Day 10: 25 Insights in 25 Days New Year Marathon
Our Love Of LUTs
In this insight, I take a look at why people including myself love LUTs.
Sure we might not use them on a day to day basis but there is something satisfying about loading different LUTs.
A little excitement to see what kind of random result will pop out.
I feel like the reason we love them so much is they do multiple things at once.
Things like contrast curves, adding separation with excellent primary grades and some secondary corrections.
The downside is all of this is baked in and you have no control over it.
Another reason I quite like them for inspiration is its not a grade I did myself.
For some reason, other people’s looks always look better than my own.
For example, look at someone else’s showreel and I bet you feel like their work is better than yours even if it isn’t!
I think it’s human instinct or at least my instinct to always be hypercritical of my own grades and work.
How can I Inspire Myself?
My solution to inspiring myself without LUTs is in the video below.
It’s quite simple. I have built a giant gallery of all my grades.
The good, the bad and the ugly of my grades live in that library and at the start of the job I can quickly load it up and inspire myself.
What’s the point?
I still have all the node graphs saved also.
It means I don’t ever need to use LUTs to show my brain what a nice look on the shot would be.
The benefit of this is that as soon as I like something I can modify it or turn off elements of it.
I’d love to know what you guys think?
Am I too anti-LUT or is this a smarter option than wrestling with baked in grades via LUTs.
If you’ve got any questions, be sure to leave a comment!
-Dan
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