Tutorials Motion

Creating and Using Your Own LUTs

Intermediate · ~18 min

Overview

Making your own LUT is straightforward and frequently the wrong solution, which is why so many custom LUTs behave badly. A LUT is a fixed mapping from input colour to output colour. It has no knowledge of your footage, cannot adapt to exposure, and bakes in every assumption present when you made it. This guide covers how to build one properly, what it can and cannot carry, and when a preset or a saved node tree is the better tool.

What You Need

A grade you are happy with, on correctly exposed footage
A grading tool capable of exporting a LUT
Test footage from more than one camera and exposure level
A clear decision about what colour space the LUT expects as input
A naming convention, because unlabelled LUTs are unusable within a month
Somewhere to store them that is backed up

Steps

Build the grade on a correctly exposed, corrected shot

A LUT captures the transform you built, including any correction of that specific shot's problems. If you grade a slightly underexposed clip and export a LUT, you have baked an exposure lift into it, which will overexpose everything else. Correct first, create the look second, and export from the look stage only.

Separate correction from look before exporting

Structure your node tree so that technical correction happens in one place and creative look in another, then export only the look portion. This is the single most important discipline in LUT creation, and it is what makes the difference between a LUT that travels and one that only works on the clip it was made from.

Decide and document the expected input

A LUT assumes its input is in a particular state: log from a specific camera, or already converted to Rec.709. Applied to something else it produces nonsense. Record this in the filename, because a LUT called "warm-look" tells nobody what it expects and will be applied incorrectly.

Choose the right resolution

LUTs come in different cube sizes: commonly 17, 33, or 65 points per axis. Larger sizes interpolate more accurately and matter for aggressive transforms. Smaller ones are lighter and adequate for gentle looks. Use 33 as a sensible default and go to 65 for anything with strong colour shifts.

Test on footage the LUT has never seen

Apply it to clips from a different camera, at different exposures, with different subjects and skin tones. A LUT that only works on the shot it came from is not a LUT, it is a grade. Pay particular attention to skin and to highlight rolloff, which is where bad LUTs break first.

Prefer a preset or node tree when adjustability matters

A LUT is fixed and cannot be dialled back except by opacity, which fades the whole transform uniformly. If you want a look whose individual components can be adjusted per shot, save a node tree or a preset instead. LUTs are for portability across tools and people, not for flexible in-house work.

Pro Tips

Never bake correction into a look LUT. It is the cause of most LUTs that behave unpredictably.
Put the expected input colour space in the filename. Future you will not remember.
Test on skin tones from a range of subjects. Looks that flatter one skin tone frequently ruin another.
Check highlight rolloff specifically, aggressive LUTs clip highlights that were fine before.
If a LUT needs to be applied at 40% opacity to look right, it is the wrong LUT rather than a subtle one.

Knowledge Base

What You'll Learn

A LUT is a lookup table, and its limitations follow directly from that. Below: what a LUT structurally cannot do, and when to use one instead of a preset.

What a LUT Structurally Cannot Do

A LUT is a table mapping input colour values to output colour values. Everything about its behaviour follows from that, including its limitations.

It cannot adapt. The same input value always produces the same output value, regardless of what the rest of the frame looks like. It has no concept of the image being underexposed, of where the subject is, or of what the shot needs.

It cannot be partially adjusted. You can reduce its overall opacity, which fades every part of the transform equally. You cannot say "keep the contrast but reduce the warmth". Those are not separable once baked in.

It cannot do anything spatial. Vignettes, masks, tracked corrections, and anything that varies across the frame are impossible, because the table maps colour to colour with no knowledge of position.

It carries its assumptions invisibly. If it was built expecting log input and you feed it Rec.709, nothing warns you. You just get a wrong image that some people will assume is the look.

These are not flaws. They are what makes a LUT portable between applications and people, which is its actual purpose.

When to Use a LUT and When to Use a Preset

The two solve different problems and are frequently confused.

Use a LUT when the look must travel: to another application, another facility, a camera for on-set monitoring, or a client who does not use your software. A LUT is a universal, self-contained format that works anywhere. This portability is the whole reason the format exists.

Use a preset or saved node tree when you will keep working on it. A saved node tree preserves the individual adjustments as adjustments, so you can raise the contrast without touching the warmth, or disable one element for a shot where it does not suit. Within one facility using one tool, this is almost always the better choice.

The common mistake is exporting a house look as a LUT for internal use, then finding that nobody can adjust it per shot without abandoning it entirely. Keep the node tree as the working source of truth, and export a LUT from it for monitoring and for anyone outside your toolchain.

Where This Fits

This guide covers one specific part of colour and grading. The wider picture, grading in Resolve from a technically correct starting point through building a look that holds up across a sequence, is in Color Grading in DaVinci Resolve, which frames the discipline as a whole and links out to the detailed guides underneath it, including this one. If you are starting from scratch rather than solving a specific problem, read that first and come back here.

FAQ

Q: What resolution should my LUT be?
A: 33 points per axis is a sensible default. Go to 65 for aggressive transforms with strong colour shifts, where the extra interpolation accuracy prevents banding and posterisation. 17 is light and adequate only for gentle looks. It is rarely worth the saving.

Q: Why does my LUT look wrong on other footage?
A: Usually because correction was baked in alongside the look, so the LUT is applying an exposure or white balance fix that only suited the original clip. Separate correction and look into different nodes and export only the look. The other common cause is a colour space mismatch on input.

Q: Should I use a LUT or a preset for my house look?
A: A preset or saved node tree for internal work, because it keeps the individual adjustments adjustable per shot. Export a LUT from it for anything that has to leave your toolchain: on-set monitoring, another facility, or a client on different software. Portability is what LUTs are for.

Q: Can I reverse or partially apply a LUT?
A: Only by reducing its overall opacity, which fades the entire transform uniformly rather than letting you keep some elements and drop others. If you find yourself applying a LUT at low opacity to make it usable, you need a different LUT or a node tree, not a subtler application of that one.