By technical editor Matt Allard:
Color Finale is a new plug in for Final Cut Pro X that allows you to colour grade within FCPX itself. Features include the ability to adjust curves, use colour wheels, apply LUTs, and use vectors. I am still very much a novice when it comes to using programs like DaVinci Resolve and for the sort of work I normally do I prefer to do basic colour correction within FCPX. This is all great, but what you can do within FCPX itself is a little limiting. Color Finale offers a lot more adjustment and allows you to use industry standard colour wheels. This is far easier for doing colour adjustments than having to use the strange colour adjustments in FCPX.
As much as it sounds lazy, I prefer to grade within FCPX and not have to go back and forth between programs. While Color Finale looks to offer a lot of great features it certainly isn’t a DaVinci Resolve substitute. Colour Finale do plan to introduce features such as masks and tracking in a forthcoming ‘Pro’ version. If you only need to do basic grading and don’t require more complex features like tracking then it may well suit your needs.
Minimum system requirements
Apple Mac (2011+)
OS X 10.10 “Yosemite” officially supported
OpenCL 1.2 support. For a list of OpenCL 1.2 cards go to the website
Final Cut Pro X 10.1 or later
4 GB of RAM
Note: “Mavericks” 10.9 is not officially supported
It is still quite a hard sell to convince users to fork out $99 US when programs like Davinci Resolve Lite are free. You can download a free trial version for 7 days to see if it works for your needs.
