Most pages selling LUTs won’t tell you where the format falls down. This one does — including the numbers we measured on our own files.
A LUT stores what a set of colours should become. Feed it a red, it returns a different red. Our files hold 65 steps per channel — 274,625 colours in all — and your editor works out everything in between by interpolating.
That last part matters, and it’s section 04.
Stored points ——— the real curve - - -
The dots are what the file holds. The dashed line is the grade we actually authored. Straight lines between dots are your editor’s guess.
Shooting D-Log, S-Log3 or Apple Log records a deliberately flat image so the camera can keep detail in the bright and dark parts of a scene. It is a storage format, not a look. Something has to decode it, and that decode is engineering rather than taste — which is why the phone, DJI and Insta360 conversions are given away free.
Doing it properly means two things, not one: the transfer curve and the colour gamut. Plenty of “conversion” LUTs only do the curve, which is why footage comes back with a green cast. We decode 18 log profiles this way.
Most packs are a folder someone exported from Resolve years ago. Ours are generated the moment you download them, by a colour engine that runs the grade as a formula — so the same look can come out decoded for your camera, at the strength you choose, at the density the job needs.
Curve and gamut matrix, not just the curve.
Eight times the samples of the usual 33, where banding shows.
Decode and look in the same file. No stacking.
Because a LUT is sampled, your editor interpolates between the points — and that guess is never perfect. We compared 60,000 random colours against the exact maths our engine runs, on the D-Log conversion at 65³:
Typical error is under one step in 8-bit — you will not see it. The worst of it sits in bright, near-neutral areas like open sky. That is the honest ceiling of the format, and it is the same ceiling for every LUT ever sold.
It is also why every pack ships a Resolve (DCTL) folder beside the .cube files. A DCTL is the grade as code: Resolve compiles it and runs it on every pixel, so there is no lattice, nothing to interpolate, and none of the error in the table above. Same look, exactly computed.
And one thing no LUT can do: grain, halation and diffusion. Those work on neighbouring pixels; a LUT only ever sees one colour at a time. Anyone selling you a “film grain LUT” is selling you a contrast curve.
If you work in DaVinci Resolve with colour management and a library of PowerGrades, you don’t need our decode — Resolve already does it, properly. And no LUT will match two cameras for you: that’s exposure and white balance, shot by shot, and it needs a person.
What we’re for is everyone else: 5 editors’ worth of people whose software has no colour management, who need flat footage to look right tonight.
A lookup table. It stores what a set of colours should become — feed it one colour, it returns another. A 3D LUT in .cube format holds a grid of those pairs; ours hold 65 steps per channel, 274,625 colours in all, and your editor works out everything in between by interpolating.
Because it is meant to. A log profile records a deliberately flat image so the camera keeps detail in the brightest and darkest parts of the scene. It is a storage format, not a look, and something has to decode it before it looks like anything.
A little, and only where the grade changes fastest. A LUT is sampled, so your editor interpolates between the stored points. Measured on our own 65³ D-Log conversion, typical error is about 0.0005 in the shadows and 0.004 in the midtones — under one step in 8-bit, invisible. The worst case, around 0.31, sits in bright near-neutral areas such as open sky.
No. A LUT maps one colour to another and never sees the pixels around it, so anything spatial — grain, halation, diffusion, bloom — is outside what the format can do. A "film grain LUT" is a contrast curve.
Not on its own. Matching depends on the exposure and white balance of each shot, which change from take to take. A conversion LUT gets both cameras to a correct starting point; the match itself is a person’s judgement.
If you work in DaVinci Resolve with colour management and your own PowerGrades, you do not need our decode — Resolve already does it properly. Take the look on its own, or skip LUTs entirely.