Best Color Grading Studios in Melbourne (2026)

Introduction

Melbourne has a small, senior colour community, and the six studios below are where most of the city’s commercial, music video and long-form grading gets done in 2026. Three are colour specialists built around a founding colourist. The other three run colour inside larger editorial, VFX or post operations.

The market looks different from a decade ago. Many Melbourne colourists now work from boutique suites or remotely, and Crayon’s Daniel Stonehouse has spoken publicly about the end of the big post-house era and the shift towards artist-led studios after COVID. Long-form work has kept growing, helped by VicScreen incentives and Docklands Studios Melbourne, and Melbourne colourists and studios have worked on recent Australian drama and features such as The Newsreader, Deadloch and the Oscar-nominated Memoir of a Snail.

Every studio here has a Melbourne base in 2026. The list is shorter than our lists for larger cities because we only included studios we could verify, and it runs in no order of merit: the right colourist depends on your format, schedule and the look you are after.

The best color grading studios in Melbourne

1. Crayon

Independent · South Melbourne · wearecrayon.com

Crayon is a colour-focused grading and finishing studio on Moray Street in South Melbourne, owned by co-founder Daniel Stonehouse CSI. Its Melbourne roster also includes Sam McCarthy CSI, Niklas Malkin CSI and Ted Deacey CSI, with Kali Bateman CSI represented from Brisbane and a producing team led by executive producer Freya Maddock.

The studio is well known for music videos, with grades for Courtney Barnett, Ruel, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Kirin J Callinan. Its commercial work includes MYOB “Simply Successful”, La Trobe University “All Kinds of Clever”, Ford “See Where” and Braindead x Reebok.

2. Moodlab

Independent · Prahran · moodlab.com.au

Moodlab is the colour and finishing facility founded in 2022 by senior colourist CJ Dobson CSI, who came to Melbourne from Wellington through Digital Pictures and spent years freelancing before opening her own shop. LBB Online profiled her in its Making the Grade series in May 2025.

Dobson’s credits lean towards film and premium drama: the Academy Award-nominated Tanna, The Newsreader and Deadloch (both Emmy-nominated), Apartment 7A and Together for Neon. She takes bookings in person and remotely, which suits productions finishing outside Victoria.

3. TP Studio

Independent · Melbourne · tpstudio.com.au

TP Studio is a boutique finishing studio led by colourist Thanassi Panagiotaras CSI, who has more than 25 years in post. It covers offline editing, grading, online and finishing, and runs remote sessions alongside in-suite work.

Long-form clients include Stan, ABC and Amazon Prime Video. The practical draw is deliverables: the studio handles mastering through to DCPs, IMF packages, ProRes and broadcast masters and captions, so one team can take a project from grade to delivery.

4. ARC

Studios in Sydney and Melbourne · Collingwood · arc.site

ARC (formerly Arc Edit) specialises in editorial and finishing for advertising, with a Melbourne studio on Budd Street in Collingwood alongside its Sydney base. Its commercials work is credited “Colour & Finish By ARC”, so a job can stay in one building from first cut to final grade.

Recent colour and finishing credits include Victoria Police “Made For More”, Telstra x Apple “Mars Road Trip”, Sydney Opera House “Play It Safe”, Suncorp and the Australian Government’s “Consent Can’t Wait”. ARC does not list colourists by city, so ask who will grade your job and where.

5. Alt.vfx

Studios in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles and Tokyo · Collingwood · altvfx.com

Alt.vfx is best known for visual effects, but it runs a separate edit and grade offering with a roster of ten colourists, including Edel Rafferty, Billy Wychgel, Ben Eagleton and Trish Cahill. Its Melbourne studio is on Smith Street in Collingwood, with its own executive producers and post supervisor.

Recent work includes Westpac’s Bicentennial Bionic Arm, Asahi Super Dry “Enter Asahi”, Aldi “The More The Merrier” and Telstra, plus VFX for Deadloch Season 2. The appeal for colour is having grade and VFX under one roof when a spot is effects-heavy. The colourists are not listed by city, so confirm whether yours sits in Melbourne or works remotely.

6. Soundfirm

Studios in Melbourne, Sydney and Beijing · Melbourne · soundfirm.com

Soundfirm is a film and television post facility whose picture department offers colour grading, online editing, VFX and dailies and deliverables, alongside the sound work it is best known for. It is the long-form option on this list, set up for features and series that need picture and sound finished together.

Recent picture credits include Memoir of a Snail (picture, sound and VFX, nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2025 Academy Awards), The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Journey Home, David Gulpilil and Strife Season 2.

What to look for in a Melbourne colour grading studio

Decide first whether you need a colour specialist or a colourist inside a larger house. Boutiques such as Crayon and Moodlab put a senior colourist in the room for the whole session. Studios such as ARC, Alt.vfx and Soundfirm make sense when the edit, VFX or sound mix is already there, since conform and versioning stay in one place.

Ask for the colourist by name and look at their own reel, not the studio’s. Melbourne colourists move between boutiques, freelance work and represented rosters, and several studios here list colourists without saying which city they work from. For a commercial, it is worth confirming whether the grade will be attended in Melbourne or run remotely.

Talk about delivery early. Broadcast, streaming and cinema each want different masters, from IMF packages and HDR versions to DCPs. Long-form jobs should agree colour pipeline, LUTs and deliverables with the studio before the shoot, especially for Stan, ABC or international streamer work.

Then sort out the handover. A grade involves large camera originals, conformed timelines, reference stills and rounds of client notes. Studios that agree up front where files live, how notes come back and who signs off each version tend to finish on schedule.

How Fabric helps colour grading teams

Fabric gives a colour team one workspace for camera files, references, grades in progress and client notes, with AI search across all of it. It suits the way Melbourne colourists work now, with a boutique suite, a remote session and a client in another city often on the same job.

Heavy media sits in Fabric’s cloud drive, which streams files on demand so they take no local disk space, and video files open without a full download. There is more on that in why DaVinci Resolve needs a better drive. Search includes colour search, so a colourist can find reference frames by shade, and similar search surfaces images with comparable composition, colour and subject from a single selected still.

For review, any folder of stills or exports can be published as a web page and shared with password protection. Link analytics shows when each named recipient opened the link and how long they spent with it. Directors and agency producers can leave threaded comments through a shared link without making an account. With annotations, reviewers can leave timestamped comments and drawings on video, and mark up PDFs and documents.

Teams can also keep shared knowledge alongside the media: show LUTs, look references and delivery specs in one folder everyone can search. Our guides to what a LUT is and colour grading basics are useful for new producers.

Password protection and link analytics are included on Pro and Team plans. See plans for teams.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best colour grading studio in Melbourne?

It depends on the format. Crayon has a long music video and commercial reel, Moodlab’s CJ Dobson has graded Oscar- and Emmy-nominated film and drama, and Soundfirm handles picture finishing for features and series.

Do Melbourne colourists work remotely?

Many do. Moodlab, TP Studio and Crayon all take remote work or represent colourists outside Melbourne, so a production elsewhere in Australia can book a Melbourne colourist without travelling. Attended sessions are still common for commercials.

Should I book a colour specialist or a full post-production house?

A specialist suits jobs where the look matters most and the edit is already locked. A full-service house suits projects that need picture, sound and VFX finished together. Our list of post-production companies in Melbourne covers the full-service option.

What should I send a colourist before the grade?

Send the locked edit with an EDL or XML, the camera originals or agreed transcodes, any show LUT, reference stills and the delivery specs. Agreeing the colour pipeline before the shoot saves time at the conform.

How are colour grading sessions priced in Melbourne?

Most studios quote per day, half day or project, with deliverables and versioning priced separately. Ask for a quote that names the colourist and lists every master you need.

Related lists

Colour grading in other cities: Sydney · New York · London · Los Angeles · Toronto

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

Run your studio on Fabric: Fabric for video editors · Best cloud storage for video editors · Fabric for creative teams