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The State of HDR Film Emulation LUTs

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    The State of HDR Film Emulation LUTs

    Color has been an obsession of mine for as long as I can remember. With the Sony a7s III in particular, however much I play around with the tint and temperature controls, the hue vs. hue curves, the color warper and the color wheels, skin tones still look video-ish. Would film emulation LUTs be the answer? While there are countless LUTs on the Internet, precious few are compatible with an HDR workflow. VisionColor and FilmConvert are both currently in the process of developing HDR LUTs; Light Illusion offers a wholly impractical solution for the budget-conscious; whereas Colourlab.Ai’s Look Designer LUT portfolio has been available for three years running. i had a chance to play around with it a bit and the results were staggeringly film-like, though I'm still trying to come to terms with adjusting contrast. Below is a glance at the various developers’ products, along with Paul Leeming’s highly regarded corrective LUTs.

    Colourlab.Ai’s Look Designer 2.0, a plugin for DaVinci Resolve, features a very deep collection of film emulation LUTs and works on macOS, Windows and Linux. A few of the many print stocks available include: Fuji CP 3510, Fuji Eterna CI 8503, Kodak Vision Color Print 2383 and Kodak Vision Color Print 2393. Negative stocks include Agfa XT 125, Fuji Eterna 8543 Vivid, Fuji Reala 8592, Kodak 5203 Vision 3 50D, Kodak Ektachrome 7294 Reversal and Kodak Kodachrome 40 7268. A tutorial explaining how to use Colourlab’s LUTs can be found here. Descriptions of the many film stocks, along with titles of some of the feature films shot on them, can be found here. The subscription service runs USD $24/month or $249/year. Try out the free trial version here.

    VisionColor is currently in the last development stages for ImpulZ 2.0 which will make the entire library of Film Emulation LUTs ACES and HDR compatible. Release is scheduled for mid September. They don’t offer anything that specifically targets HDR at this time and ImpulZ 2.0 will be the first HDR product in their catalogue. VisionColor has a massive selection of LUTs for a reasonable price, and best of all, they are not a subscription service! A listing of their current film stock library can be found here (click on the individual pictures at the top of the page to reveal them). VisionColor’s Hollywood LUT Bundle that includes ImpulZ™ film emulations (not HDR) runs USD $106. I used to use their popular Osiris LUTs back in the day.

    The good folks over at FilmConvert have a library of no fewer than 19 color positive, negative and reversal film stocks that are compatible with both macOS and Windows and their plugins work with Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve. They are in the initial research stages of how to implement HDR for their products, so they don’t have an ETA at the moment. They encourage those interested to sign up for their newsletter or subscribe to their social channels, as they’ll be sending out updates once they have something to share. As of this writing, a license for their plugins (not HDR) starts at USD $139. A free trial (not HDR) of their plugins is available here.

    Light Illusion has generated a selection of three ‘Look LUTs’ that can be downloaded for use in different graphics systems. The LUTs include True Film Emulation for Cineon/Log C & TV Legal Rec709 images, as well as an additional LUT generated via ACES data, also for Log C images. Cost is USD $13.90. These are not HDR. Steve Shaw, CEO of Light Illusion, says ColourSpace is required to generate HDR LUTs. The in-built film profiles can be used to generate any HDR LUTs. The cost of the software ranges from USD $868 for ColourSpace LTE to $4,064 for ColorSpace INF. We’re not kidding!

    CORRECTIVE LUTS

    Leeming LUT Pro™ is the world’s first unified, corrective Look Up Table (LUT) system for supported cameras, designed to maximize dynamic range, fix skin tones, remove unwanted color casts and provide an accurate Rec.709 starting point for further creative color grading. The Pro LUTs are designed for perfect Rec709 colorimetry and have a linear luma curve, with an average measured dE(2000) of less than 1, meaning they are visually indistinguishable from reality to the human eye. Athena LUTs are a brighter version of Pro, designed around how the eye sees, while retaining the same perfect colorimetry as Pro. Combo packs for Sony alpha, Panasonic G and S, Canon EOS, Fujifilm X, Nikon Z and Blackmagic Pocket cameras are only around USD $35 and best of all, updates are free. Paul Leeming assures us he’ll begin working on HDR corrective LUTs once he’s done putting the finishing touches on his Sony alpha cameras update.
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