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Could a single adjustment transform the entire mood of your photography? Discover how LUTs, often seen as a video tool, can unlock cinematic looks and elevate your images with just a few clicks.
We explore the terms and techniques of Photography.
Welcome to this deep dive. We're continuing our journey, building our photography skills, working through the alphabet. That's right. And today we've landed on L. L, and L brings up something, well, something a lot of folks connect mainly with video, right? Complex color stuff. Yeah, LUTs, L-U-T. You hear that and you think Hollywood, big grading suites, maybe something a bit intimidating for still photographers. Exactly, like, oh, that's for the filmmakers grading their footage. And this is the cool part. These tools, they are absolutely relevant, like, incredibly useful for photographers. For you. Oh, definitely. They're kind of a fantastic shortcut, really. A way to get these complex, very stylized color grades onto your photos changes the whole mood, like, instantly. And that's pretty much our mission today. We're gonna unpack what LUTs are, how they actually work, and crucially, how you can use them in your photo editing. We'll focus mostly on Photoshop. Yep, how to get those, you know, sometimes cinematic looks, but fast. It's a real creative boost for your toolkit. Okay, so let's kick things off. What exactly is a LUT? Right, LUT. It stands for Look Up Table. Which, okay, sounds a bit technical, maybe a little dry. Yeah, like something you'd find buried in code or a spreadsheet. Well, funny you mention spreadsheets. That's actually a pretty good analogy someone used. Think of it like a spreadsheet for color. Okay. Your photo has, you know, millions of pixels, each with a specific color value. A LUT is basically a list of instructions. It says, okay, computer, see this specific shade of red. I want you to change it to this slightly different, maybe richer shade of red. Ah, so it's mapping one color value to another one. Exactly. For potentially thousands or even millions of colors, it's essentially a really sophisticated filter. Or maybe think of it like a very specific pre-baked color grade preset. So the goal is speed. Getting a certain look without fiddling with sliders for hours. Speed, yeah. And consistency, too. If you want a specific... a specific vibe, a certain emotion across a set of images, a LUT helps you nail that down fast. Right, like that example you mentioned, Breaking Bad, the yellow tint for Mexico scenes. Perfect example. That wasn't an accident. It was a deliberate color choice to signal location and mood. A LUT lets you achieve that kind of specific, intentional look very quickly. Okay. I get the concept, this color map, but how do I actually, you know, use it on my photos? Good news for photographers, it's usually applied as a layer right inside your editing software. So Photoshop supports this? Oh, yeah. Photoshop, definitely. But also the big video editors, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, they all work with LUTs. But sticking with Photoshop for a moment, where do I find this thing? Okay, in Photoshop, you'll want to look at your adjustments panel, you know, where you find curves, levels, hue saturation. Yeah. There's an icon there. It looks kind of like a grid. It's called color lookup. That's your gateway. Color lookup. Got it. Yeah. Wait, how is this really different from just slapping on a preset? Presets change color and mood too. That is a really good question, because yeah, on the surface, especially for photographers, they can seem similar, but there are some key differences. So presets often bundle a whole bunch of adjustments together, right? Exposure, contrast, maybe clarity, highlights, shadows, plus color tweaks like white balance or HSL sliders. They kind of adjust everything at once. Right, like applying a whole recipe directly to the image setting. Exactly, a LUT though, is primarily focused on that color transformation, that remapping we talked about and the really important part for us in Photoshop, it's applied as a separate adjustment layer. Ah, the layer, okay, that's where the magic happens for non-destructive editing. Precisely, that's the key, because it's a layer, it sits on top of your image, it doesn't permanently bake the changes in and this gives you so much flexibility. You could adjust the strength. Exactly, you get that opacity slider on the color lookup layer, so maybe the full LUT effect is way too much, just look. looks weird, but dial it back to, say, 70% or 50% or even less, and suddenly it hits that sweet spot. Well, that's huge, just being able to blend it in. Massive difference. And you can toggle the layer visibility, that little eye icon, see the before and after instantly. Plus, because it's a layer, you can combine it with all your other favorite adjustment layers. So I could put a LUT on and then maybe add a curves layer on top to tweak the contrast. You absolutely could. Or maybe adjust levels underneath the LUT to prep the image before the color mapping happens. You can stack them up, build really complex looks piece by piece. Okay. That makes total sense. It's like the LUT provides the base color style, and then I can use my normal tools to shape it further. Now it's worth knowing there are different kinds of LUTs floating around, often developed for specific video workflows. But for what we're doing, applying a creative look to photos in post-production, we don't need to get too bogged down in all the types. Good. Let's give some of the super technical video stuff. Pretty much. You might hear terms like input LUTs or sometimes camera LUTs. Those are often used right at the start of a video editing process maybe to convert really flat looking footage like S-Log from Sony cameras into a more standard color space before the main creative grading starts. Okay, so that's more about technical conversion. Right. And then there are monitor LUTs or calibration LUTs. Those are used during shooting or editing to make sure the monitor you're looking at is showing accurate colors or maybe to preview the final look on set. Again, less relevant for us applying a look to a finished photo. Right. So we're zoning in on the LUTs used during post-production to get a specific style. What are those called? Those are generally called look LUTs. And within that category, you'll mainly come across two flavors, 1D and 3D. 1D, 3D. Okay. One sounds simpler than the other. You got it. A 1D LUT is the more basic type. It mostly works on the overall tone and saturation, like adjusting the gamma curve. Think brightness and contrast, maybe a general color shift. But it's limited. Yeah, the limitation is that adjusting one color channel, say red, tends to affect the others too. It's working along just one dimension of adjustment. You often see these with a dot loop file extension. Less precise then. What about 3D? 3D LUTs are where things get much more powerful, especially for creative looks. They operate in a three-dimensional color space. Think hue, saturation, and brightness, or luminance. So it understands color in more depth. Exactly. This means it can map specific colors much more accurately and independently. You can tell it, take this specific shade of blue and make it this specific shade of cyan, but leave the skin tones alone. Okay, that's the kind of control photographers would want, being able to really target the colors for a specific palette. Absolutely. 3D LUTs can replicate much more complex and nuanced looks, like mimicking the distinct color characteristics of old film stocks. These are usually the ones you see with a dot cube file extension. Honestly, for creative photo editing in Photoshop, these dot cube 3D LUTs are generally what you'll be working with. So let's nail this down for everyone following along with photography A to Z. The big news is, yes, you can definitely use those powerful dot cube files, even if they were made with video in mind, on your still photos, right inside Photoshop. Absolutely confirmed. It's a totally valid and really powerful workflow. And getting them into Photoshop, it's not some scary technical process. Not at all, actually. It's usually pretty straightforward. You basically just need to copy those dot cube files into a specific folder that Photoshop looks at. Where's that folder usually? It can vary slightly depending on your system, but typically you'd navigate into Photoshop's application files, find a presets folder, and inside that, there should be a folder called 3D LUTs. You just drop your dot cube files in there. And then Photoshop just finds them. Yep. Next time you launch Photoshop, or sometimes you might need to restart it, you open your photo, add that color lookup adjustment layer we talked about. And that's it. I hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please like, share, and subscribe. And if you want to see more videos like this, you can always click on the link in the description below. icon thingy. Right. Click that, choose Load 3D LUT from the Properties panel, and voila. Your installed LUTs should appear right there in the drop-down menu. And then click one, and Instant Style. Yeah. We already talked about tweaking the opacity, which sounds crucial. What else is possible with that layer? Well, you can play with layer blending modes, though. For standard color grading, normal mode at varying opacities is most common. But the real power, as we touched on, is combining it. Right. Stacking adjustments. So you can put the LUT on, then maybe add a Curves layer above it to punch up the contrast, or lift the shadows slightly after the color shift. Or maybe you put a Hue Saturation layer below the LUT to desaturate the greens a tiny bit before the LUT does its thing. Ah, okay. So it really slots into your existing non-destructive workflow. Yeah. That's awesome. It means you don't have to be a master colorist to get a really cool, sophisticated look. Exactly. It's a fantastic starting point, or even a finishing touch, especially if you're maybe not super confident with... intricate manual color grading yet, or if you just want to quickly try out different established styles, it democratizes access to looks that could take ages to build from scratch. And it feels like, well, it feels like a really creative tool, not just a technical fix. You apply a LUT and suddenly the whole story of the image can change. Oh, completely. And that's where experimentation becomes so important and actually really fun. The same LUT will look totally different depending on the photo you apply it to. Why is that? Well, it's remapping the colors that are already there. So LUT designed for, say, warm golden hour tones might look stunning on a sunset portrait, really enhancing that feel. Makes sense. But take that exact same LUT and put it on a photo taken on a cloudy day with lots of cool blues and greens. It might look muddy or unnatural or just off. Yeah, I think I've seen that happen. You try one, it looks amazing. Try it on the next shot. Total fail. Right. It's all part of the process. It's the LUT that clicks with that specific image, the light, the subject, the existing color. It's the LUT that clicks with that specific image, the light, the subject, the existing colors, and then using that opacity slider to blend it perfectly. Sometimes you hit that aha moment where a certain LUT just makes the photo sing, maybe at like 60% opacity, which leads to the question, are LUTs necessary? Are they somehow better than using presets? It sounds like they're not really a replacement for actually learning color grading skills, but they're definitely a powerful tool in the box, more than just a simple Instagram filter, for sure. Nobody's suggesting they replace understanding color theory or mastering curves, but they are incredibly useful shortcuts. They're fantastic for photographers who want to achieve complex looks without spending hours on manual adjustments. Great for beginners exploring styles, great for pros needing workflow speed or consistency for a client project. And that comparison with presets, it really comes down to that layer-based control and the specific granular color remapping of a 3D LUT, doesn't it? For me, as a photographer using Photoshop, that seems like the key advantage. I think that's a perfect way to summarize it, yeah. Presets are often broader, one-click adjustments affecting many parameters. LUTs, especially 3D LUTs used as adjustment layers, offer this focused, sophisticated color transformation that you can then precisely control, blend, and integrate with other edits. Neither is inherently better, they're just different tools suited for different tasks or preferences. Okay, one quick but important side note before we wrap up. If you start downloading LUTs from the internet, copyright is something to be aware of. Yeah, it seems a bit weird maybe because it's just, you know, color data. But some creators and companies put a lot of work into crafting unique LUTs and consider them original creative works. So they might be copyrighted. Potentially, yes. So especially if you download or buy LUT packs, just quickly check the license or terms of use, particularly if you plan to use them in photos you're selling or publishing commercially. Use good practice to avoid any unexpected issues down the line. Okay, so let's bring it all together. What's the main takeaway for you? LUTs are this really potent, fast way to apply complex color grades. To give your photos a distinct look. Maybe something cinematic, maybe something vintage, often with just a couple of clicks. And crucially, used as adjustment layers in Photoshop, they offer amazing flexibility. You can dial in the exact strength with opacity, and you can stack them with all your other familiar editing tools. Yeah, they're not a substitute for skill, maybe, but they are a massive shortcut and a brilliant creative tool. They help speed things up and let you explore really sophisticated looks, even if you're just starting out with more advanced editing. They kind of put pro-level color styling within easier reach. So we've really dug into LUTs today. We've seen how these tools, often pegged as video only, are actually incredibly valuable for us photographers. Understanding they're these clever color maps, seeing how easy it is to use those .cube files as adjustable layers in Photoshop, it really can be a bit of a game changer as you build your skills on this photography A to Z adventure. Hmm, and it really makes you think. doesn't it? If you can shift the entire color palette, the entire mood of an image so profoundly, just by applying a LUT and maybe tweaking its opacity, how does that deliberate color choice fundamentally alter the story that photograph tells? It stops being just a technical edit, you know? It becomes a conscious narrative decision, something powerful you now have easier access to.