HAL Picture Diachromie and Diaphanie Color Grading Look and Texture Plugins – Comprehensive Overview

by Jeff LochNovember 26^th, 2025

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A new French company, HAL Picture, recently released two plugins for DaVinci Resolve and Baselight: Diachromie, for look development, and Diaphanie, designed to add texture to your footage. To learn more about these plugins, we went to Paris, France, to discuss the philosophy of their tools, their vision, and what’s under the hood with the three cofounders, Martin, Olivier, and Paul.

We receive requests to review color correction or color grading tools/plugins/LUTs at CineD very often, to say the least. As someone who has worked on many projects as an editor/colorist, I’m frequently the one asked to review them. However, when you unwrap the marketing of many of these “groundbreaking/world first” tools, I would say that 9 times out of 10, I can’t really see anything that innovative that would be worth a proper review. Indeed, as professionals ourselves, we value your time as much as ours, and most of all, we are independent and unbiased. In a nutshell, if we put the time and effort into a review, it must be a tool that brings something to the table, and not just another set of LUTs or a re-wrapped tool with a bunch of sliders.

Back in early November, I received two plugins from a French newcomer to the industry, HAL Picture. After playing around with the Diaphanie and Diachromie plugins, I realised very quickly that I was dealing with something whose technology and capabilities went far beyond what I normally use. It is rare for a tool to stop me in my tracks and make me feel like I’m the one who needs to catch up, but that is exactly what happened here. Because of that, I wasn’t sure a straightforward review would make much sense. A couple of emails later, and I was on my way to Paris, France, to meet up with HAL Picture founders and learn more about these tools.

Who is behind HAL Picture?

After a warm welcome with coffee and some croissants, Charles Bussienne, the general director of Polyson post-production, took me on a tour of their Parisian studios. But wait, what is the link between an audio post-production studio and HAL Picture? Well, first of all, Polyson now handles not only sound but also images, with complete editing and color grading studios. Secondly, after HAL Audio, which is well-known for its audio plugins and sound libraries, Polyson decided to launch HAL Picture, their R&D brand dedicated to creating innovative solutions for post-processing video footage.

At the initiative of HAL Picture, there are three industry professionals: Martin Roux and Paul Morin, both directors of photography, and Olivier Patron, a DIT. All three met each other during their studies at the Louis Lumière cinema school. After parting ways and starting their careers on a variety of feature film sets, they found, during the COVID-19 lockdown, that they all shared a common interest in color spaces and color theory. The idea to start working on color correction and color grading tools was born.

The story behind Diachromie and Diaphanie

Paul and Olivier, both with some coding knowledge, started building Diachromie and Diaphanie back in 2020, with Martin bringing ideas and expertise. The concept of both plugins was, at first, a bit simple: can we build creative tools that are a bit better than existing solutions and give more control to DoPs/DITs/Colorists over their images? It didn’t take long for the three cofounders to realize that yes, creating something “a little bit better” was doable. The project started as DCTLs for DaVinci Resolve and then evolved into creating fully-featured OpenFX plugins with fewer “limitations” due to their format.

After many iterations and sleepless nights, the three HAL Picture friends finally had functional tools: Diachromie and Diaphanie. The name Diachromie means “through,” or “through color.” It also happens to be the name of an old photographic process, so it’s a nod to that. The name Diaphanie, on the other hand, combines “through” and “phanie,” a suffix evoking transparency and the play of light.

However, Paul, Olivier, and Martin first started using these high-end tools on their own projects, with no direct interest in selling them. After seeing the enthusiasm and requests around them, as well as their use in many feature films, commercials, and music videos, the idea to refine the plugins and make them publicly available arose.

Diachromie – features

HAL Picture Diachromie is the company’s creative look development tool. As mentioned in our video, Diachromie works best in a color-managed workflow, and the company recommends working in the ACES color space, which is camera-agnostic. The plugin supports all cameras and color profiles, but it works best with footage shot in Log or RAW.

Diachromie is divided into four main sections:

• The Contrast and Color Tone Curves modules: Both modules benefit from dedicated 1D Display Curve and Color Tone Targets monitoring tools. These two modules let you finely and precisely adjust the overall contrast of your image, and then tweak the highlight/midtone/shadow parts of your image with Hue and Saturation controls.
• The Vertex Transformations section allows you to adjust R/G/B/C/M/Y colors with extreme precision using hue, saturation, brightness, color boost, color density, low saturation, saturation intensity, and bleach controls.
• The Effects module: at the moment, only the Bleach Bypass effect is available, but more should be available soon.

All of Diachromie’s transformations are built on mathematically robust models. This is very different from LUT-based systems, as it removes any guesswork and “black boxes” from the creative process. The amount of control Diachromie gives you over your image is impressive.

Furthermore, during a shoot’s preparation stage, when you are done grading your preparation/demo footage and are pleased with the look you created, you can also export a 3D LUT for monitoring on set.

Diaphanie – features

Even if HAL Picture designed Diachromie and Diaphanie to work independently, they work best when used together. After crafting your look inside Diachromie, you can use Diaphanie to add some texture to your image. Diaphanie offers four main features: spatial equalizer, grain, diffusion, and halation.

The grain module is highly customizable, as the grain is generated by the plugin rather than a “regular” stock grain applied to your image. You can adjust the size, how soft it is, the disparity and grain color, as well as where you apply it on your footage, for example, if you want more grain in your highlights than your shadows.

The most impressive feature inside Diaphanie is probably the spatial equalizer. This tool divides your image into zones of detail, based on what Hal Picture calls frequency zones. Once you have selected the zones of your image you want to affect, you can control the footage’s definition by increasing or decreasing the gain for each zone. That’s a potent and impressive tool, and I strongly encourage you to try it out.

Final thoughts

HAL Picture Diachromie and Diaphanie plugins are clearly not tools for everybody. Both plugins include presets to give you a starting point more easily. However, mastering the full potential of Diachromie and Diaphanie requires a learning curve. The company has many tutorials available on their YouTube channel to get you started.

The team behind HAL Picture has impressive color knowledge, and you can see it reflected in their plugin. All changes you apply to your image are based on mathematical calculations, and the amount of control you gain access to is close to unrivaled. If we use an analogy, Diaphanie and Diachromie feel like you have an entirely new set of brushes in DaVinci Resolve and Baselight that unlock entirely new creative ways. As hard as it is to describe with words, I strongly encourage you to download the demo version of their plugins and play with them to get what I mean.

Pricing and availability

HAL Picture Diachromie and Diaphanie are both available now for Windows and macOS users, and they are compatible with DaVinci Resolve and Baselight. You can buy each plugin with a perpetual license for €1,100, or the bundle for € 1,950. Several subscription models are available starting at €70 per month. Each license includes two seats.

You can download demo versions on the website for free, which are fully unlimited in time/features, but they include a watermark on your image and don’t allow you to export LUTs.

Obviously, these plugins are not for everybody and are designed for working colorists and color grading studios, even though the company plans to release simpler versions in the future.

For more information, please visit the HAL Picture website here.

What do you think about those two plugins? Did you download the demo and play with it? Do you like this style of comprehensive overview article? Don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments below!