Colour grade in GIMP 3.2 with an all-in-one plug-in

Key points

• The Colour Grading plug-in for GIMP 3.2+ brings a familiar three-wheel colour grading workflow to GIMP.
• You use it visually, with three colour wheels and an tonal range bars in a single dialog, with a live preview that updates as you work.
• A preset system lets you save, load, share, and back up colour grades across images and machines.
• The plug-in requires GIMP 3.2 or above.

Colour grading in GIMP 3.2, with an all-in-one plug-in

If you’ve done colour grading in Lightroom, Capture One, or DxO PhotoLab, you know the workflow: three colour wheels for shadows, midtones, and highlights, and a range bar to define where each tonal band begins and ends. It’s intuitive, visual, and fast.

GIMP didn’t have that. Until now.

What is colour grading?

Colour grading shifts the colour cast of an image independently across its tonal ranges: shadows, midtones, and highlights. Unlike colour correction, which fixes problems like a skewed white balance or an odd skin tone, colour grading serves a creative purpose. Push the shadows toward blue and a scene takes on a cooler, moodier feel. Warm up the highlights and a landscape starts to feel like late afternoon. Done subtly, it’s something viewers feel rather than notice.

The tool most photographers reach for is a set of three colour wheels, one per tonal range, with a way to control where each range begins and ends. Lightroom, Capture One, DxO PhotoLab, and DaVinci Resolve all follow this model. So does this plug-in.

How photographers managed before

Before this plug-in, photographers working in GIMP had a few options for colour grading. Each solved part of the problem. None of them quite covered it.

Gradient maps map tonal values to specific colours, and the results can look great. But the complicated workflow and unintuitive interface add stumbling blocks compared to anything Lightroom or Capture One users would recognise.

Colour balance has been the go-to tool for many GIMP users. It works for adjusting colour ranges. But it operates on pre-defined broad tonal ranges with no way to adjust the definition of shadows, midtones, and highlights. That makes precise, targeted grading difficult. Colour balance serves a different purpose from colour grading proper.

The closest GIMP-native approach combines a tonal range selection with colour balance: select the shadows, apply a colour shift, deselect, repeat for midtones and highlights. It works, but the two steps sit in separate parts of GIMP with no visual feedback connecting them. You adjust the colour without seeing the range, and adjust the range without seeing the colour. It can get the job done, but awkwardly, disjointedly, with a lot of guessing and clicking.

Some photographers step outside GIMP entirely and use a dedicated raw processor like ART or RawTherapee. Those serious tools include proper colour grading workflows. But that means leaving your GIMP editing context, doing the grade elsewhere, and importing the result back. For a step that should sit naturally in the middle of an edit, it breaks your flow.

What this plug-in brings to the table

Everything you need for a complete colour grade is collected in one place: wheels for shadows, midtones, and highlights, a range bars to define the tonal boundaries and feathering, and a live preview that updates as you work, and options to save your colour grade as layers in a group that you can continue to refine later.

The results are completely non-destructive.

Here’s a brief demo:

A tour of the plug-in

The main dialog

The three colour wheels follow the spectrum model you’ll recognise from other photo editing applications like Lightroom, Capture One, and DxO PhotoLab. Click and drag inside a wheel to shift the colour cast for that band. Distance from the centre controls saturation, and angle controls hue. A readout below each wheel shows the current hue and saturation values. Double-click or drag back to the centre to remove the cast entirely.

The range bars below the wheels adjust the luminance masks for the three bands. Their sliding handles allow you to finesse feathering and overlap between the ranges. The masks are rebuilt from the image’s luminance data every time you adjust ranges. You’ll find more detail about this below.

Presets let you save a complete colour grade and apply it to other images. A preset captures the colour wheel positions for all three bands, the range bar settings, and the output option. You can save as many presets as you like, export any of them to a JSON file for backup or sharing, and import presets from a file. When you load a preset, the plug-in rebuilds the tonal masks for the current image, so the grade adapts rather than transplanting a fixed result.

The output options give you a choice of how the plug-in delivers the finished grade. Merge to single layer bakes all three tonal adjustments into one new layer on top of your original. Leave colour grade group with filters keeps the three band layers in a group, with their colour balance filters and tonal masks intact, ready for further editing.

The range bars

The range bars below the three colour wheels adjust the curve of each band’s luminance mask—the curve that determines which tones the colour grade affects, and how strongly. The three separate gradient bars control Shadows on the left, Midtones in the centre, and Highlights on the right. Each bar has its own draggable handle(s), the downward-pointing triangles immediately above each bar.

Shadows

The Shadows bar has a single handle. Drag it right to expand the shadows coverage into the midtones. Drag it left to concentrate the shadows grade in the darkest tones.

Midtones

The Midtones bar has two handles, one on each side of the centre. Each handle sets where the midtones influence fades out on that side. Drag them apart to widen the midtones coverage, or together to narrow it. Neither handle can cross the centre of the bar.

Highlights

The Highlights bar has a single handle. Drag it left to expand the highlights coverage into the midtones. Drag it right to concentrate the highlights grade in the brightest tones.

Reset tonal ranges

A small reset button ( ) to the right of the “Tonal ranges” label, above the range bar, resets all four handles to their default positions and immediately updates the preview. Use it any time the range geometry has drifted too far from a workable starting point.

The info dialog

The button opens a reference dialog with expandable sections. It covers subjects like how to use the plug-in, how preview updates work, the output options, presets, and more. If you forget how something works, the answer is likely in there. It saves a trip back to this post.

The settings dialog

The button opens the settings dialog. The settings dialog shows the current plug-in version and an option to check for updates. You can run the check manually or leave auto-checking on so the plug-in checks for you on a weekly basis. I may add additional plug-in settings in the future.

Icon buttons: save and load presets, show and hide your colour grade

1	Save (preset)	The Save button stores the current settings as a named preset. That includes the colour wheel positions for all three tonal bands, the shadow and highlight split points on the range bar, and your chosen output option. Clicking it opens a dialog where you type a name for the preset. If you want to store a copy outside the plugin, an Export button in the same dialog saves the preset to a JSON file of your choosing.
2	Load (preset)	The Load button opens a dialog which lists all the presets you’ve saved. In the Load preset dialog, select a name from the list and click Load to apply it. The dialog also lets you import a preset from a JSON file someone has shared with you, and delete any presets you no longer need. When a preset loads, the plugin rebuilds its tonal masks fresh from the current image, so the result adapts to each photo.
3	Reset	The Reset button returns everything to its default state: all three colour wheels go back to neutral, all range bar handles return to their default positions, and the output option resets to its default. A confirmation prompt appears before any changes are made. To reset only the range bar handles without affecting the wheels or output option, use the small reset button to the right of the “Tonal ranges” label, above the range bar.
4	Preview toggle	The Preview button shows and hides the live colour grade on your image. When on, the colour grade is visible. When off, the button turns red and the colour grade is hidden, so you see the original image.

How to use this plug-in, step by step

Open your image in GIMP and launch the plug-in from Filters > Colors > Colour grading….

The plug-in prepares the image before the main dialog appears: it builds a luminance channel from a flattened composite of your image, then creates three band layers with tonal masks for shadows, midtones, and highlights. On a very large image this may take a few seconds. A progress bar in GIMP’s status bar tracks each step so you can see what’s happening.

When the main dialog opens, the three colour wheels sit at neutral and the range bar uses default split points that divide the tonal range into three bands.

Click and drag inside a colour wheel to introduce a colour cast for that tonal range. Drag outward from the centre for more saturation, and rotate around the centre to shift the hue. The readout below the wheel shows the current values. The preview updates when you release the mouse, so you can see the result on your image before committing.

Work through the other wheels in the same way. There’s no fixed order. Some photographers start with shadows and work up; others start with highlights. Do whatever feels natural for the image in front of you.

If the default tonal ranges don’t suit the image, adjust the range bars. Move the range bar handles to achieve the effect you want. Changes to the range bar take a moment longer than wheel updates on large images, because the plug-in rebuilds the luminance masks each time you move a range bar handle.

When you’re happy with the colour grade, choose your output option and click OK. Merge to single layer bakes all three tonal adjustments into one new layer on top of your original, ready to flatten or export. Leave colour grade group with filters keeps the three band layers in a group with their colour balance filters and tonal masks intact, so you can go back and tweak individual bands after the dialog closes.

If you want to reuse the look on other images, click Save before you click OK and give the preset a name.

Video demos

Here’s a few short videos demonstrating how to use the plug-in.

Saving the colour grade to a new layer

You’ve already seen a short demo (above) showing the basics of how to create a colour grade using the colour wheels and saving to a single colour grade layer.

Save the colour grade as a layer group for tweaking

This next video shows how to work with a colour grade output group and its individual layers.

When you click OK with “Leave colour grade group with filters” selected, the plug-in leaves the colour grade as a layer group called “Colour grade” in your image instead of a single merged layer. The group contains three layers: Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights. Each of them has its own colour balance filter and luminance mask.

These are ordinary GIMP layers. To fine-tune a band’s colour adjustment, click its layer thumbnail in the Layers panel and open the layer filter already on that layer. That layer filter is a colour balance filter that you can adjust non-destructively. To adjust the tonal range a layer is applied to, click its mask thumbnail and use any standard mask-compatible tool (Levels, Curves, Gaussian Blur, and so on). The masks respond exactly as they would on any other masked layer.

Use the tonal ranges sliders

Drag the slider handles on the tonal range bars to adjust how broadly or narrowly a tonal range affects the image. This example demonstrates how to use the highlights slider to fine tune the effect of the highlights colour grade:

Presets

You can save and load presets to speed up your workflow:

The save preset dialog also lets you export a preset, and you can import a preset with the load preset dialog.

A some examples of popular colour grades

Classic filmic: warm highlights, cool shadows

This look can give an image a golden hour, nostalgic emotional vibe.

Start with the Highlights wheel. Drag toward yellow-orange. You want warmth, not a colour cast that reads like a mistake, so keep the wheel close to the centre. In the Shadows wheel, drag toward blue or blue-violet. Pull the Midtones wheel slightly toward the same warm direction as the highlights, or leave it neutral if the image already has a balanced midtone.

If the warm cast spills into the midtones, drag the Highlights bar handle to the right to push the highlights range further up the luminance scale, concentrating the warmth in the brightest tones.

The result pushes the light areas warm and the dark areas cool, which gives the image a sense of depth and a cinematic quality. Keep all three wheels close to the centre and build up gradually. It’s easy to overdo.

Muted editorial: desaturated midtones, cool cast

This look creates a calm, detached mood that works well in contemplative images, or even when you want to create tension between content and emotion.

Start with the Midtones wheel. Drag a short distance toward blue-green, keeping the wheel close to the centre. The goal is a slight cool shift rather than an obvious colour cast. Then pull the Highlights wheel a small distance in the same direction. Leave the Shadows wheel neutral, or nudge it very slightly warm to preserve some contrast between the bands.

Because this look focuses on the midtones, the midtones range bar matters a lot. By default, the midtones curve centres on the luminance midpoint with moderate width, which works for most images. If the cool cast is spreading too far into the shadows or highlights, drag both midtones handles inward to narrow the coverage. If the image has a lot of content in a specific tonal range (a grey concrete wall, an overcast sky…), drag the handles outward to widen the midtones coverage and bring those tones fully into the band.

The result gives the image a quiet, slightly detached quality that works well for editorial and documentary styles. Restraint is the key. A little goes a long way.

Fuji film: teal shadows, warm midtones, cool highlights

The “Fuji look” refers to cool-leaning greens and controlled reds that create emotional distance — not cold, but rather considered. The dominant Fuji mood is quiet confidence: images that trust their subject matter without needing to oversell it.

Start with the Shadows wheel. Drag toward teal, keeping the wheel close to the centre. This is the most distinctive element of the look and it doesn’t take much. With the Midtones wheel, drag a little toward yellow-orange, just enough to add a gentle warmth to the mid-range tones. Finally, on the Highlights wheel, drag slightly toward cyan or pale blue, giving the brightest tones a cool, slightly withdrawn quality.

This look depends on the three bands staying well separated. If the teal bleeds into the midtones, drag the Shadows handle to the left to concentrate the shadows mask in the darker tones. If the warm midtone cast spills into the highlights, drag the right midtones handle to the left to narrow the highlight side of the midtones band. Keep the midtones handles at a moderate width: wide enough that the grade covers a useful tonal range, narrow enough that each band reads as a distinct colour.

The result has the organic, slightly desaturated quality that makes film emulation popular. Keep all three wheels close to the centre and the look will feel natural. Push too far and it tips quickly into something artificial.

These examples use restrained values deliberately. Colour grading works best when the viewer doesn’t notice it. Start with less than you think you need, step back from the screen, and adjust from there. The preset system makes it easy to save a look you like and come back to it, so there’s no pressure to get everything right in a single session.

Of course, you can use more aggressive hues and saturations too. It all depends on your image and your vision.

Easy, flexible, and all-in-one colour grading in GIMP

The Colour Grading plug-in for GIMP 3.2+ brings everything into one place: three colour wheels, integrated tonal range masking, a live preview, and a preset system, all in a single dialog. The group output option keeps the three band layers with their colour balance filters and tonal masks intact, opening up further tweaking and creative possibilities beyond the initial grade.

The workflow follows the same model as Lightroom, Capture One, and DxO PhotoLab, so if you’re among the growing number of photographers making the move to GIMP, you won’t need to learn a new way of working. The tools look familiar, the results are immediate, and the grade stays connected to your edit rather than living in a separate application.

Good to know

• On large images, the plug-in takes a few seconds to initialise. This is normal. GIMP’s status bar tracks progress so you can see what’s happening.
• Colour wheel updates are fast. Range bar updates take a moment longer on large images because the plug-in rebuilds the tonal mask curves from the luminance data each time you move a handle.
• Non-linear images convert to linear light temporarily during processing, which ensures the tonal masks land in the correct part of the image’s brightness range. The plug-in converts back when you click OK or Cancel.
• The plug-in grades the currently visible image. Hidden layers are ignored. If you want the grade to reflect the full composite, make sure all relevant layers are visible before launching the plug-in.
• Presets are stored in a plain JSON file in your GIMP user config directory, so they’re easy to back up, move between machines, or share with other users.

What languages is the plug-in available in?

This colour grading plug-in for GIMP 3 is available in the following languages. You don’t have to do anything to see it in your language. GIMP will automatically load the correct version of the plug-in (provided you follow the installation instructions below).

If you have any suggestions to improve those translations, please leave a comment below.

install the Colour Grading plug-in

How to install

This plug-in is supported for GIMP 3.2 and later, on Linux, Windows, and macOS. It does not work properly in GIMP 2.x or GIMP 3.0.

If you run into any problems with any of the steps below, please let me know in the comments below.

1. Download the plug-in

Download the Colour Grading plug-in as a ZIP file. You’ll extract it as described below in the next section:

colour-grading-v3.zip

2. Copy the downloaded file to where GIMP looks for plug-ins

This is something you have to do for every plug-in you add to GIMP 3.

Find where GIMP looks for plug-ins:

1. Open GIMP if it’s not already open and select Edit > Preferences in the GIMP menu.
2. In the Preferences dialog, scroll down the list on the left until you find Folders, then click on the expand icon in front of the word to expand that list.
3. Scroll down the list of folders and select Plug-ins.
4. Still in the Preferences dialog, on the Plug-in Folders panel on the right, locate your plug-in folder(s). You can use the folder that’s listed for your user name or add a new one.
5. Click on the “Show file location in the file manager” to open your computer’s file manager.
6. Copy the .ZIP file you downloaded into that folder and extract it there. You should see a subfolder named “colour-grading-v3”. The plug-in is inside that folder (see the note below for why it should be in its own subfolder). Don’t move it, just leave it in that subfolder.
7. Files downloaded from the internet or transferred across systems may not retain their “executable” flag, especially on UNIX-based systems like Linux and macOS. The plug-in’s .py file needs the correct permission to be executed as a script. It’s a quirk of the different operating systems’ security models. Windows 11 treats plug-in .py files as executable automatically.
   • Linux:
     You should be able to right click on the .py file and set the permission to allow it as an executable (see below for an example screenshot). Or you could set it in your Terminal app with the command chmod +x [PATH TO WHERE YOU EXTRACTED THE PLUG-IN FOLDER]/colour-grading-v3/colour-grading-v3.py. For example, with GIMP 3 I extracted the plug-in folder into a subfolder of Documents, so the command would be chmod +x "Documents/GIMP plug-ins/colour-grading-v3/colour-grading-v3.py".
   • macOS:
     You may be able to right click on the .py file and set the permission to allow it as an executable (see below for an example screenshot). Otherwise, follow these instructions from Apple.

There are two files in the colour-grading-v3 folder that need to be marked as executable: colour-grading-v3.py and helpers.py. Do not mark any other files in that folder as executable. Do not

3. Register the plug-in with GIMP

Now you have to register the plug-in with GIMP: just close and re-open GIMP.

If all has gone according to plan, you should find a menu entry called Layer > Mask > Colour grading…. If not, please leave a comment below.

4. Optional: create a keyboard shortcut

If you want to assign a keyboard shortcut to a luminosity mask menu item, go right ahead:

These instructions are the same as for my other GIMP plug-ins (Interactive luminosity masks, Frequency separation, Dodge and burn…). Only the plug-in names are changed.

Why it’s important to follow these steps

GIMP version 3.x requires that every plug-in must live in a folder with exactly the same name as the plug-in file. So for example, you add the subfolder where you’ve saved the plug-in file to the list of folders where GIMP looks for plug-ins, and that folder needs to be named exactly the same as the plug-in with that subfolder.

This is an example of how working with free software isn’t entirely free. You have to do some of the work that other systems automate, and put your thinking cap on. Bear in mind that GIMP is developed and maintained by volunteers who donate their time and talents as and when they can. So sometimes documentation lags behind development.

Key takeaways

• Colour grading is now native in GIMP, no workarounds or external applications needed.
• The three-wheel workflow matches the model used in Lightroom, Capture One, and DxO PhotoLab, making the transition straightforward for photographers moving to GIMP.
• Tonal range masking integrates directly with the colour wheels, so you define the grade and the range in one place.
• The group output option keeps band layers, filters, and masks intact for further editing and creative experimentation.
• Presets adapt to each image rather than locking in a fixed result, making them reusable across different shots.