A Colour Grader Where Distance Was the Whole Idea

In June 2018 I got tired of every grader I tried making me think in masks. I wanted to point at “this orange” in a photo from one of my walks, nudge it, and have the neighbouring reds and yellows come along by however much made sense. Distance in colour space, not a brush. So I built the proof.

The UI was a colour wheel where you’d click to drop a marker, drag to move it, click anywhere to add another. Each marker had its own settings; transformations fell off smoothly with distance from the picked colour. No masks, ever.

I never built it into a real tool. The idea still feels right: distance in colour space is the natural unit for prose-style editing of an image. If I returned to it, I’d reach for WebGL instead of canvas. The interaction only earns its keep if the preview is live on a real photo, and canvas couldn’t get there.