Chromatica Studio - The definitive color grading suite for Unity - Easy, Fast, Powerful

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Chromatica Studio brings state of the art, high quality color grading to Unity with a powerful artist-friendly interface at an entry-level price.

Asset Store | Itch.io
Website | Documentation​

Inspired by industry standard color correction tools such as After Effects, Nuke and Smoke, it lets you add as many color operators as you'd like onto your scenes with only one fast draw call and works on desktop as well as mobile platforms (DirectX 9, DirectX 11, OpenGL, OpenGL ES 2.0) for both 2D and 3D games.

NEW : LUT Volumes ! Chromatica can now automatically blend between LUTs as the player goes through volumes & zones in your scene.

NEW : Depth LUT support ! You can now use a dual-LUT setup to vary the color grading according to a pixel's distance from the camera. The depth interpolation can be manipulated with a blending curve.

It works by compacting multiple color operators into one single PNG file called a Lookup Texture, which is then applied to the game using a special post-processing effect. This means you can use an unlimited amount of color operators and still get very high performance color grading. You can also generate several LUT and swap them at runtime.

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Unity 4.5+ Pro or Unity 5.0+ (Personal or Pro) is required.

Feel free to leave any feedback or feature request here, I'll monitor this topic !

 

New update sent to the Asset Store (could be a few days before it's up).

Changelog (0.9.1) :

• Added : Experimental embedded curve editor for the Curves operator with support for multi-curve editing. You can enable/disable it in the preference panel.

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• Added : You can now change the color wheels sensitivity in the preference panel. Default to 0.5.
• Fixed : Channel Swapper editor was broken.
• Fixed : Optimized Channel Swapper.
• Fixed : The black & white gradient in Levels was wrong in linear mode.
• Misc : Various documentation fixes.

 

Chromatica is now available on Itch.io as well if, for some reason, you can't buy it from the Asset Store. Same price, same version (but quicker updates because of the validation process).

 

I'm pleased to announce that Chromatica is now out of beta ! Version 1.0 is available on Itch.io and will be on the Asset Store in a few days (as soon as it's validated).

Changelog (1.0) :

• Added : Shortcut to open the Chromatica editor (Ctrl+Alt+C on Windows, Command+Alt+C on Mac).
• Added : Color wheels in the Three-Way operator are now dynamically sized (clamped to a fixed min/max size).
• Added : Split screen mode can be set from the Chromatica editor.
• Modified : The operator list in the Chromatica Studio component was editor-only. It's not anymore and can be accessed in-game if you need it.
• Fixed : Optimized the color wheels in the Three-Way operator (3 times less cpu & mem usage).
• Fixed : Loading presets is more future-proof.
• Fixed : Resetting a Curves operator didn't reset the current displayed curve.
• Misc : Some prep-work for an upcoming feature.
• Misc : Various documentation fixes & additions.

Chromatica now has an introduction video :

 

Added to the todo list, I'll see what I can do ! It won't be in the next update (1.1) because it's already awaiting validation from the asset store team but probably in the next one (1.2).

 

Amplify Color acts as a bridge between Unity and Photoshop. You work in Photoshop and the result is exported to Unity.

Chromatica is a fully integrated solution (although you can still use Photoshop if you really want to), meaning you get all the usual Photoshop tools as well as some more powerful ones from the compositing world (auto white balance, three way color corrector...) inside Unity.

It's all about workflow, speed and ease of use. Keep an eye on the next update (it's currently awaiting validation so it should be up soon), it brings a cool new feature

Side note : Chromatica should be compatible with Amplify Color's Volume feature. Both tools are complementary IMO.

 

Here's version 1.1 with a cool new feature ! As usual, it's available on the Asset Store and Itch.io.

Changelog (1.1) :

• Added : Depth LUT support ! You can now use a dual-LUT setup to vary the color grading according to a pixel's distance from the camera. The depth interpolation can be manipulated with a blending curve. More info in the doc!

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• Added : Bake As feature. Click the arrow next to Bake to get access to a submenu.
• Added : New Bleach Bypass operator.
• Added a new quickstart launcher when you import or update Chromatica.
• Added About Chromatica and Chromatica Manual in the Help menu.
• Modified : Re-organized the toolbar. Clear/Save/Load are now located in the Lut menu.
• Modified : A few minor UI tweaks.
• Fixed : HDR is now properly supported.
• Fixed : Linear color space now properly supported.
• Fixed : Better UI focus behavior.
• Fixed : Curve editor colors with the "Light" theme were wrong.
• Misc : Various documentation fixes & additions.

 

Version 1.1.1 (maintenance release) is available on the Asset Store and Itch.io.

Changelog (1.1.1) :

• Fixed : Precision error when previewing the LUT in the editor with anisotropic filtering being forced on.
  
• Misc : Minor bug fixes & documentation improvements.

Don't forget to leave a review on the Asset Store

 

There was a reason at the time, but not anymore. The next update will fix this, thanks for the catch

 

A new version is available on the Asset Store and Itch.io !

Changelog (1.2) :

• Added : In dual LUT mode, you can now quickly copy all the operators from the primary LUT to the depth one using the Lut menu.
• Fixed : Proper 4.6 compatibility.
• Fixed : Bleach Bypass wasn't correctly saved in presets.
• Fixed : Only one ChromaticaStudio component allowed per camera.
• Misc : Minor optimizations & documentation improvements.

 

Done ! The auto-switching to the game view is actually a repaint call, but for some reason Unity also gives it focus. Update available on the Asset Store and Itch.io

Changelog (1.2.1) :

• Added : A toggle in the Preferences panel to enable/disable auto switching to the game view window.

 

For the next 24 hours, Chromatica Studio is 50% off ! Enjoy

 

Chromatica is entirely focused on color grading. You can apply as many color correction effects as you want and bake them all into one lookup texture (which is them applied with a custom image effect). It's great for very high performances color grading and works wonders on mobile too. It's a static effect and can't be changed at runtime, although you can generate many lookup textures and swap them as you want.

Colorful, on the other hand, is a collection of finely tuned image effects, some made for color corrections, some for more general effects (radial blur, led, analog effects etc). The whole point of Colorful is that you can smoothly animate everything at runtime (see the documentation, everything you see there can be animated using scripts or the Unity Animation tool). But, as the effects are separated, every one of them will use one draw call so you can't stack an unlimited number of them at once or your performances will suffer.

So, really, it's all about what you need. If you want a powerful color grading tool, use Chromatica. If you need to animate a bunch of effects in realtime, use Colorful with its simpler but still powerful tools

 

Indeed, the main difference between Amplify Color and this asset is that the first one acts like a bridge between Unity and Photoshop, and Chromatica is a fully integrated solution.

Performance should be roughly similar, really, except for the Dual-LUT mode in Chromatica which should be a bit slower, obviously.

Actually, you should be able to use Amplify Color's Volume feature with Chromatica to do LUT blending ! I still need to fully test it to make sure it works as expected but it should be a pretty powerful combo

 

Hmm I can't reproduce this bug using Unity 4.5 and 4.6...

That would be a nice feature indeed. Added to the todo list.

Ah ! I haven't had the chance to try Chromatica with Unity 5 yet. Will do asap and report back !

 

New version available !

Changelog (1.2.2) :

• Added : Save / load feature for the depth curve in "Dual" mode.

 

Quick update !

Changelog (1.2.3) :

• Added : "Blend" slider on the component.
  
• Misc : Unity 5 package.
  
• Misc : Documentation update.

 

Yes the blend amount can be modified / animated at runtime. Blending between LUTs is possible too, add a second ChromaticaStudio component to the camera and play with the Blend property of both ! Right now editing two Chromatica instances at the same time in the editor can be a bit cumbersome but I'm working on it.

 

My last update introduced a bug on DirectX 9... Sorry about that. New version available !

Changelog (1.2.4) :

• Fixed : Shader bug with DirectX 9.

 

Yep, something's coming

 

Not yet, sorry. Maybe in the future.

 

A LUT is, by definition, static. That's what make it very fast, even on mobile devices. Chromatica doesn't let you generate LUTs at runtime for performance reasons. So if you're looking for a dynamic color grading solution, Chromatica won't be of any help... Yet Wait for the next update (1.4), it should be out soon and will add an easy way to blend between multiple LUTs at runtime.

If you want a way to change/tween/animate individual color correction operators (Hue, Saturation, Contrast, Vibrance etc) at runtime, you should look into Colorful.

 

The first NullReferenceException is related to the second issue (hard coded links). That's something I've wanted to fix for a while... I guess it's time I'll look into it for the upcoming update.

Edit : fixed in the dev branch, will be in 1.4.

 

Here comes Chromatica 2.0, featuring LUT blending and volumes ! Check out the documentation or the intro video :

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Changelog (2.0) :

• Added : Due to popular demand... LUT Volumes ! You can now add "Volumes" to your scenes to automatically and smoothly blend between lookup textures.
• Added : Small public API to manually blend LUTs. See the documentation.
• Added : Tooltips on inspector fields.
• Added : "About" button in the "ChromaticaStudio" component for faster access to the documentation, changelog and support email.
• Modified : Renamed the "Blend" property to "Contribution".
• Modified : Added the "ImageEffectTransformsToLDR" attribute to the "ChromaticaStudio" component. This will make sure the rest of the post processing chain will switch to LDR mode. This shouldn't have any impact on rendering as the output was already in LDR but can save performances in some cases.
• Removed : The documentation isn't bundled anymore, it's now online only. Benefits : the package size is a lot smaller and imports faster.
• Fixed : Proper "Reset" support in the inspector.
• Fixed : Alpha channel preservation (useful for some old image effects like Glow).
• Fixed : Potential memory leak with the dual LUT mode.
• Fixed : Better internal file path control. You should now be able to move the Chromatica folder safely.
• Fixed : Some preferences not being restored correctly on Unity restart.
• Misc : Various UI tweaks and optimizations in the editor.
• Misc : Documentation update.

 

I wouldn't say it fully replaces Amplify Color, as the volume feature in Amplify Color also works with third-parties post processing effects, whereas Chromatica only focuses on LUT / color correction.

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