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Start with the Photos app you already have, see where iMovie fits, and move to a browser grader only when you need LUTs, wheels or log footage converted.
To colour grade a video on iPhone without installing anything, open it in Photos, tap Edit, then use Adjust for individual sliders or Filters for a ready-made look, and tap Done. Photos keeps the original underneath, so you can experiment freely, and Copy Edits and Paste Edits carry the same settings to other clips from the same shoot.
Photos is quick but limited: it has no LUT import, no colour wheels and no way to convert Apple Log. For those jobs you can apply a LUT to the video or convert Apple Log to Rec.709 in Safari with the grader above, and a Mac adds iMovie’s colour balancing tools, covered further down. If you shoot on Android as well, the Android colour grading guide is the companion to this one.
In Photos, open the video and tap the Edit button. The editing tabs appear under the frame; Adjust and Filters are the two that change colour.
Enhance makes an automatic light and colour fix in one tap. For more control, stay in Adjust and swipe along the row of settings; Apple’s guide gives Exposure, Brilliance and Highlights as examples, and the rest of the row depends on your iOS version. Drag the slider under each one.
In Filters, pick a style (Apple mentions Vivid and Dramatic) and use the slider to set its strength. Choose Original to take the filter off again.
Tap Done. To grade a batch the same way, use Copy Edits on the finished clip and Paste Edits on the others, then check each one, since the same numbers can look different on a shot with other light.
Photos edits are global: every setting applies to the whole frame and the whole clip. That suits a quick correction or a gentle look, but it means you cannot cool the shadows while warming faces, change one colour without touching the rest, or load a LUT someone sent you. The edit is stored alongside the original rather than burned in, so you can return to it later. On iPhone 16 and later, Apple steers photos towards Photographic Styles, but those are for still photos; video keeps using Adjust and Filters.
Apple’s guide to iMovie for iOS (version 3.0.6) covers colour through filters only. Tap a clip in the timeline, tap the Filter button, pick a filter and drag the slider below the timeline to set its strength; None removes it. A filter for the whole project lives in Project Settings. There is no white balance picker, no saturation slider and no LUT import, so treat iMovie on the phone as a place to add a style to an edit, not to correct colour.
The Mac version is much more capable. Select a clip and click Color Balance to choose Auto, Match Color, White Balance or Skin Tone Balance. White Balance asks you to click something that should be white or grey; Skin Tone Balance asks you to click skin; Match Color lets you skim to a frame in another clip and click it to borrow its palette. The Color Correction button opens a multislider for shadows, brightness, contrast and highlights, plus Saturation and Color Temperature. To repeat a fix, choose Edit > Copy on the graded clip, select the others and choose Edit > Paste Adjustments > Color Correction.
If you record in Apple Log, the clip looks flat and grey on purpose: the camera stores a wide range of light in a gentle curve so it survives grading. Photos and iMovie on iPhone are not built to convert it, so pushing Contrast and Saturation by hand rarely gives natural skin. It needs a conversion to standard Rec.709 colour first, and only then a creative grade.
Apple Log 2 is the newer format on iPhone 17 Pro, with a wider colour gamut. Apple says the matching LUT can be applied in Final Cut Pro for iPad and Mac, and on the Mac it appears as a Camera LUT choice in the Info inspector alongside Apple Log.
The Apple Log to Rec.709 page walks through this in detail.
When Photos runs out of road, the tool at the top of this page works in Safari on the same phone. Choose Select video and pick the clip from Photos or Files; it is graded on the device and never uploaded. Press Auto colour for a measured white balance and levels fix, then try a look from Looks or tap All looks to browse around 300 of them, each previewed on your own footage. Intensity dials the look back.
For hands-on control, Pro tools has Wheels (Lift, Gamma, Gain, Offset), Curves, HSL for one colour at a time and a LUT tab that reads .cube and .3dl files saved in Files. Copy grade and Paste grade repeat a grade across clips, and Match colours borrows the palette of a reference photo or frame. When you are done, Export video and then Share to save the result back to Photos.
Two honest limits. The export is a new encode of every frame, so it is never a bit-for-bit copy of the original, and a phone processes long, high-resolution clips more slowly than a laptop. For a single clip or a short batch it is usually the quickest way to get a proper grade without a desktop editor.
On a Mac, yes: Color Balance (Auto, Match Color, White Balance, Skin Tone Balance) and Color Correction (a multislider plus Saturation and Color Temperature) cover basic correction. On iPhone and iPad, iMovie offers filters with a strength slider and nothing finer, so most people do the colour work in Photos or another tool first.
In iMovie on a Mac, select the clip you have corrected and choose Edit > Copy. Select the clips that need the same treatment, then choose Edit > Paste Adjustments > Color Correction. In Photos on iPhone, Copy Edits and Paste Edits do the same job between videos.
Neither Photos nor iMovie for iPhone imports LUTs. Save the .cube or .3dl file to Files, open the video in the grader on this page in Safari, then use Import LUT in the LUT tab under Pro tools. LUT intensity sets how strongly it applies. The LUT guide explains the options.
Convert it first, then grade. In the browser tool, set Footage to “Apple Log / Rec.2020” under Pro tools > Basic, then add a look or adjust the wheels. Apple Log 2 needs Apple’s own LUT loaded with Apply LUT set to Before the grade.
Apple introduced Apple Log 2 with iPhone 17 Pro, describing it as a log format with a wider gamut. Earlier Pro models record the original Apple Log.
Photos has no matching tool. iMovie on a Mac has Match Color in Color Balance. In the browser, Match colours takes a photo or a frame from another video as the reference and moves your clip’s colours towards it, with Match amount to soften the result.
No. Photos keeps the original alongside your edit, so you can go back to it later from the editor. Tools that export a new file, such as iMovie or a browser grader, leave the original in your library as well.