Color grading or colour painting, is the process of altering and enhancing the color of a motion picture, video image, or still image either electronically, photo-chemically or digitally. The photo-chemical process is also referred to as color timing and is typically performed at a photographic laboratory. Modern color correction, whether for theatrical film, video distribution, or print is generally done digitally in a color suite. Considering such achievements in digital imaging, the artist has the ability to "paint" the image, thus the names "colorist" or "color painter" have become most applicable.

With the advent of television, broadcasters quickly realized the limitations of live television broadcasts and they turned to broadcasting feature films from release prints directly from a telecine. This was in the days before 1956 when Ampex introduced the first Quadruplex videotape recorder (VTR) VRX-1000. Live television shows could also be recorded to film and aired at different times in different time zones by filming a video monitor. The heart of this system was the kinescope, a device for recording a television broadcast to film.