Recolor a clip by replacing each pixel’s color with a color picked by its brightness. The same map applies to every frame, so a palette holds across the whole video.
Brightness to color
Brightness is measured in linear light, the way the sensor recorded it, rather than on the gamma-encoded values in the file. The gradient between stops is blended in the OKLab color space, so a transition from blue to orange passes through a clean in-between hue instead of gray.
Palettes
The 12 presets are the same palettes as the image gradient map, so a grade picked on a still carries over to the footage it came from. Changing any stop switches the preset to Custom. Surprise me picks another preset rather than random colors, which rarely form a usable ramp.
Exposure, contrast, and midtone bias
These three act before the mapping. They move which stop a pixel lands on, not the colors themselves. Raise Exposure to push the whole shot toward the highlight colors, raise Contrast to spread it across more of the gradient, and move Midtone bias to decide whether the middle of the ramp favors the shadow or the highlight end.
Detail preservation adds back local contrast measured against a slightly blurred copy of the frame, so texture survives in areas that would otherwise map to a single flat color.
Effect strength
Below 100%, the mapped color is blended with the original in linear light. A setting near 30% tints the footage without replacing its colors, a look close to a split-tone grade.