Grade log footage fast, in one effect

What the Color System does

The Spearhead Color System is a complete grading pipeline inside one Final Cut Pro effect. It converts your camera's log footage to Rec.709, balances it, shapes the exposure, adds a creative look and finishes it with film-style effects.

Each stage is a numbered section in the inspector, and they run in the order shown at the top of this page. Every section has a checkbox on its title row: untick it to bypass that whole stage and see the picture without it.

When you first drop the effect on a clip, nothing changes. The camera is set to Rec.709 (Passthrough), no look is chosen and every finishing control is at zero. You build the grade up from there.

What you need

• A Mac with macOS 13 Ventura or later. Apple silicon and Intel Macs are both supported.
• Final Cut Pro (tested with version 12.4).
• Your serial number, from your order page or your release email.
• An internet connection to activate and to get updates. After that, the effect works offline.

Install in two minutes

The download is one app. It installs the effects into Final Cut Pro for you and handles activation and updates.

1. Open the download.Double-click the .dmg file, then double-click Spearhead Color System.
2. Let it move to Applications.If you opened it from the download, it asks "Move Spearhead Color System to Applications?" Click Move to Applications. It copies itself there, puts any older copy in the Trash and opens again.
3. Quit Final Cut Pro if it's open.The effects can only be installed while Final Cut is closed. If it's open, the app says so and installs the moment Final Cut quits. You can click Quit Final Cut Pro & Install, or quit Final Cut yourself with ⌘Q. Final Cut saves your work on its own.
4. Check the result.You'll see "4 effects installed in Final Cut Pro, under "Spearhead Media" in the Effects browser."
5. Activate.Paste your serial in the same window. See the next chapter.
6. Open Final Cut Pro.In the Effects browser, choose the Spearhead Media category. Drag Spearhead Color System onto a clip.

Activate your serial

Until you activate, the effect works fully but shows a "SPEARHEAD COLOR SYSTEM · UNLICENSED" watermark across the picture, in the viewer and in exports.

1. Find your serial.It's on your order page and in your release email. It looks like this:
   SCS1-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
2. Paste it into the app.Open Spearhead Color System from Applications, paste the serial under Activate and click Activate (or press Return). Capitals, spaces and dashes don't matter.
3. Done.The window shows "Activated on this Mac". If Final Cut Pro is open, the watermark disappears within a few seconds.

Two Macs per serial

One serial works on two Macs, for example a desktop and a laptop. Activating the same Mac again doesn't use another seat. Once activated, the Mac never needs to be online for the effect to work.

If activation doesn't work

Moving to a new Mac? See Moving Macs and uninstalling.

From log to finished in six moves

A typical grade on log footage, top to bottom through the inspector.

1. Pick your camera.In 1 · Camera, set Camera Profile to your camera's log format, for example Sony S-Log 3 or DJI D-Log. The flat log image becomes a normal Rec.709 picture.
2. Balance the color.In 2 · White Balance, tick WB Target and drag the target in the viewer onto something white or grey, or set White Balance (K) and Tint by eye.
3. Set the exposure.In 3 · Pre-LUT Adjustments, move Exposure until the picture sits right (50 is one stop). Pull Highlights or Peak Highlights down for bright windows and skies.
4. Choose a look.In 5 · Look (LUT), pick a look and set Look Intensity to taste.
5. Finish.Add a touch of Halation, Matte, Vignette or Grain if the shot wants it.
6. Save it as a preset.From the Preset menu at the top, choose Save Current Settings as Preset… and reuse it on the rest of the shoot.

1 · Camera

Converts your camera's log footage to Rec.709 with each manufacturer's published math, not a LUT. Every camera goes through the same tone curve, so the same scene looks alike whichever camera shot it.

Supported cameras

• Rec.709 (Passthrough)
• Apple Log
• Apple Log 2
• Arri LogC3
• Blackmagic Film Gen 5
• Canon C-Log 3
• DJI D-Log
• DJI D-Log M
• Fuji F-Log
• GoPro GP-Log
• GoPro GP-Log2
• GoPro Protune Flat
• Nikon N-Log
• Panasonic V-Log
• Red Log 3G10
• Sony S-Log 3

Tuned on real footage

A few cameras get a small extra step, tuned by the Spearhead team on side-by-side footage, so they land where you'd want them without correction:

• Sony S-Log 3 is balanced a touch away from red, so skin and warm surfaces don't need red pulled out.
• DJI D-Log gets more saturation and contrast, since D-Log footage comes out especially flat.
• DJI D-Log M gets a little more saturation and contrast.
• GoPro profiles are brightened to match the other cameras.

2 · White Balance

Fixes the color of the light, in real scene light before the conversion, the way the camera's own white balance would. Changing it never changes the brightness.

3 · Pre-LUT Adjustments

Exposure and tone, set before the look so the look always gets a well-exposed picture.

Exposure, Black Point, Shadows, Highlights, Saturation and Clip Protect work on the camera's own signal, before the conversion. Contrast, Tone Pivot, Peak Highlights, Deep Shadows and Vibrance work on the converted Rec.709 picture.

4 · Primaries

Four classic color wheels, applied in the order Resolve uses: Lift, Gain, Gamma, then Offset. Each has a color well for the direction and a slider for brightness.

For each wheel, the color well sets the direction of the color push and the slider sets the brightness. The well's own brightness is ignored, so a grey well means no color change.

5 · Look (LUT)

The creative look, designed for the Rec.709 picture the earlier sections hand it.

The built-in looks

Estate · Spearhead is our signature: warm skin and teal-leaning skies. Pop · Vivid is clean, punchy and saturated. Film · Infrared imitates false-color infrared film: foliage turns deep red, skies and water go deep blue and everything else is muted. Anything green turns red, as it does on real infrared film.

6 · Finish

Film-style finishing, applied after the look. Every control here starts at 0.

Halation or Pro-Mist?

They stack, so a touch of each gives a filmic, diffused look. Both take extra render time, so leave them at 0 when you don't need them.

7 · Vignette, 8 · Edge Blur, 9 · Lens Fringing

Three lens effects around one shared center: a vignette to darken the edges, Edge Blur to soften them and Lens Fringing for color fringes, each with its own shape and guides.

All three share the Vignette Center. With Letterbox on, they follow the visible picture inside the bars.

10 · Grain and 11 · Letterbox

Mix and Reset

Mix, at the very bottom, blends the whole graded result with the original clip. To start over, use the reset menu next to the effect's name at the top of the inspector: it puts every control, the camera and the look back to their defaults. Each row also has its own Reset Parameter in the menu at its right.

Work right in the viewer

Three controls appear in the viewer when the effect is selected in the inspector. They're for you only: none of them is ever rendered or exported.

Primaries Wheels

Tick Primaries Wheels in section 4. Four wheels appear along the bottom of the picture: Lift, Gamma, Gain and Offset. On vertical or narrow footage they arrange themselves in a 2 by 2 grid.

• Drag the puck inside a wheel to push the color that way. The rim is a full push.
• Drag the bar beside each wheel up or down for its brightness.
• Reset a wheel with the ↺ Reset chip next to its name, or Option-click or double-click a wheel or bar to reset just that part.

WB Target

Tick WB Target in section 2. A square target appears.

• Drag it onto something that should be neutral, like a white wall or a grey card, and let go. That spot is measured on that frame and the correction holds for the whole clip, even as things move under the target.
• Untick WB Target to hide the target; the correction stays.
• Clear the correction with the Reset WB Target button in section 2 of the Inspector, the ↺ Reset chip by the target, or Option-click the target.
• The target hides while the clip plays.

Vignette, Edge Blur and Lens Fringing guides

Tick Vignette Guides, Edge Blur Guides or Lens Fringing Guides in sections 7 to 9. Each shows a solid inner ring (Range) and a dashed outer ring (Falloff): white for the vignette, light blue for edge blur, pink for lens fringing. They share one center crosshair.

• Drag the center dot to move all three effects. With one set showing, drag inside its inner ring to change Range and around its outer ring to change Falloff. With more than one showing, grab the ring you want.
• Double-click a part to reset it.
• The guides are drawn over the picture in the viewer only. The effects never change how they look, and they're never exported.

Presets

The Preset menu, near the top of the effect, applies a whole grade in one click. It always returns to "Choose a Preset…" after you use it.

Spearhead's own preset sets are coming in a later update. For now the menu holds the presets you save or import.

A preset sets every control. Anything it doesn't mention goes back to its default, which includes the look, so pick your look after applying a preset.

Which preset a clip uses

After you choose a preset, the menu shows its name and the drop-down ticks it. Change any setting the preset controls and an asterisk appears, for example S-Log3 · Kitchen *, so you can see the clip has moved on from the original.

• Revert to "name" in the Preset menu puts the preset's settings back and the asterisk goes away.
• Choosing Choose a Preset… unlinks the clip from its preset. Its settings stay as they are.
• The clip remembers its preset. After you reopen a project, the name shows again on your first change.

Save your own

1. Set up the grade you want to reuse.
2. Choose Save Current Settings as Preset… from the Preset menu.
3. Name it starting with the color space, for example "S-Log3 · Kitchen". Press Return to save.

Your presets appear under Your Presets in the menu. A preset saves every control except the WB Target and WB Sample, the viewer-control checkboxes and Mix. Cameras, looks and letterbox shapes are saved by name, so presets keep working after updates.

Share, rename and delete

Choose Import, Export & Manage Presets… from the Preset menu, or open the app and click Presets & LUTs…. From there you can Import, Export, Rename, Move to Trash and Show in Finder. To share a preset, export it and send the .scspreset file; whoever double-clicks it gets it in their Preset menu.

Bring your own LUTs

Add your own .cube files in two places.

1. Choose Import LUTs… from the Preset menu, or open the app, click Presets & LUTs… and pick the LUTs tab.
2. Click Import Look LUTs… or Import Conversion LUTs… and choose your files. Each one is checked and put in the right folder.
3. Quit and reopen Final Cut Pro. New LUTs show up only after Final Cut restarts.

• Only 3D .cube files are supported (sizes 2 to 129). 1D LUTs are not.
• The menu name is the file name without ".cube".
• Adding LUTs never changes clips you've already graded: new ones always go at the end of the menu.
• If you delete or rename a LUT that a clip uses, the menu shows it as "(missing)" and the clip renders without it. Put the file back under the same name to restore it.
• With a conversion LUT, Exposure and White Balance can't work in true stops, because the LUT doesn't say what the camera curve is.
• The files live in Movies › Spearhead Color System, in Conversion LUTs and Look LUTs.

One system, four effects

The Spearhead Media category has four effects. They're the same engine with different controls shown, so you can split a grade across effects or use only the part you need.

Staying up to date

Updates for the version you bought are included and install in place. Your activation, presets, LUTs and projects stay as they are.

• Automatically: once a day the app quietly checks for a new version and shows a notification when one is out. Turn this off with "Check for updates automatically" in the app.
• In Final Cut: click Check for Updates…, the first row of the effect.
• In the app: choose Check for Updates… from the app menu, or use the Updates section of its window.

Click Update to… and the app downloads the new version, checks it's genuine and signed by Spearhead Media, replaces itself and reopens. If Final Cut Pro is open, the new effects install as soon as you quit it.

If an update can't be installed, your current version stays exactly as it was, and the message says why. Installing needs permission to change apps in your Applications folder.

Tips and render speed

Keep renders quick

• The core grade (camera, white balance, exposure, wheels, look) is one fast GPU pass, even at 4K.
• Halation, Pro-Mist Glow, Edge Blur, Clarity and Sharpen each add blur passes. Leave them at 0 when a shot doesn't need them.
• Two copies of the effect on one clip render twice. Use one copy unless you need two.
• Noise reduction is usually far slower than color. Turn it on last, only where it's needed.

Working habits

• Set exposure and white balance before choosing a look: the looks are built for a well-exposed Rec.709 picture.
• Untick a section's checkbox to compare before and after for just that stage.
• Save presets per location or lighting setup and share them with your team.
• Projects are safe across updates: graded clips open looking the same after you update.

If something's not right

Clean reinstall

1. Quit Final Cut Pro.
2. Drag Spearhead Color System from Applications to the Trash.
3. In Finder, choose Go › Go to Folder, enter ~/Movies/Motion Templates.localized/Effects.localized/ and move the Spearhead Media folder to the Trash.
4. Download the installer again from your order page, open it and let the app install.

Your presets, LUTs and activation are kept in other folders, so a clean reinstall doesn't touch them.

Contact support

Email support@spearheadmedia.comCopy

Include your version (shown in the app), your Mac model, macOS and Final Cut Pro versions, the camera profile and look you used, and a screenshot or short screen recording. If the app itself misbehaves, attach ~/Library/Logs/Spearhead Color System.log.

New Mac or uninstalling

Moving to a new Mac

1. On the old Mac, open the app and click Deactivate this Mac. You can also remove a Mac from your order page if the old one is gone.
2. On the new Mac, install and activate with the same serial.

To bring your presets, export them from the app on the old Mac and import them on the new one, or copy the Presets folder from ~/Library/Application Support/Spearhead Color System.

Uninstalling

1. Deactivate first in the app, so the seat is free for another Mac.
2. Quit Final Cut Pro, then move these to the Trash:

• Applications › Spearhead Color System
• Movies › Motion Templates › Effects › Spearhead Media
• Movies › Spearhead Color System (your LUTs; keep it if you want them)
• Library › Application Support › Spearhead Color System (your presets and license)