Difforum · Colour Grade

Most "video look" nodes in ComfyUI are preset spam - pick neon, get neon. Difforum · Colour Grade is the honest version: a real grading node with the controls an actual colorist would recognize, sitting in the pack's VJ/look group. It takes any IMAGE (a still, a feedback render, or a whole footage batch) and lets you reshape it with exposure, contrast, saturation, white balance, and a full lift/gamma/gain (LGG) pass, plus hue rotation. If you want your Deforum render to stop looking like a raw diffusion output and start looking like a film frame, this is the node - and it needs zero models, zero diffusion, just numpy math.

The required inputs cover the first pass:

• exposure (−3–3, default 0) - overall brightness in stops.
• contrast (0–3, default 1) - S-curve; 1 is neutral, 1.1–1.2 is the "film" nudge.
• saturation (0–3, default 1) - 0 goes monochrome.
• temperature (−1–1) - white balance: negative cools, positive warms. The fastest way to sell "golden hour."
• tint (−1–1) - green/magenta balance; the counterweight you reach for when temperature alone makes skin look sickly.

Then the optional LGG trio - the part that separates this from a filter:

• lift (−0.5–0.5) - shifts the shadows. Crush blacks toward a colour for that teal-and-orange blockbuster look.
• gamma (0.1–3, default 1) - the midtones curve; where most of the "vibe" actually lives.
• gain (0–3, default 1) - highlights. Pull it down to save blown-out feedback highlights.
• hue (−180–180) - rotate the whole colour wheel. On looped footage, a slow hue spin is a one-knob psychedelic effect; the README's VJ look list even mentions hue cycling.

Output: one image (IMAGE). The whole thing is plain IMAGE-to-IMAGE, so it works identically on a single frame or a 500-frame batch - that's the design of the VJ group.

Install

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/chillithebillis/Difforum.git difforum

Restart ComfyUI ([Difforum] loaded N nodes) or ComfyUI Manager → "Difforum". numpy-only.

Common issues

• "It does nothing." Check your values - defaults are all neutral by design (exposure 0, contrast 1, saturation 1, gamma 1). This node is an instrument, not a preset; you have to turn knobs.
• Harsh banding after crushing blacks. That's real lift/gamma/gain behavior on 8-bit-ish content. Ease off the lift and consider a touch of noise (Detail Guard) to dither.
• Colour drift in a long clip. If you grade per-frame and the source itself drifts (feedback loops do), the grade can amplify it. Grade a representative frame, or better, match colour first (Feedback Sampler's LAB matching) and grade after.

The pairing to know: Colour Grade is the precise tool, and Difforum · VJ Look (presets) is the one-shot version for when you want "cinematic" in a single click. If you're the type who tweaks, this is your node; if you just want it to look like a movie right now, grab the preset and don't look back.