Best Color Grading Studios in Toronto (2026)

Introduction

Toronto has two colour markets that share a lot of talent. Commercial colourists grade spots for Canadian agencies and US brands, while finishing houses grade features and series shot in Ontario for Netflix, HBO, Apple TV and the Canadian broadcasters. The 12 studios below cover both, chosen for recent work, named colourists and an active Toronto base in 2026.

The post map has shifted over the last two years. Technicolor Group filed for bankruptcy in 2025, and Rodeo FX acquired its Mikros Animation business that spring. Company 3 Toronto now runs the facility that was once Deluxe. Picture Shop, part of Streamland Media, worked on 12 films at TIFF 2025, and its Toronto managing director Jane Tattersall is the 2026 recipient of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers' Bill Hilson Award. Remote grading has also grown: in May 2025 Nice Shoes set up a permanent remote colour suite inside Klick Health's Toronto office.

Every studio here has an active Toronto office in 2026. The list runs in no fixed order of merit, because the right colourist depends on the format, the look you are after and how you like to work in the suite.

The best color grading studios in Toronto

1. Alter Ego

Independent, partner-owned · King West · alteregopost.com

Alter Ego was founded in 2007 by colourists Eric Whipp and Wade Odlum with Greg Edgar and Alex Eaton, and was the first commercial colour facility in Canada to grade non-linearly. It works on Baselight and has offices in Toronto, Santa Monica and Vancouver. Whipp graded Mad Max: Fury Road, and the team's feature credits include Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Odlum won the FilmLight Colour Award for best commercial grade in 2022 for the Royal Ontario Museum's "Immortal".

The colour team also includes Andrew Ross, Kipp Lightburn, Lily Henry and Bree Brackett. Alter Ego has more than 1,000 credits on LBB, with clients such as RBC, CIBC, BMO, IKEA Canada, DoorDash Canada and Air Canada, and it worked on RBC's "Crochet" campaign in 2026. VFX and motion design sit under the same roof.

2. Company 3 Toronto

Company 3 network · King West · company3.com

Company 3's Toronto facility on King Street West was known as Deluxe until the business moved under the Company 3 name. It offers final colour, finishing, conform, dailies and sound for features, series and advertising, and can connect clients to Company 3 colourists in other cities.

Senior colourist Bill Ferwerda is based in Toronto. His credits include The Handmaid's Tale, Halo, Silo and David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future and The Shrouds, and he has received the Bob Mann Award for lifetime achievement in post-production. The facility's recent finishing work includes The Handmaid's Tale season 6, The Testaments and Shoresy.

3. Picture Shop Toronto

Streamland Media · Toronto · pictureshop.com

Picture Shop is a colour, VFX and finishing company owned by Streamland Media. Its Toronto studio handles dailies, editorial, colour, sound and mastering for film and episodic work, and it worked on 12 films at TIFF 2025 before hosting the Behind the Camera House during TIFF 2026.

Senior colourist Mark Kueper's credits include Fargo, Women Talking, Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, The Vampire Lestat and The Westies, and Brett Trider's recent work includes Brilliant Minds season 2 and North of North season 2. Other Picture Shop credits include Megalopolis and Thanksgiving.

4. Redlab

Independent, filmmaker-owned · Queen West · redlabto.com

Redlab opened in 2008 and is owned by a group of Canadian filmmakers. Its building on Soho Street has three Dolby Vision colour suites, Flame finishing suites and Dolby Atmos sound, and it is a Dolby Vision certified facility.

Colourist and owner Walt Biljan leads a colour team that includes AJ McLauchlin and Conor Fisher. Redlab graded several seasons of Schitt's Creek and has worked on CBC's Coroner and Workin' Moms, alongside commercial clients such as McDonald's, Toyota and American Express.

5. Urban Post Production

Independent · Leslieville · urbanpost.ca

Urban Post has worked from Toronto's film studio district since 2000, with sister facilities in Winnipeg and North Bay. The Toronto building on Boston Avenue is Dolby Vision certified and has five colour grading suites with 4K DCI projection and HDR, plus seven online suites.

The company works on theatrical features, drama series, documentaries and animation for Netflix, Prime Video, Apple and Hulu, and handles sound in the same building. Its teams have won International Emmy and Canadian Screen Awards, which makes it a practical choice when picture and sound need to finish together.

6. Fort York VFX

Independent · Distillery District · fortyork.tv

Fort York is a commercial post studio in the Distillery District offering colour grading, compositing, animation and motion design. Colourists Jason Zukowski and Jose Arturo Torres Salinas each keep their own reel on the studio's site, with work for New Balance, Lexus, TD and LG.

Erin Kuttner joined as managing director and executive producer in March 2026. Recent jobs include Rogers' Blue Jays campaigns with Michael Cera, Hellmann's World Cup spot with Alistair Johnston, and work for Dayforce, ATCO Energy and Skip.

7. Nice Shoes Toronto

Nice Shoes (New York) · King East · niceshoes.com

Nice Shoes is a New York creative studio that opened a Toronto location in 2016, with senior colourists working on Baselight and a remote grading network linking its offices. The Toronto studio is on King Street East.

In May 2025 it set up an always-on remote colour suite inside Klick Health's Toronto headquarters, giving the agency direct access to Nice Shoes' senior colourists. The studio marked its 30th anniversary in 2026.

8. Artjail

Independent · Dundas West · artjail.com

Artjail is a VFX and colour boutique with offices in New York, Santa Monica and Toronto, where it works from Dundas Street West. Senior colourist Clinton Homuth is based in Toronto and grades on Baselight after earlier years at Alter Ego and Notch.

Homuth's credits include Lincoln, Geico, Realtor.com, Google, Hulu and IKEA. The Toronto office added Flame artist Sebastian Boros in July 2025, and recent Artjail work covers adidas, Jeep, Domino's and KAY Jewelers.

9. Rodeo FX

Private · Toronto · rodeofx.com

Rodeo FX is a Montreal-headquartered VFX company with studios in six cities, Toronto among them. Its advertising and experiences division added a Baselight colour suite in Toronto in 2024, so that colour and VFX decisions can be shared directly between departments.

Senior colourist Ana Escorse leads the suite. She won the music video category at the 2022 FilmLight Colour Awards and sat on the 2023 jury, and her credits include Drake, Spotify, Mercedes and adidas. The division's campaigns include McDonald's, Tiffany & Co and Red Bull.

10. Feather

Independent, artist-led · Toronto · studiofeather.com

Feather is an artist-led post studio in Toronto working across VFX, motion design and colour, mostly on commercials and music videos. It won a Silver Cube at the ADC Awards for its effects work on "Possible Lives Here".

Recent colour and VFX jobs include Gantri, directed by William Ukoh, Zevia with Eoin Glaister and DoorDash with Henry Scholfield. Feather is a good fit for spots where the grade and the effects need to be worked on together in a small team.

11. kookaburra colour

Independent · the Junction · kookcolour.com

kookaburra colour is a boutique grading studio on Cawthra Avenue, with a supervised suite for up to six people and remote sessions for clients elsewhere.

Its work spans commercials for Hyundai and Voila, branded content for Coca-Cola, Goodfood and Benefit, music videos for Devon Cole, Sunflower Bean and Basia Bulat, and narrative films including Nine Easy Dances and This Is Why We Swim.

12. Mind Factory

Independent, owner-run · Toronto · mindfactory.ca

Mind Factory is a Toronto colour, motion design, VFX and finishing studio run by colourist Gav Patel, who has more than 18 years in post-production. He started at the broadcast design studio Crush and worked with agencies including Craft Worldwide and McCann MRM before moving into colour.

Commercial clients include TD, RBC, Hyundai, Chevrolet and Shoppers Drug Mart. Patel also grades documentaries and short films, including Peter Chin: The Blood Remembers and Copper Coins in 2025, and has a long partnership with documentary filmmaker Jeanette Kong.

What to look for in a Toronto colour grading studio

Start with the format. Toronto's finishing houses, such as Company 3, Picture Shop, Redlab and Urban Post, are set up for long-form work, with conform, mastering and the deliverables that streamers ask for. Check for Dolby Vision certification and projection if the job needs HDR or a theatrical master. Commercial boutiques such as Alter Ego, Fort York and Feather move faster across short turnarounds and many versions. Several studios do both, but each has a centre of gravity.

Book the colourist, then the studio. A grade depends heavily on one person's eye and on how they work with the director and DP. Look at reels for footage close to yours, ask who will be in the chair for the full session, and check whether an assist or a second colourist will handle cut-downs and versions.

Settle the technical pipeline before the shoot. Agree the camera, colour space, show LUT and HDR or SDR targets with the colourist and the DIT early, so that dailies, the offline and the final grade all start from the same look. Ask whether the studio grades in Baselight or DaVinci Resolve, and how it hands colour decisions to VFX if shots are going out for compositing.

Finally, plan how review will run. Remote grading is common in Toronto now, and many sessions mix people in the suite with others watching from Montreal, New York or Los Angeles. Clear rules on where reference stills, LUTs, graded exports and notes live will shorten each review round, especially when an agency, a director and a client all need to sign off.

How Fabric helps colour grading teams

Fabric gives a colour studio one workspace for reference material, graded exports and client feedback, with AI search across all of it. Each job can have its own shared space holding the treatment, the DP's reference frames, the show LUT and every version sent for review. There is a short primer on what a LUT is for producers and clients new to the process.

Exports and project files sit in Fabric's cloud drive, which streams files on demand so they take no local disk space, and heavy files open without a full download. Search includes colour search, so a team can find past grades and stills by shade using a picker or a description such as "teal shadows". Similar search compares images by composition, colour and subject, which helps when a director asks for "something like that job from last year".

For review, a graded cut or a folder of stills can be published as a web page with password protection, and link analytics shows when each named recipient opened it and for how long. Agency and client teams can leave threaded comments through a shared link without creating an account. Timestamped comments and drawing on video and images are coming soon; today annotations cover PDFs and documents such as look books and grade notes.

The grade itself stays in the calibrated suite and the grading software. Fabric keeps the material around each session organised and easy to share, with AES-256 encryption for files in transit and at rest.

Password protection and link analytics are included on Pro and Team plans. See plans for teams.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best colour grading studio in Toronto?

It depends on the work. For commercials, Alter Ego is the most established colour specialist, founded in 2007 by colourists Eric Whipp and Wade Odlum, who are still partners. For features and series, Company 3, Picture Shop, Redlab and Urban Post have experienced long-form colourists, and Redlab and Urban Post are Dolby Vision certified.

Which Toronto studios grade feature films and TV series?

Company 3 Toronto, Picture Shop Toronto, Redlab and Urban Post focus on long-form finishing, with credits ranging from The Handmaid's Tale and Schitt's Creek to Cabinet of Curiosities. Alter Ego also grades features, including Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

Can I attend a Toronto grade remotely?

Yes. Several studios on this list offer remote or hybrid sessions, including kookaburra colour, Redlab and Company 3, and Nice Shoes runs a permanent remote suite inside Klick Health's Toronto office. Ask the studio which streaming system it uses and whether it can supply a calibrated monitor or viewing guidance for remote viewers.

Should colour be booked separately from editing and VFX?

It can be. Many commercial jobs in Toronto pair a separate editorial house with a colour studio, while studios such as Alter Ego, Fort York and Feather handle colour and VFX together. For a single facility covering edit, colour, VFX and sound, see our list of the best post-production companies in Toronto.

What software do Toronto colourists use?

Baselight and DaVinci Resolve are the two main systems. Alter Ego, Artjail and Rodeo FX's Toronto suite all grade on Baselight. It is worth confirming the system early if your VFX vendor needs to receive colour decisions in a particular format.

Related lists

Colour grading studios in other cities: New York · Los Angeles · London · Chicago · Atlanta

More in Toronto: Creative agencies · Post-production · Editing · VFX · Video production · Sound design

Run your colour studio on Fabric: Fabric for video editors · What is colour grading? · Best video review software for creative teams