Comparing ARRI’s New LUTs To ‘Resolve Color Management’

November 22, 2022

Learn to customize the built-in color management workflow of Resolve with quality external LUTs. This series begins with ARRI's LogC4 LUT.


Custom Color Management Part 1: How to think about building your color management pipeline

In this Insight, I’m kicking off a new series on custom color management! We’ll be answering the question:

How you can take control of your imaging pipeline beyond what’s offered to us “off the shelf” by systems like ACES and Resolve Color Management (RCM)?

Here in Part 1, we’re looking at the potential use of ARRI’s new LogC4 to Rec709 LUT – even if our source material isn’t Alexa 35! We first implement Resolve’s built-in ARRI transforms using the venerable Color Space Transform (CST) plugin. Then we compare that to executing the same basic color management pipeline but incorporating the ARRI LUT.

Understanding the concept of a color pipeline shootout

Every project we tackle as colorists has unique needs. Sometimes the reproduction produced by one color management framework (ACES, RCM) doesn’t get us as close to our creative intent as it could. In these situations, it’s helpful to have various options ready to audition and stage a “shoot-out” to see which best supports our vision (and that of our clients!).

Key Takeaways from this Insight

By the end of this Insight, you should understand:

  • How equivalent pipelines in different color management systems will produce different images
  • Why it’s useful to think of color management as a creative foundation and to optimize your color management
  • How to use transforms like Arri’s new LogC4 to 709 LUT as alternative color management – even if your footage isn’t Alexa 35!

Links mentioned in this Insight

Related Mixing Light Insights

– Cullen


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Comments

Homepage Forums Comparing ARRI’s New LUTs To ‘Resolve Color Management’

  • This is super interesting! Looking forward to following parts.


  • Cullen Kelly
    Member

    Glad you found this useful Teemu! Some cool stuff ahead in this series.

  • Hi Cullen,

    Very interrested way of working ! However, I have a a question: how do you set up the shots if you want to go in Fusion? Because Fusion is prior of grading, do you simply use the usual sandwich log-to-lin? For instance if my shot is Slog3  / SGamutCine.3, I would tempt to use the cineon node and set up for sony


  • Cullen Kelly
    Member

    Hey Guillaume! Within Fusion you can of course move between color spaces/tone curves as needed, but I’d set up the comp so that the final image out of Fusion and going into Color is in the original color space, e.g. S-Log3/S-Gamut3.Cine in your example. Hope this helps!


  • Scott Stacy
    Member

    Nice Insight, Cullen!  And, as mentioned, another shootout option when considering your project CM pipeline.  Cool.


  • Cullen Kelly
    Member

    Thanks Scott, glad you enjoyed it! And yes, always good to have another candidate for a ‘shootout’ scenario!

  • What was your Project Settings > Color Management > Color Space and Transforms settings when you did this node based pipeline? I know your Color Science was DaVinci YRGB but I’m usually confused as to what the Timeline Color Space should be and why? I assume that your Timeline Color Space is DaVinci/WG Intermediate or LogC4?

    Thank you for your time and work.


    • Cullen Kelly
      Member

      Apologies I missed your question Maurice! Timeline color space in this case should be DWG Intermediate. Hope this helps!

  • Is there a technical reason why ARRI LogC4 LUT package does not contain any HLG and PQ LUTs with 200nit diffuse white? Did I miss a memo that the color world has gone back to only 100nit diffuse white as the standard?


    • Cullen Kelly
      Member

      Hey James! There are PQ LUTs included in the package, but TBH I’m not sure where they place diffuse white.

      • The level of diffuse white is included in the name of the LUTs as either “DW100″ or ‘DW200”, as explained in the PDF that comes with the LUT package download. The LogC3 LUT package includes both DW100 and DW200 LUT variants, while the LogC4 LUT package only includes DW100 variants.

        • This reply was modified 3 months, 1 week ago by  Jamie LeJeune.

  • Cullen Kelly
    Member

    Interesting, thanks for sharing! I can’t speak to Arri’s thinking, but diffuse white level level is obviously more of a recommendation than a standard, and they may have found that there’s not much appetite for that higher level.

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