Teal and orange
Also known as: orange and teal, blockbuster look
The grading look that pushes shadows toward blue-green and skin toward orange, ubiquitous in action video and easy to overdo.
Updated
What it means
The look exploits a colour relationship. Skin sits in the orange range, and pushing everything else toward its opposite makes the subject separate from the background. The eye reads separation as depth.
It became a default because it works on almost anything. Water, sky, snow and forest all take a cool push, and a rider stays warm against them, which is why it is everywhere in action video.
It is a Creative LUT decision rather than a correction. Nothing about it fixes an image; it imposes a relationship on one that was already technically correct.
How it works in practice
Correction comes first. Color correction for exposure and cast, then the look, because applying it over a Color cast amplifies whatever was already wrong. Order is not negotiable here.
Strength is the whole skill. A quarter of the effect reads as deliberate; the full preset reads as a preset applied by somebody in a hurry, and the difference is one slider position almost nobody pulls back far enough.
Skin tones are the limit. The moment a face goes orange rather than warm, the look has gone past where it was useful. Faces are the control sample for the whole adjustment.
What to watch out for
It ages visibly. A heavy version marks an edit to a particular few years as clearly as a font does, and restraint is the only version that survives a few years of being watched.
It fights mixed sources. Two cameras that disagreed before the look disagree more after it, which is why Color matching has to happen before any of it is applied.
Green environments suffer most. Forest and grass pushed toward teal go grey or cyan, and a Bike park edit is where the look most often falls apart, because trees do not behave like water under a cool push.
How RawClip handles it
The grade applied to an assembled sequence is a restrained, consistent one rather than a strong stylistic look, because a look that suits one session fails outright on the next. A particular treatment is a brief-level request rather than a default.