I use it in flakes. The great thing about that is you can make just what you need, and it's really cheap. Here's a mixing chart:

https://www.shellac.net/PoundCutChar...rr0xlEvm4kLCdx

I mix mine up in 1 pound cuts. I usually make a half cup at a time, which is 0.5 oz of flakes. If you doing it metric, you use 14g of flakes into 764ml. One nice thing about the flakes is that they last pretty much forever. Just drop them in alcohol and wait overnight for them to dissolve. I mash my flakes up pretty fine, and they are usually ready in a few hours.

To get the lightest color of shellac I think you have to make it from flakes (at least I haven't seen it any other way). The next grade darker (which is not much darker) is blonde shellac. That can be purchased as liquid in a 2 pound cut. It's Zinzer SealCoat which is sold at the big-box hardware stores. If you look at the fine print it says it's 100% de-waxed shellac. Don't by the Zinzer Shellac, however, because it is NOT dewaxed. You can use it as 2 pound, but I like mine really thin...which you can get by cutting the Zinzer with 1:1 with denatured alcohol.

The clear grain filler I have used is AquaCoat which (I think) is more viscous than the Crystalac product. It pulls a little, but I mash it back into the finish, and haven't really noticed a color change. Maybe it will work the same way with the Crystalac product. The nice thing about the water based clear grain filler is that it has no color of it's own so what you "pull" effectively becomes a "tint" as long as you keep most of the filler on the body.