ANNOUNCING: New Contributor, new Steal, Reduce Email Clutter, Retiring the App

Newsletter | 09/23/2025

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Announcing: New Contributor, New Steal, Reduce Email Clutter, Retiring The App

Hi, !

I haven't sent one of these emails in the past 2 months, so I hope this season finds you healthy. At Mixing Light HQ we've been plugging along releasing Insights, the weekly Color Grading Newsletter, pursuing new initiatives - and we are pulling the plug on an old initiative.

Welcome to our newest Contributor, Sam Lowe

It's hard to express my pleasure in finding Sam Lowe (via his talented wife, colorist and Contributor Kali Bateman). He's an experienced audio mixer who has spent two decades in the trenches, in client-driven sessions, honing his craft.

He also possesses the top skill required to be a Mixing Light Contributor: A self-awareness of what he's doing when he's working, understanding why he's doing it, and ability to communicate those decisions and actions to people like us.

Sam represents Mixing Light's further push to support the range of creatives honing their skills in digital post-production.

We will never take our eye off the color grading specialist. But colorist's don't work on an island (though it often feels that way). We are part of an orchestra. It's important to be able to hear our other orchestra members, and talk with them in a shared language. Sam expands our shared language into the auditory realm.

That's why the first topic I asked Sam to tackle for us was the shared language between Video and Audio creatives. Click over, and watch Sam's first Insight.

Mixing Light also has many members who are on smaller teams and need to perform multiple roles. My intention is for Mixing Light to grow to help our 'generalists' become more talented in the entire range of creative tasks that a tool like DaVinci Resolve offers.

Sam's Insight will remain in front of the paywall for the entire internet, so please do share it on your social networks. Premium members, it'd be great if you took a moment and welcomed Sam to our community in his Insight's comments.

New Steal for Premium Members: Filmlab AI

Dado at ColorLab is offering a great Steal for Filmlab AI. It's an advanced version of his machine learning color grading workflow. It allows experienced professionals deeper controls over how ColorLab's tools work.

But because of Filmlab's complexity, he's limiting access to the tool only to professionals committed to the craft. Normally, you need to apply to gain access to purchase the Filmlab platform. But Mixing Light Premium members can skip the verification process. All that happens is Mixing Light verifies you're an active Premium member and then we email you the details.

Mixing Light Premium members get (nearly) instant access to FilmlabAI, and a $100 discount.

Head over to the Deals & Steals page for the details. We try to process approvals quickly, within our normal business hours.

Reduce Your Email Clutter with Mixing Light Email Preferences

We recently implemented more fine-grained email preferences. If you like getting some types of emails from us, but not others - it's not longer an all-or-nothing option.

You can now click through and choose which types of common emails you get, and which you don't. No matter your preference, we still always email you about password changes, upcoming billing charges, and receipts.

But you can now control all of our other emails from this simple page, that is linked on all of our emails going forward.

The Mixing Light App Is Being Retired

Twenty-two months ago we launched the Mixing Light app. The goal was to make it easier and more convenient to access Mixing Light in your pocket. Very soon, the app will be discontinued for two reasons.

Primary Reason: Less than 10% of the membership base ever used the app.

Plus, across two years, only a handful of subscriptions were ever sold through it. Our members spoke with their actions - they prefer the desktop experience and they prefer signing up through a browser rather than the iOS or Android stores.

Secondary Reason: The app vendor has become unresponsive.

For most of 2025 there was a serious bug in the app, that the app vendor acknowledged - and then went radio-silent. Two months ago we stopped offering subscriptions because we felt the app didn't represent 'the brand'. And when taking into account member usage of the app, it became clear the 'juice wasn't worth the squeeze'.

At this moment, the Mixing Light app won't show up in iOS or Android store searches. In the next few days, the app will stop working entirely - as the monthly payment to our vendor cancels out. Shortly thereafer, we will delete the app - to the extent possible (the Google Play Store does not like apps completely disappearing, so on that platform it might be available - but it won't work).

Is there something new coming to the mobile front?

Actually, yes. And no. We spent the summer rewriting and adding code to Mixing Light to speed up both the logged-in and logged-out experience. The results have been objectively achieved. Mixing Light runs faster than ever.

We dramatically reduced server load while supporting custom, member-specific views of Mixing Light.

The plan is to take this a step further and version into a highly performative mobile-aware experience. We will present a content-focused version of Mixing Light when you're visiting on mobile (similar to the discontinued app). And we will present the full experience on other devices.

We will start working on that 1Q2026. In the meantime I have other promises to fulfill, including rolling out Consultations and updating the Resolve Fundamentals courses.

Thanks for reading this far!

I know: This was a long email. I'll try to write these more frequently, to keep them shorter. In the meantime...

Scroll down to read recent additions to the Mixing Light Tutorial Library that you may have missed.

Sincerely,
Patrick Inhofer
Chief Photon Wrangler, MixingLight.com