Significance of the .lut S Curve in conjunction with the new Technicolor profile?

H

HansSteinert

Well-known member
The footage straight out of the camera with the Technicolor Cinestyle picture profile looks very good for grading. I'm a little confused at what I'm supposed to do with the .lut file. When I apply it, it adds contrast. Isn't that exactly what I don't want for grading since it reduces the latitude that I originally gained?

I'm clearly misunderstanding something, so if any experts could explain the significance of the .lut file, and how I should use it in post production while grading my footage, I would really appreciate it.
 
After Effects + magic bullet lut plug-in

I'm confused on whether I should apply it on top of my grade, under my grade, or if I should only apply it as a substitute for grading.
 
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what I will do is the following: apply it to get nice colors back, then tweak adding effects below the lut

after applying the LUT, you get something that's very similar to having shot with neutral picture style and contrast=-2
http://www.similaar.com/foto/picturestyles/picturestyles.html
but in this case you didn't destroy any detail in the shadows or highlights: it's there, and you can use it by playing with color grading tools that are applied below the LUT correction

if you're a good colorist, who can recover nice colors back from an ultra flat image, you'll want to skip the LUT completely and do all the grading yourself; with my limited abilities, this LUT thing is what makes shooting so flat viable in the first place (with all previous ultra flat picture styles, all I got on my final images were clay-like skin tones)

keep in mind: in exchange for this extra dynamic range, you're adding some noise and artifacts to your images: the 256 tones that the codec can store now have to be spread over a wider DR, and sharpening and codec artifacts will also be more noticeable
 
oh, and, by the way: if you open the .lut file in a text editor, you'll see it's just an S curve, same one for each RGB channel; you can apply it yourself and you'll get nice skin tones back from your ultra flat footage, no LUT needed

so now even I can recover nice skin tones out of ultra flat footage, even without the LUT shortcut; I think this is a first

more info here
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?247598-New-Technicolor-Profile-Is-Amazing/page5
 
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