Matcha

How Matcha was built

Matcha was built to match a reference grade I shot in a Japanese garden, measured region by region on the scopes and then rebuilt from scratch. What the measurements showed, and what most green looks miss, is that the green is not one colour. In that grade a lawn in shade sits at a cool bottle green, the pond at a yellow-green jade, and sunlit leaves only go as far as lime. So the look turns yellows toward green by how much light they are in, not by what they are, and saturation grows with the light: lush in the shade, luminous where the sun hits.

Green-black, not olive

The shadows are where green looks go wrong. Push green into everything dark and the frame turns olive, while grey gravel and stone go teal. Here the green lives in the low-mids and drains out toward the floor, which leans faintly violet, so the deepest shade reads as a clean green-black. Grey surfaces only turn as far as their own colour allows, and anything that lands in the khaki band between yellow and green is turned on to moss rather than left as mud. Skin is held on its own: its hue and saturation are capped, so faces stay human instead of going orange or green.

Two honest notes

Two honest notes. It is dense on purpose: faces come out about 15 to 20 percent darker than shot, more when backlit, and on the Flat version, which is the one for phone, drone and GoPro footage, the whole frame reads dark, so expose a little bright or lift it after the LUT. And the top is matte by design: white never reaches pure white, and the brightest things in frame go a pale mint. That is what makes lily pads and sunlit leaves glow, and it also tints clouds, white shirts and city asphalt. It is a look for gardens, forests and greenery; on city streets or under an overcast sky, expect a mint cast.