Perfecting Color Workflows: A Q&A With Harbor's Head of Color Science, Matthew Tomlinson, on Using Colorfront Streaming Server and Gaining Creative Confidence
With extensive technical and creative expertise, Matthew Tomlinson is the head of color science at Harbor, where he services projects by ensuring color consistency from preproduction through final color as well as creative look development.
Recent credits include Universal Pictures' Jurassic World: Rebirth, A24's Babygirl and Materialists, Sony's Karate Kid: Legends, Apple TV+'s The Studio, and Season 1 of Netflix's Sirens.
How is color science evolving in film and television today?
We're at an interesting inflection point. Color science is no longer just about display calibration or LUT management. It's about dynamic, real-time fidelity across a wide range of formats, workflows and environments. HDR is now table stakes. Dolby Vision, ACES, IMF pipelines — these are all pushing us toward a future where precision needs to travel. And increasingly, that means rethinking how we collaborate when everyone isn't in the same room.
What's the biggest challenge when it comes to maintaining color fidelity in either hybrid or remote workflows?
Trust. The moment you leave the calibrated theater, you risk breaking the visual contract between the colorist, the cinematographer and the viewer. One of the trickiest elements is the display variable. Not everyone is on a reference monitor — many are on iPads, laptops, consumer OLEDs. So, the question becomes: How do you preserve intent in less controlled environments?
How is color science evolving in film and television today?
We're at an interesting inflection point. Color science is no longer just about display calibration or LUT management. It's about dynamic, real-time fidelity across a wide range of formats, workflows and environments. HDR is now table stakes. Dolby Vision, ACES, IMF pipelines — these are all pushing us toward a future where precision needs to travel. And increasingly, that means rethinking how we collaborate when everyone isn't in the same room.
What does Harbor do to solve for that?
We've spent years testing and building infrastructure that supports remote workflows without compromising fidelity. That includes carefully selected display profiles, bandwidth-aware stream handling and, yes, smart tools like Colorfront Streaming Server. We've worked closely with Colorfront to help fine-tune how streams map color to different devices. The Colorfront teams' willingness to collaborate is fantastic, and while no remote solution is perfect, we've gotten very close to the reference experience — especially for HDR review.
But it's not just about the tools. It's about how you implement them. Our engineers, colorists and producers build each session with a science-forward mindset — calibrated displays, color-managed outputs, the right technology and clear client guidance.
What are some of the key reasons you use Colorfront Streaming Server for remote review, and how has perceptual mapping helped deliver consistent picture quality across different devices?
We use Colorfront Streaming Server because it integrates seamlessly with our workflows. The under-the-hood perceptual mapping was critical in relation to helping multiple viewing devices, specifically the iPad Pro and M Chip laptops. They present an image that is a "perceptual match" to the hero reference device. This aspect helped immensely.
We are living in a day and age when it's not uncommon for there to be multiple viewing devices all in the same room viewing the same image. I will give a specific example. One of our clients had to be out of town for a large part of the color grading process but still needed to sign off on the image. We provided an iPad Pro with Colorfront Streaming Player installed and compared it to the reference display, the Sony X310. We were able to present the same image in both HDR and SDR. For his confidence, the client held the iPad Pro directly next to the X310. That was the absolute torture test — two distinctly different display technologies showing the exact same imagery. The perceptual mapping was key in this respect.
The Colorfront team has spent the time to understand the inner workings of the iPad Pro and how to interact with the device, bringing it inline visually with the hero display via the perceptual mapping. That small sentence has massive implications. It creates an environment of trust between the devices to a very high degree and has transformed remote viewing with color-critical capabilities.
In general, the concept of perceptual mapping is very impressive, and I love how those who are embracing the concept, like Colorfront, are really allowing themselves to think outside the box. This is the kind of thinking that could eventually help streaming platforms and grading tools deliver more consistent experiences, regardless of device — which, in turn, helps maintain creative and storytelling intent. But it only happens if we can trust that what we're seeing remotely is accurate.
What do you say to creatives who are skeptical about remote review?
Skepticism is healthy. We encourage it. But the answer isn't to resist change; it's to get closer to the science behind it. We invite our clients to test with us, to see how closely we can match their expectations. Technology is only as good as the team implementing it — and that's where Harbor excels.
What's next?
We're not trying to replace the theater; we're trying to extend it. Our goal is to make remote creative decisions just as confident as in-person ones, and tools like Colorfront help us get there. That means constantly refining our tools, our processes and our understanding of the way color behaves across different platforms.
Color science isn't static. It's a moving target. But if we get it right, we preserve the essence of the image, no matter where it's seen.
To learn more about Colorfront Streaming Server and how it can enhance your workflows, click here.