Do I Need To Use LUT’s?

What is a LUT?

The actual definition for LUT’s is very broad. To simplify this, I’ll break it down into a friendlier definition for videography and photography. A LUT, is a means of efficiently changing your input video colours, to your desired footage colours. They are often applied through filters, or nodes within Davinci Resolve. There are multiple different uses of LUT’s. One example is the use of LUT’s within your camera. When shooting in flat profiles such as LOG footage, your videos will appear very flat looking, sometimes making it difficult to properly assess exposure within your camera. Many cameras offer viewing LUT’s to while shooting to assist with this. Some LUT’s, especially for simpler video editing programs such as Premier Pro, transform your log footage to REC-709 footage within one click. These are known as input LUT’s. Others transform your REC-709 or accurate colour graded footage, into more stylised footage. These are often referred to as ‘Look’ LUT’s.

LUT’s are often one rabbit hole that trap beginner videographers and photographers alike. Some creators will say LUT’s are absolutely essential to creating a look and saving time from the editing workflow. Others stating that LUT’s are absolutely not necessary, that creating a look personally for each video grants you the most control, and ensures uniqueness. I’ve personally had a bit of a different experience with LUT’s. From working with them in Premier Pro, through to Davinci resolve. Testing a wide mix of input LUT’s, as well as look LUT’s. Here’s what I discovered.

Should You Use Them?

Now as with everything creative, this may not apply to everyone. If you have a different experience or disagree that’s fine. In this case, there’s no right or wrong, only personal preference. NOW, I’ve definitely had a mixed experience with LUT’s. From accidentally using the wrong colour space input LUT in premier pro, resulting in my reds looking pink. To creating my own LUT’s within Davinci Resolve.

Input LUT’s

INPUT LUT’s are crucial if you’re editing within Premier pro. Colour grading within premier pro isn’t as multifaceted as Davinci Resolve, having one click LUT’s you can apply to accurately transform your footage from log -> Rec-709 is extremely helpful. Converting footage manually to Rec-709 can be tedious, with often some colours and hues needing more saturation then others. To save time, and to have an accurate base grade to work on, these LUT’s are crucial. However, these LUT’s can sometimes be very difficult to find on your camera brands websites. If I could give you one tip, it would be to RESEARCH THOROUGHLY. Each camera often has different input colour spaces. This is not something that is often discussed with LOG -> Rec-709 footage, and is the trap I got stuck in. IF YOU USE AN INPUT LUT, AND IT DOESN’T LOOK RIGHT, IT PROBABLY ISN’T. Just make sure you ensure that the input LUT has the correct input colour space as well as Input Gamma. Now since transitioning to Davinci Resolve, I have found no need for the input LUT’s, rather taking advantage of the Colour Space Transform effect to accurately transform my footage to Rec-709.

Look LUT’s

Look LUT’s can be a very useful technique to help in saving time during your post-processing. However, I personally rarely find myself using look LUT’s at this point in my journey. Most of the work I’m doing is long-form, with a focus on cinematography. For this footage, saving time in post isn’t as high of a priority as it would be if I was creating more short-form content. The reason I opt out of LUT’s, is if I’m creating a look, I often have an exact look in mind. I like the ability to build this look step by step. It also helps me ensure that every video I produce looks different from the next.
However, if you’re at the beginning of your video editing and colour grading journey, look LUT’s are a resource I absolutely recommend. They allow you to produce absolutely stunning footage, quickly and safely. They allow you to have a higher turnover rate for clients, as well as your own personal media. Now they’re absolutely not essential, but they allow you to learn the whole process one step at a time, instead of having to learn to create unique stylised looks at the same time as all the basic grading skills within Colour Grading (Sorry to plug my store, but there are full start -> finish luts available in my store :P)

In saying all this, I do know multiple video creators that use LUT’s even at a high level of videography and cinematography, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. This advice has been given based off of where I currently am in my journey, and what I would’ve done differently if I had to start it all again.

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to message me on Instagram @torii.media , or email me at ToriiMedia@Hotmail.com . Thank you guys so much for reading this blog post!