Premier 5.5, you would know even that is better than final cut X. (lets start with the fact that it can handle a variety of footage natively which final cut x still cant, such as RED). And then there’s Media Composer, which has been around for almost 20 years, and has made huge strides over the last 2 years at making it easier for Final Cut 7 users to switch. Both of which have color grading options.

You clearly wrote this article with the best of intentions, but next time do a bit of research before you start to preach.