February 15, 2026
OmniScope Featured Artist:
Tobia Montanari is a digital colorist, BMD Certified Trainer, Dolby Vision Professional, and member of the Colorist Society International (CSI). Based in Cesena, Italy, he runs his own color correction studio working on feature films, commercials, documentaries and other audiovisual projects for both Italian and international clients. He also serves as a professor at LABA, the Academy of Fine Arts in Rimini, and regularly writes educational articles on color grading and color science on his blog.
Beyond the grading suite, Tobia has been creating innovative web-based games for colorists — tools like Histogram Hero and Match the Grade that help students and professionals train their eyes while having fun. Nikon even used one of his games during live events to create challenges for attendees.
We sat down with Tobia to talk about his journey, his work, and how OmniScope fits into his workflow.
Tobia, tell us a little about yourself. How did you get into the industry?
I started working as a photographer and videographer for a local nightclub when I was a teenager, and later embarked on an artistic journey, graduating with honors from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rimini. I experimented with various media forms — from photography to graphic design — before my fascination with storytelling gradually steered me toward video production.
Between 2018 and 2019, I further specialized in post-production, focusing primarily on color correction. After several years as a DaVinci Resolve user, my passion for sharing knowledge led me to pursue a teaching path, eventually earning a Trainer certification from Blackmagic Design in 2020. One year later, I also became a certified Dolby Vision Professional.
Today, I run a color correction studio in Cesena, working on feature films, commercials, documentaries and other audiovisual projects for both Italian and international clients. I also serve as a professor at LABA, the Academy of Fine Arts in Rimini, where I've been teaching "Languages and Techniques of Audiovisual Media" for the past three years.
What projects did you work on in 2025?
I work across a wide range of projects — commercials, music videos, documentaries, fashion films — but the type of work I focus on the most, and enjoy the most, is narrative, especially feature films and short films.
Among these, I worked on Pretty Boys, a short film starring Doug Jones; Tracers, a sci-fi, action-packed short film; and Blooming Death, a horror feature distributed by Minerva Pictures, a historic Italian production and distribution company active since 1953. I also graded the behind-the-scenes of The Leopard, a TV series based on the famous novel and produced by Netflix.
Pretty Boys
Tracers
Blooming DeathIn the documentary field, I worked on a film about Donato Telesca, an Italian Paralympic powerlifter, following his journey to the 2024 Summer Paralympics.
I also graded several commercials for Poltrone e Sofà, campaigns for Terranova, a commercial for Trade Republic featuring Pecco Bagnaia (three-time MotoGP World Champion), and several advertising spots for Conad.
Poltrone e Sofà
Trade Republic
ConadWhat is your favorite project that you have ever worked on?
Difficult to choose, because every new project brings its own challenges and excites me in different ways, and I genuinely feel that I learn something new from each one.
If I had to pick one, I would say the behind-the-scenes of The Leopard. It was probably the biggest project I've worked on so far, and being part of a production of that scale was both inspiring and deeply formative.
The Leopard (Netflix)At the same time, projects like Tell That to the Winter Sea by Jaclyn Bethany, starring Amber Heard, were especially meaningful on a more personal level, because I was asked to create looks that were very far from my usual aesthetic. Stepping outside my comfort zone and exploring a different visual language was both challenging and extremely rewarding.
Tell That to the Winter SeaCan you walk us through your current color grading setup?
Why do you use and recommend Nobe OmniScope?
I've been using and recommending Nobe OmniScope for years, mainly because of its high level of customization, the wide number and variety of scopes available and its overall ease of use. All of this makes the workflow much more efficient, especially when I need to quickly check very specific aspects of the image with precision and consistency — skin tones, product colors, and more.
What are your favorite OmniScope features?
One of my favorite features is the freedom to build exactly the scope layout I need: I can add any scope, place it wherever I want and create as many instances of the same scope as I like. For example, I often use a black-and-white source signal to evaluate contrast, with overlays on top to quickly check safe areas and composition.
The skin tone scope is another tool I rely on heavily. I set up a custom gradient going from green to yellow to red, so at a glance I can immediately see what kind of color cast a person's skin tone has and correct it accordingly.
Quick masking that updates across multiple scopes is extremely useful, especially when working with skin tones or commercials, where I need to make sure that a product's color remains consistent.
Since I also work as a DIT on set, being able to load clips directly into OmniScope and check them without opening or connecting other software such as DaVinci Resolve is incredibly practical.
Integration with Stream Deck is another feature I really appreciate. Being able to zoom into the blacks on specific scopes, or open a single scope full-screen for precision monitoring, is both very powerful and extremely fast in everyday use.
As a professor, I also find it extremely useful in the educational field: showing the 3D color cube and CIE color space graphs while explaining color science concepts has helped my students grasp complex ideas much more clearly and intuitively.
In conjunction with the UltraStudio 4K Mini, looping the SDI signal makes OmniScope especially effective, because it doesn't rely on OFX or timeline-based monitoring. Once the setup is in place, everything works automatically and continues to monitor the signal even when color grading is bypassed, accurately reflecting the image before and after the grade.
Finally, although it's not something I use on every project, the QC tools have already helped me detect blanking issues in the past, which proved extremely valuable when delivering master files and DCPs.
What is the biggest challenge you face as a colorist?
Philosophically speaking, the biggest challenge is overcoming the fear of not being good enough. Almost every new project, I start working with the feeling that I don't really belong there, that someone else could probably do a better job. Over time I've learned that my goal shouldn't be to be "the best," but rather to do my best to bring each project to its maximum potential.
From a more practical perspective, one of the main challenges is translating what clients express in words into concrete visual changes. I've had clients asking for a "sexy" color, a "premium" look, or the classic "I want it cinematic," which can mean everything and nothing at the same time. But that's part of the job: guiding them toward a clearer visual direction. I usually ask for reference images and then extract the main characteristics from each one to build a common language.
I've also had clients who would constantly confuse certain terms, such as saturation and contrast, and every time they asked to increase saturation, I had to remind myself to work on contrast first and explain the difference along the way.
Finally, not really a creative challenge but a health-related one: reminding myself to stand up, stretch and let my eyes rest. After eight hours of grading sessions, I've even had clients joking about the fact that we both ended up in a "shrimp-like" position in our chairs!
What is your favorite thing about your career?
My favorite thing about this field is that it's constantly evolving. I never really feel like I've "arrived": every project pushes me beyond my boundaries and teaches me something new. Not always big "aha" moments, but often small discoveries that gradually improve my workflow and the way I approach the image, always trying to keep the process simple and solid, focused on storytelling rather than on tools.
