subscribe 0330 333 1113 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 23 November 2019 57
ALL PICTURES © GEOFF HARRISDISCOVER LUTS Technique
T
his time last year, ‘LUT’ was not
a familiar acronym to digital
photographers, but LUTs are
becoming increasingly popular
as an extra weapon in the photo-editing
arsenal. As with presets, LUTs are a great
way to give your images, be they raw or
JPEG, an instant one-click makeover that
can really speed up your editing as well as
deliver some dramatic, ‘cinematic’ looks
which can suit a variety of genres. One
of the best packages for applying LUTs
in Lightroom, Lutify.me, has just been
upgraded, but before going any further
let’s clear up some terminology.
LUTs stands for Look Up Tables, and
a LUT (pronounced loot) is basically a
conversion profile that takes a colour
value in your original file, looks it up in
a table and returns a new colour value.
So it’s actually not much different to a
monitor-calibration profile designed tocorrect the colours a monitor displays,
or a printer profile to produce accurate
colours in a printed photo. Here, though,
this conversion process is being used to
shift tones and colours for a creative
rather than corrective effect, and this is
an important difference to get your head
around. LUTs are very well established
in the world of video editing and
cinematography, but also appeal strongly
to stills photographers owing to their
instant effects and ease of use.A consistent look
So why use a LUT instead of a Lightroom
preset or similar? A big reason is that they
‘remap’ colours and tones in ways that a
preset, or tools in your software, may find
difficult to reproduce. Also, applying a
LUT doesn’t shift any of the image
adjustment tools in your software in
the way that regular presets do. YouThe look
of LUTs
Keen to get a more distinctive look for your images,
with more ‘cinematic’ colours and tones? As Geoff
Harris explains, it’s time to fall in love with LUTs
Adhil
Alternative Process
Another favourite Alternative Process LUT is
Adhil, which delivers a rich, dense and slightly
cold film look. The fine degree of colour
grading you get with LUTs could be time
consuming to replicate with Lightroom’s
standard Develop tools.
Hessex
Contemporary Color Films
For a more up-to-date, vibrant look, the
Contemporary Color Films again give an
instant colour boost, and Hessex is great
for deep blue skies (don’t be afraid to further
enhance this using the Hue, Saturation and
Luminance tools in Lightroom).Menkent
Teal and Orange
The Teal and Orange look has been
fashionable in cinematography for a while, and
you can now add it to your still images thanks
to Lutify.me. The key is to experiment and
regard a LUT as a starting point for further
fine-tuning depending on your creative intent.