Best Color Grading Studios in Austin (2026)

Introduction

Austin has a small, practical colour scene: five studios and colourists with a working grading suite in the city in 2026, ranging from full-service post houses with feature and streaming credits to a freelance colourist grading commercials and music videos.

Most of the city's colour work runs through a few post houses that also handle editorial, sound and finishing, alongside independent colourists with their own suites. The large Los Angeles colour facilities do not list an Austin site: Company 3's locations page names Vancouver, Toronto, Hollywood, London, New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles, and FotoKem lists Burbank, Hollywood and Atlanta. Talent also moves. Two colourists who built their reputations in Austin, Cullen Kelly and Cory Berendzen, have since relocated, and several local studios now pair an Austin suite with remote sessions. Client lists lean towards Texas names such as Dell, Whole Foods, H-E-B, Shiner and YETI, and SXSW keeps festival titles moving through local finishing rooms each spring.

Every studio here has an Austin suite or office shown on its own site or in trade coverage we could check in 2026. Five met that bar. The list is in no fixed order, since the right colourist depends on the format, the delivery spec and how closely you want to sit in on the grade.

The best color grading studios in Austin

1. TBD Post

Independent, partner-owned · East Austin · tbdpost.com

TBD Post is a full-service post house co-founded by short-form editor Ted Griffis and long-form colourist Brandon Thomas, who run it as managing partners from a purpose-built 6,000-square-foot facility in Austin. It covers editorial, colour, VFX, sound and finishing for film, series and commercials, and lists MBE and Texas HUB certification and AICP membership. Thomas has graded more than 60 films and over 150 TV episodes, including Netflix's Blue Miracle and the Frontline documentary A Thousand Cuts. Stefan Allen also appears on the current colourist roster.

Credits on its site include Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life, The Long Game with Dennis Quaid, Apple TV+'s Fathom, and commercials for Bacardi, Fender, Ariat and EA's Super Bowl LVI spot. In late 2023 TBD Post added a network of colourists working remotely and in person, and some of those colourists have since moved on, so confirm who will grade your project and from where.

2. Stuck On On

Independent · Austin · stuckonon.com

Stuck On On is an Emmy-nominated Austin post house founded in 2007, offering colour grading, DI and online finishing, sound design, mixing and VFX. Its colour service supports HDR and Dolby Vision up to 8K, with DCP authoring, trailer mastering and standards conversion handled in-house. Parke Gregg, a co-founder, was the studio's colourist and finisher when the Austin Chronicle profiled it on the Eastside.

Clients include Netflix, Warner Bros, HBO, Hulu, PBS, CNN, SXSW, Dell and H-E-B. Recent projects on its site include Deep in the Heart 2: Texas Rivers, the twelfth-anniversary theatrical return of Boyhood, The Last Critic (SXSW 2026) and Hope for the Guadalupe, about the 2025 Texas floods. Sessions are by appointment.

3. Alice Abrams

Freelance colourist · Austin · alicefilmcolor.com

Alice Abrams is a freelance colourist who has worked in the industry since 2014. She started as a director of photography, editor and colourist on projects in California and New York, then moved to Texas to focus on colour alone. She runs her own grading suite in Austin and also takes remote work from clients abroad.

Her client list includes Google, Volvo, Meta, Netflix, REI, Red Bull and Capital One. The portfolio covers commercials for Converse, Subaru, Leica and Danner, branded work for Coinbase x Team Liquid and Visit Austin, and music videos for The Black Angels. She suits commercial and music video teams who want one colourist across a campaign.

4. Finland Finish

Colourist-led · BLK MKT Studios, Baylor Street · finlandfinish.com

Finland Finish is a colour and finishing company led by principal colourist Nick Smith, who has 25 years of experience in colour and retouching for commercials. Smith is now based in New York, and the company keeps a dedicated suite for in-person sessions at its original home in Austin's BLK MKT Studios, a woman-owned post collective on Baylor Street. It works in DaVinci Resolve and Autodesk Flame and also handles beauty work, cleanup and conforming.

Clients include Dell Technologies, Whole Foods, Shiner, Frost Bank, YETI, Southwest Airlines, Pizza Hut and Universal Studios. Since the principal colourist works from New York, ask whether an Austin session will be attended in the room or streamed to the suite.

5. Charlie Uniform Tango

Independent, Dallas-headquartered · Central Austin (Marathon Boulevard) · charlieuniformtango.com

Charlie Uniform Tango is a full-service production and post company headquartered in Dallas, with a studio on Marathon Boulevard in Austin. It has run for around three decades and grades in DaVinci Resolve with calibrated monitoring, alongside Flame and Nuke for finishing. The company says it partnered with Company 3 on an early virtual telecine.

Its clients include Amazon, McDonald's, Dr Pepper, Coca-Cola, Ford, Samsung and Lexus, and it lists more than 20 Super Bowl commercials. Its site does not name individual colourists, so ask who grades and whether the session runs in Austin or Dallas.

What to look for in an Austin colour grading studio

Start with who will sit at the panel. Austin's colour talent is mobile: colourists join post houses on remote arrangements, move to other cities, or keep an Austin suite while living elsewhere. A studio's reel may reflect people who no longer work there, so ask for the named colourist and recent work they graded themselves.

Match the room to the delivery. Features and streaming series need HDR and Dolby Vision mastering, calibrated reference monitoring and experience with platform specs. Of the studios here, Stuck On On lists HDR and Dolby Vision finishing up to 8K, and TBD Post has graded for Netflix and Apple TV+. Commercial and music video work puts more weight on look development and speed across many short deliverables.

Plan around the calendar. SXSW premieres each March push documentary and feature finishing into the same few weeks at the same small number of Austin rooms. If your project is aimed at the festival, agree grading dates and a conform deadline well ahead.

Finally, agree how files and approvals will move. A grade depends on clean handoffs: camera originals or proxies from editorial, LUTs and look references from the director of photography, and review copies that clients can comment on without confusion over versions. Studios that set this up before the session spend less time chasing material during it.

How Fabric helps colour grading teams

Fabric gives colourists, editors and producers one workspace for project files, reference material and client feedback, with AI search across all of it. A colour project gathers camera originals, proxies, LUTs, stills and notes from several people, and keeping them together cuts down on the handoff questions that slow a grade.

Heavy media sits in Fabric's cloud drive, which streams files on demand so they take no local disk space and open without a full download. Teams that cut on proxies and conform to originals can keep both in shared folders with the latest versions; there is more on that in what a proxy workflow is. Show LUTs and look files can live alongside the project, with background on what a LUT is for clients new to the process.

Look references are easier to find with search, which works by meaning across documents, images and transcribed recordings and includes colour search for visual assets. Similar search surfaces stills with comparable composition, colour and subject, which helps when matching a new grade to a past campaign.

For review, any file or folder can be published as a web page with password protection, and link analytics shows when each named recipient opened a review link. Clients can leave threaded comments through a shared link without signing up. Timestamped comments and drawing on video are coming soon to annotations.

Password protection and link analytics are included on Pro and Team plans, and Team plans add self-writing docs that keep a page per client up to date. See plans for teams.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best colour grading studio in Austin?

It depends on the project. TBD Post and Stuck On On are the two full facilities here with feature, documentary and streaming credits, while Alice Abrams and Finland Finish focus on commercial and branded work.

Do Company 3 or FotoKem have colour suites in Austin?

Neither lists an Austin location. Company 3's locations page names Vancouver, Toronto, Hollywood, London, New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles, and FotoKem lists Burbank, Hollywood and Atlanta.

Can I work with an Austin colourist remotely?

Yes, several work that way. Alice Abrams takes remote projects from clients abroad, Finland Finish's principal colourist works from New York with an Austin suite for in-person sessions, and TBD Post added colourists who work remotely and in person.

Should I use a post house or a freelance colourist?

A post house suits projects that also need editorial, sound and finishing under one roof, along with mastering for streaming platforms. A freelance colourist often suits commercials and music videos where a director wants a consistent look across a run of short pieces.

Where can I find editors and full-service post houses in Austin?

See our lists of the best editing studios in Austin and the best post-production companies in Austin, which cover offline editorial and full-service houses.

Related lists

Color grading in other cities: New York · Los Angeles · London · Chicago · Atlanta

More in Austin: Creative agencies · Post-production · Editing · VFX · Sound design · Video production

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