LUT vs Color Grading -

[New_Zealand]

can you tell if the film was done in LUT or Color Grading? how much differences is there? Just warp up a short film and trying to decide, do I do LUT's? or do I hire a color grader to do the film?

 

[NorBro]

No, you can't tell. (That's the short answer because the question is too broad.)

But there are more benefits to having a specialist review a total body of work than just slapping on LUTs (and I'm saying that as someone who just slaps on LUTs).

 

[Doug Jensen]

can you tell if the film was done in LUT or Color Grading?

Those things are not mutually exclusive. Even serious color grading will often use LUTs as part of the grade.

A better question might be, "Can you tell poor color grading from good?" Yes.
Or, "Is dumping a LUT on footage going to be as good as color grading each scene by hand?" Never.

 

[jonpais]

can you tell if the film was done in LUT or Color Grading? how much differences is there? Just warp up a short film and trying to decide, do I do LUT's? or do I hire a color grader to do the film?

High-end films use both LUTs and grading.

 

[Bob Loblaw]

You’re going to have to color grade no matter what. A good LUT will only get you half way there. If you can afford to hire a professional do it, you won’t regret it.

 

[jmone]

This is a quote from Doug's FX6 Master Class where we were discussing Davinci's approach to Colour Grading. I personally find this much easier than a LUT (for the technical grade) especially when bringing in footage from different camera's / formats, and the the ease to produce both a SDR and HDR render from the same project. The video by Daria is well worth watching where they touch on the downside of LUTS.

....

On the editing side, I found this clip very informative esp the explanation given by Daria Fissoun regarding the Color Management In DaVinci Resolve 17 , she literally wrote the book on this for Black Magic on their Colour Mgt. It was good on how it all works but was silent on what settings should be used for rendering to HDR, SDR etc. I've reuploaded my HDR sample as I had to "Limit output gamut to P3-DCI" given the capability of todays display devices. My settings are below FWIW and the HDR output is now the same as that used by the production houses creating UHD Blu Ray disks. Using Davinci Colour Mgt makes it easy to make one edit/grade on the "DaVinci Wide Gamet" in your timeline/monitor then you change the output color space when you want a SDR or HDR version and Resolve does the mapping between the colour spaces. Nice and straight forward.

View attachment 143315

 

[New_Zealand]

when a colorist does the correction on the footage, what is the best way for the colorist to return the footage back to me so I can hand it off to the Visual Effects guy to add in his effects? I was given some different ideas to look at; export the individual clips in DNxHD for best quality(Loss less), or create individual custom luts that are easily apply them and add VFX

 

[Doug Jensen]

when a colorist does the correction on the footage, what is the best way for the colorist to return the footage back to me so I can hand it off to the Visual Effects guy to add in his effects? I was given some different ideas to look at; export the individual clips in DNxHD for best quality(Loss less), or create individual custom luts that are easily apply them and add VFX

First thing I'd do is speak to my VFX guy and get his input. Surely he must have an opinion and/or preference.
Personally, I'd export the individual graded clips using the highest quality ProRes codec that the VFX guy recommends.

 

[Noel Evans]

First thing I'd do is speak to my VFX guy and get his input. Surely he must have an opinion and/or preference.
Personally, I'd export the individual graded clips using the highest quality ProRes codec that the VFX guy recommends.

This. Just do what your VFX team ask for.