Exporting LUTs

A LUT export saves your whole grade as one file you can apply in DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, CapCut desktop, Photoshop and most other editors. LUT export is part of Pro Pro.

Without Pro, you can buy just the grade in front of you as one export, no plan and no account needed (camera LUTs come with their pack instead). After paying you can export it again for an hour, in another format or size. On a phone you pay in a sheet over your grade, with Apple Pay or Google Pay, PayPal or a card, and the export opens as soon as the payment goes through.

Exporting

1. Click Export LUT under Export in the left sidebar.
2. Name it. The name becomes the file name and the title inside the file.
3. Choose the options below, then click Export.

Options

• Formats: tick as many as you need. One downloads as a file; several download together as one .zip, and Luttie remembers your choice for next time.
  • .cube works almost everywhere; tick it unless you know you need something else.
  • .3dl is for some high-end grading systems such as Autodesk Flame.
  • Lightroom saves a Lightroom and Camera Raw profile (.xmp).
  • Capture One (beta) saves a Capture One style (.costyle) and the ICC profile it applies; see Capture One.
  • Panasonic VLUT saves a .vlt to load into a Lumix camera. It always has 17 points, and the camera applies it to V-Log, so grade with the source set to Panasonic V-Log; see Lumix cameras.
• Size (for .cube and .3dl): 33pt is the standard. 65pt is the most accurate, for fine colour work, at about 7 MB a .cube; if an app refuses it, export at 33. 17pt makes a smaller file for apps or devices that need one. Cameras take 33 at most.
• Also at 50% and 75% strength: adds two gentler versions of each .cube, .3dl and .vlt to the .zip. Useful when the app or camera you'll apply it in has no LUT intensity control. Not offered for a LUT with a log conversion in it: at 50% it would only half convert the footage.

What goes into the LUT

A LUT maps colours to colours. It knows nothing about where a pixel sits in the frame, so:

• Included: everything that changes colour and tone — Basic Correction, Creative (LUT presets, vibrance, faded film), Color Wheels, Curves and hue curves, HSL Secondary, the Color Space Transform, the film engine, and the halation and bloom from Film Effects.
• Not included: the vignette, masks and film grain, which depend on position. Add those in your editing app if you need them.
• Not included: the This photo only correction in Basic Correction, shown when several photos are open. It belongs to one photo, and the LUT is the look.

The grading order you set in the node graph is the order baked into the LUT.

Build the LUT on the right kind of image

A LUT applies the same way to every image, so build it on an image like the ones you'll use it on. For log footage, set the film engine's Source to your camera's log format, add a Color Space Transform from it, or start from a camera LUT, grade a frame from that footage, and the exported LUT will expect log input. See Log footage.

What the LUT expects

The export dialog says which footage the LUT is for, and the same line goes into the .cube or .3dl file's header:

• Rec.709: normal photos and video. On log footage, convert to Rec.709 first and apply the LUT after it.
• A log format (for example Sony S-Log3): the grade includes a log conversion, from the film engine's Source, a Color Space Transform or a camera LUT, so apply it to that camera's ungraded log footage and don't add another conversion before it.

It also stops you before the mistakes that make a LUT look wrong somewhere else:

• Converted twice: two of the film Source, a Color Space Transform and a camera LUT convert from log.
• A conversion below 100%: a camera LUT or the film strength turned down blends the flat log picture back in.
• A conversion on a photo: the grade converts log but was built on a photo or RAW file, which isn't log.
• Flat footage with no conversion: the clip looks like log but the grade doesn't convert it, so the LUT expects Rec.709.
• A log LUT as a Lightroom profile: Lightroom applies profiles to photos, which aren't log.
• A VLUT that doesn't expect V-Log: a Lumix camera applies the .vlt to V-Log, so a LUT built for anything else looks wrong in the camera.

Next: Using LUTs in other apps.