2 February 2026

Why we grade stills with the film

Matching a retouched still to a show LUT is not a courtesy — it is how a campaign holds together in a media mix.

When the stills go to a retoucher and the film goes to a colourist with no shared stills, the campaign splits in public. Feeds, sites, and OOH start arguing.

We pull stills from the same colour-managed timeline, or we send the retoucher a show LUT and a set of control frames. Skin, product whites, and black level are decided once.

Platforms compress both stills and video. A common grade is what survives that compression as one brand. A ‘prettier’ still that ignores the LUT is a different product.

HDR delivery does not excuse a rogue SDR still. We check both, on the same display, with the same stills open beside the timeline.

Agencies that traffic six months of cutdowns thank us when the stills folder is not a forensic project. That is the point of grading together.

Dgti produces commercial photography and motion from Lublin. Stills and film share one plot so a campaign does not arrive as two vendors, and a lookbook does not argue with a cut in public. The rooms on Krakowskie Przedmieście hold tabletop, a compact cyclorama, and a colour desk. Clients review tethered stills and a calibrated picture in one visit. Product and grade are not two appointments. Location days stay on the plaster we recce. Bounce and a quiet key match the lane; we do not gel a postcard onto a grey street. If the weather turns we wait or we rewrite the shot. Agencies come with a media plan. We name masters for print, 1:1 and 9:16, keep a working project for the revision window, and hand an archive another team can open a year later.

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