Color Grading LUTs For Noobs! - LUT Basics and Techniques

hey guys this is Casey Faris thanks for checking out another one of my videos today I want to talk about nuts for people who have no idea what nuts are I get a lot of questions about how to use a lot what a lot does what's the best way to you know put a lot on my footage and here's the thing I feel like a lot of people don't even know really what a lot does or what it's used for here's what happens they'll see something like this online that's before and after of a lot and so this is black magic footage before a lot and this is after so they'll get all excited and go to any website they can find that has lots and download them and then they have no idea how to use them and so it can be really frustrating if you have no idea what you're doing so before we get into how to use lots and all the specifics of that I want to tell you just what a lot is so here's a bunch of Luntz from ground control these are available at ground control color comm and this is a pack called the vengeance pack now this is designed specifically for black magic footage so its footage that's shot in this log format that looks really great and washed out and it makes it look nice like this when you download lets they come in files like this they're usually a dot cube file but there's also other formats like three DL and mga and there's also several other formats out there but they're all basically the same thing and here's what they are so if I were to take any of these Luntz and open them say with notepad this is what it looks like it's just a text file with a ton a ton of numbers so if this is a let that takes blue things and makes them green this might be a light blue and it turns it into a light green so that's all a lot is now how you use a let is you have to have a program that will actually open it and apply it to footage you can't just download a lot and like double-click it and you know open up your footage or something like that it doesn't really work like that they're kind of like presets or filters that you use with an existing program so what kind of programs use Luntz you can use a lot in just about any program that plays with images and color things like that so premier will load Lots old versions of premier will load Lots with a utility called LUT buddy from red giant Final Cut Pro X will open lots with either let utility or a free program called fcpx LUT loader resolve opens lots SpeedGrade opens lots photoshop opens lets there's tons of programs that will open a lot and apply it to footage but a lot itself isn't software that you load your footage into it's just a preset for existing software and because a lot is pretty much just a text file it works on Mac it works on PC it even works on Linux you just have to have software that runs it and so there is no like compatibility issues if you open up your LUT folder on a Mac sometimes they'll show a preview that says dot exe and people look at that and they freak out and they go oh these are Exe files and you can't run those on a Mac here's the thing sometimes when OS 10 doesn't know what a format is it'll just give it a generic icon and sometimes that generic icon says dot exe it doesn't mean anything it's just the icon if you open up premiere or Final Cut Pro X on your Mac and you load a lot the way that you should it's going to work great so don't worry about that another thing people try and do is open up whatever app they're using and they try and import a lot just like they would import footage and of course if you go to your LUT folder you'll find that none of them show up because you can't import a lot that way it doesn't work that way remember a lot is more like a preset and you don't import presets this way you only import media this way so it doesn't even make any sense to do it that way here's how you do it in whatever app you're using there's going to be some type of effect that will load a lot for you in Premiere you can do that with the luma tree color effect and so if you open up the luma tree color panel under creative there's a thing that says look and you can go to browse and you can find the lot that you want and put that on your footage and then you can adjust it and do all sorts of fancy things but you have to load it through some type of LUT loading tool and the only difference between the tools is some of them will let you customize it like the luma tree color panel has a intensity slider that just multiplies those numbers in the LUT to give you a stronger or weaker effect let's have a look at another tool to load a lot to premiere this is called red giant let buddy this is available for free from red giant calm and I just drop it on my footage and here under my effect controls I now have let buddy and I can click this little thing right here I can load let's with this I just need to pick a dot three DL format so if whatever let you have has a dot three DL version that will work great and apply to your footage and look beautiful most let's can even be opened in Photoshop so in the last few versions of Photoshop if you go to window and adjustments there's a little adjustments panel here and this little table button to the right says color lookup and under load 3d let just click that and then hit load 3d LUT again and it'll open up and you can select your let and apply it to your image so that's the really cool thing about LUT is it's kind of like a color preset that will work in just about any program so you don't have to have a premiere three-way color corrector to use the preset something else about lots is there's there's basically two different types of Luntz there's a creative LUT and there's a utility LUT now here's what a utility LUT does here I have my flat BMD film footage if I go to look and browse and I grab BMD film to 709 it just takes this flat gray ugly-looking footage and makes it look good so that's what a utility let does the other type of LUT is a creative LUT and what that does is take footage that already looks good and just add some style so i have an adjustment layer over my corrected footage and if i go to look find a stylistic LUT like this let called charm this gives this footage some style it just takes this existing footage that looks pretty good and gives it some style and with any let it's important to think about the type of image that you're starting with this stylistic let is called a rec 709 lat and what that means is the image that you're feeding into it should be a rec 709 image which just means that the blacks are black the whites are white and the image has good saturation and contrast this image out of camera is called a log image and without getting into a bunch of nerdy stuff it basically means that it looks really bad so you don't want to start with a log image like this and then add a 709 lot because it's going to come out looking really weird but if I turn on my correction you'll see it comes out a lot better and that's because each LUT is designed for a specific type of image now this utility let that makes ugly images nice is designed for this type of log footage and so when you put it on this log footage it looks nice so there's a lot that's designed for log footage and a lot that's designed for 709 footage and the problem is depending on the type of camera you're using this log footage is going to look a little bit different footage shot in BMD film on a Blackmagic camera looks really different than protein footage shot on a GoPro and so I'm really careful to pick the right type of LUT for the type of footage that I have if I were to pick a protune LUT you see it's not going to come out as good even though it starts grade like this I put it on there this is designed for GoPro footage it's not going to look great on Blackmagic footage however if I were to take some protune footage shot on GoPro and apply this protune to 709 LUT it comes out looking great because it's designed for that type of footage at ground control we also have what you would maybe call hybrid Lutz which kind of mixes the two together so you can start with a protune image and grab a let's say from our rain protune lutz and at the end you'll have a pretty decent looking shot with some style applied to it and that's because it's designed for this flat protune footage so use the let for the type of footage that you have the last thing i want to mention is that there is no lot that works in every single situation all the time sometimes they need tweaking this is again shot in black magic in BMD film and if I go to my creative look here under the luma tree color panel and I find BMD film to 709 and I load that it looks good but it's still dark and the reason for that is this shot is dark this isn't going to fix every single little problem with your footage most let's are designed for footage that has good white balance and good exposure so if you have a problem with either of those you're going to have to fix that in addition to adding the LUT so I can add my let in here but it's a good idea to go into basic correction and pop up by exposure and I might have to play with these settings a little bit just to fix the problems with the initial footage and so now I have a really good result so for anyone that's had a little bit of confusion about I hope that clarifies some things for you and just a note if you're looking for some good let's check out ground control color comm we have tons of lots that are made for specific cameras like Blackmagic Canon GoPro we even have some new lots out for the DJI inspire and phantom 3 and the best part is if you click on free Luntz up at the top here's a whole bunch of absolutely 100% free Luntz for you to download and use as you please and hopefully it'll make your footage beautiful so thanks for checking out this video if you like this make sure to let me know by hitting that like button if you have any questions or comments leave them in the comments below and of course for more color grading editing post-production tutorials subscribe to my channel here on the youtubes that does it for me my name is Casey Faris I'll catch you next time you

Channel: Casey Faris

Views: 140,982

Keywords: how to install, ground control, 709, Color grading, LUT buddy, blackmagic luts, log footage, gopro, blackmagic, gopro luts, gh4, davinci resolve, rec.709, color grading luts, LUT, premiere cc, dji luts, look up table, protune luts, color correction, presets, drone luts, sony luts, rec709, film luts, gamma, how to use LUT, log

Id: UjQSaz_YgSE

Length: 9min 49sec (589 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2015