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I thnk I understand what a LUT is, but...

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I think I understand what a LUT is, but...

Can someone explain to me what a LUT is? Apparently it's something very easy to understand, although I'm not quite sure I get it. Even the "simple" explanations go right over my head.

People are adamant that they are not, and should not be used as presets or filters to obtain a final look, why not? If the look is nice, and what I am after, why not (Like Captain Hook's LUT - really like the look of it)? Are those people just elitists or something?

From what I understand, a LUT is used as a starting point for colour grading so that you know what changes are going to be made to your footage during the final step, EG: You have super flat prores footage that's going to be printed to film AFTER you colour grade it, only the print to film alters it, say with extra contrast and saturation. So the LUT you would use would be ONLY what the final print to film WOULD make: a bit of extra contrast and saturation. Then you colour grade it the way you want it to look at the end result, remove the LUT and you're done. Even though YOUR final image with have LESS contrast and saturation, when you do finally get it printed to film, it will look how you intended.

But just now (I think) I read that a LUT is simply a means to share colour grading info across different platforms much like an XML or EDL file for editing programs. So one dude in Resolve grades a clip, then gives you a little file that you import into After Effects and you get the same changes he made.
 
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As far as the use I've had for LUTs, it is just a mapping of one value to another.

In my case, I had to undo cinestyle, which is a super flat style. All my LUT did was map medium high values to high, and medium low values to low, like an s-curve.

In computer science, a LUT is just a mapping table and nothing else. I'm sure it could be used for sharing grading, too, as long as you start from a identical state for contrast and white balance.
 
In simplest terms, yes a LUT is just a reference mapping values from one range to another.

That's almost explicitly defined by it's name... LUT == Look Up Table

Essentially, what it does is says any pixels within this particular range, should be moved up/down/left/right this other amount.

Basically.. A LUT shifts the values of color, contrast, saturation, etc around. A LUT is not, really, a full color correction, but rather a method of intrepreting the source data of the image.

This should help: http://nofilmschool.com/2011/05/what-is-a-look-up-table-lut-anyway/
 
In simplest terms, yes a LUT is just a reference mapping values from one range to another.

That's almost explicitly defined by it's name... LUT == Look Up Table

Essentially, what it does is says any pixels within this particular range, should be moved up/down/left/right this other amount.

Basically.. A LUT shifts the values of color, contrast, saturation, etc around. A LUT is not, really, a full color correction, but rather a method of intrepreting the source data of the image.

This should help: http://nofilmschool.com/2011/05/what-is-a-look-up-table-lut-anyway/

If using LUTs, should I shoot flat?
 
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