Thank you Cullen. The last 2 videos have been so helpful, it have clear some of my confusion. I'm getting better results and I feel more confident about my color grading skills. Thanks again, you are amazing.
Good and helpful video. Thank you! I'm at a point in my journey where I have avoided LUTs because I wasn't using them properly. I've just started experimenting with them again and been pleased with the result. Feeding a balanced image into the LUT makes a big difference 😂
Thanks for the video! Just found you channel and started working with log footage. Was looking for world class coloring resources online and your yt channel was most recommended online. I can agree with that!
Hi Cullen. I'm wondering if there's a reason that you do the initial exposure, contrast and colour balance/ saturation nodes in series and not in parallel. Sometimes if I feel a clip is too bright or dark or the contrast isn't looking right and I adjust the first node in the chain sometimes I end up tweaking the nodes that come after it. Also just for the sake of having a more compact node tree. Thanks for all the videos too. You've really helped me along with grading and appreciating how colour works.
Great question! No, balancing with HDR Global vs linear gain will give you quite different results, and I prefer linear gain. (This can be confusing because if you're only adjusting exposure, HDR Global and linear gain are identical)
@@CullenKellyHey Cullen! Thank you for replying!! Do you suggest putting the linear gain balance node in front of or after exposure adjustment? Or is there no difference? Thanks
It would be great to know how you determine if the LUTs are reliable. So how can you take a LUT and find out if it's not changing the middle grey value? Or what is the process of making a reliable LUT for your own needs?
There's only one way to know for sure: test. Personally, I have a project file that I typically use to make and test lookdev LUTs. It has a lot of beautiful footage, as well as some really difficult footage that break very easily if not treated right. If a LUT gets a 100% score, it's great. 97-99% is acceptable for random internet LUTs.
@@ayoubthegreat Another technique used to evaluate Luts, is to view them in a cube displaying the colour space and the effect of the Lut matrix upon that colourspace. Problems are often revealed when a lut pushes the pixels beyond the boundaries of the cube, or creates jagged holes, nasty clumping or fold backs. Basically you look for hues and saturations to be adjusted smooth and clean. Another way is to obtain your creative (and camera >>rec.709) Luts from known good sources (note it is not uncommon for camera manufacturer Luts to break on less than ideal media.) Or you can build your own with a creative tool like Cullen’s Contour plugin which is designed to stay within colourspace bounds and retain middle grey. This costs a bit to buy however. And using that tool comes with a few helpful extras like a training video, a series of test images, and it has a built in cube generator to look at your lut through a different perspective. Several of his recent videos refer back to this plugin. So if you are a commercial colourist this may be you next best investment after software scopes. Ultimately though every lut has a task it excels at, and your eyes will tell you if the image is being made ugly. One of the easiest signs the lut is wrong is in low bit rate footage that is fragile and goes blocky or begins to smear, or colours jump inconsistently as saturation increases. The most reliable lut is the one that serves your present project well in every shot, despite baby colourist fingerprinting underneath. Early daysI made a very bad lut, that worked well until very pink faces in broad sunlight appeared and then the images became weird, and sunburnt would be an understatement. So one checks and rechecks before simply slapping. And your scopes can help ID bad Luts too. Cullen has demonstrated using his exposure chart DCTl to pin middle grey in the curves many times in the past year.
For a demo on how to check whether a LUT preserves mid gray, check out this week's Grade School: th-cam.com/users/liveyjyUdiCOvkg?si=egRDRwDZ740Qv1EB&t=1888 Re reliable LUTs, I can vouch 100% for my Voyager LUTs since I built them, and you can also explore building your own LUTs/looks using my new look development plugin Contour (which will automatically preserve mid gray).
Great question! For balance, linear gain vs HDR global are actually quite different, and I prefer linear gain. For exposure, the two are identical. (I know, kinda confusing!)
@@CullenKelly I think this distinction might offer the kernel of yet another grade school. I am not sure I am on the same page in regards to the term “balance” used here. The other day you discussed using linear in separate nodes set to composite mode luminance ( for exposure) and composit mode color for balance. Have I missed something?
Great question! I compare the two and discuss my preference for Global Exposure here: th-cam.com/video/pRCd1VkmycQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=9B085wfPX14Cl4Ve&t=462
Thanks, Cullen!! It's always good learning from you! Just wondering if I could contact via email if I have a question about colour grading work. Or here is better? many thanks!
Depends on which 2383 -- for example, my free DWG 2383 is an isolated look LUT, but it's unusual in that respect. Most FPEs are going to combine a creative look with a technical transform, meaning they can't be slotted into a color managed workflow. Hope this helps!
Depends on the LUT! That's why it's so important to know what a LUT is set up to to do -- otherwise you're shooting blind and almost certain to have a mismatch between what the LUT expects/returns vs the way you're actually using it...
Phantom luts by Joel Famularo are my go to...for months now. Have never come across something like that ever. Would love to try out the voyager luts. 👍✅🔥
LUTs are a scam. No two scenes are close enough for a LUT to be applied to both. You end up spending as much time tweaking your LUT to achieve consistency as it would take to just do it from scratch.
Not true. One uses a lut to establish commonality between shots and scenes. The Lut’s job is not to make them look the same, it is to make them feel like they were shot on the same planet. A good lut might subtly twist hues in the reds towards yellow, and clamp in the greens. It will then do so precisely the same across all shots it is applied to. Like when wearing pink sun glasses everywhere your eyes end up doing some high level colour grading and exposure control under the pink shaded look the sunglasses applied. Take the sunglasses off after wearing them for 18 hours and the world just looks subtly wrong -until your eyes regrade the image. I think of good Luts as a multiplier -of both- problems and beauty. Making it easier to spot when you’re grading in the wrong direction, and easier to see when approaching the aesthetic sweet zone. The trick is to know when not to tweak anymore. To move between shots often and grade in passes to avoid fixating. As for tweaking the lut itself well that is another task and skill set altogether to grading.
Yes. It is true that you need to work with the LUT. But if all the shots use the same few or one show LUT. You spend less time recreating that specific look for each shot and can concentrate on balancing and fun stuff like relighting. I tend to not use LUTs per se in my own stuff... But... I do keep film look creator on an adjustment clip above my edit... And that is technically a LUT itself. It's just a bit more flexible than a single LUT file. LUTs are essentially like choosing negative and print stock combos. You still need to light and color time correctly. But you set in a few overarching transforms that are predictable.
I'd say that depends on what you're expecting from the LUT. Going by the philosophy I describe in this and other videos, there's zero work required to achieve consistency with your LUT, as it's by definition perfectly consistent across every shot. You of course still need to grade underneath, but that's the main theme of this video...
Haha I love the film look creator... An always-on for me too. But one thing that annoys me is that it desaturates the reds... I had a shoot with fire engines in it a few days ago, and I had to change everything up... Unusable with the film look creator
Subtle gradients in a low-key frame combined with 8 bit can definitely be tricky 😉. The noise you're seeing is actually added in to fight the resultant banding...
Understanding how to consider and use a properly made LUT is a real confidence builder. Thank you for sharing and caring.
The godfather of teaching color grading hands down
You are a great teacher Austin was right. Thank you.
So, I put ketchup on my wife’s meal and dial it in with salt and pebber😊
Thank you Cullen. The last 2 videos have been so helpful, it have clear some of my confusion. I'm getting better results and I feel more confident about my color grading skills. Thanks again, you are amazing.
Good and helpful video. Thank you! I'm at a point in my journey where I have avoided LUTs because I wasn't using them properly. I've just started experimenting with them again and been pleased with the result. Feeding a balanced image into the LUT makes a big difference 😂
Thanks for the video! Just found you channel and started working with log footage. Was looking for world class coloring resources online and your yt channel was most recommended online. I can agree with that!
Welcome to the channel!
Hi Cullen, amazing work as always. You may help people in terms of “reliable” LUTs by showing how you actually stress-test one.
Is it just me? or does ur voice just SOOTH all my grading anxieties!
Excellent video - confirms that I have been doing it right. Thanks.
Hey Cullen! How do you preview each lut in the full screen without having to move the cursor over the lut?
thanks man
Hi Cullen. I'm wondering if there's a reason that you do the initial exposure, contrast and colour balance/ saturation nodes in series and not in parallel. Sometimes if I feel a clip is too bright or dark or the contrast isn't looking right and I adjust the first node in the chain sometimes I end up tweaking the nodes that come after it. Also just for the sake of having a more compact node tree. Thanks for all the videos too. You've really helped me along with grading and appreciating how colour works.
Incredibly useful ❤
Does the HDR global wheel give you similar results as the gain wheel in linear mode when adjusting the color balance?
Not wanting to give a wrong information but I believe he made a video the previous months explaining that HDR Global and Linear Gain are the same
@@VfxKopele Thank you! I will check that out.
Great question! No, balancing with HDR Global vs linear gain will give you quite different results, and I prefer linear gain. (This can be confusing because if you're only adjusting exposure, HDR Global and linear gain are identical)
@@CullenKelly 🤯Good to know! Thanks Cullen!
@@CullenKellyHey Cullen! Thank you for replying!! Do you suggest putting the linear gain balance node in front of or after exposure adjustment? Or is there no difference? Thanks
I can’t hold it in any more.
Have you seen the film Fantastic Beasts and where to find them? 😇😇
It would be great to know how you determine if the LUTs are reliable. So how can you take a LUT and find out if it's not changing the middle grey value? Or what is the process of making a reliable LUT for your own needs?
There's only one way to know for sure: test. Personally, I have a project file that I typically use to make and test lookdev LUTs. It has a lot of beautiful footage, as well as some really difficult footage that break very easily if not treated right. If a LUT gets a 100% score, it's great. 97-99% is acceptable for random internet LUTs.
@@ayoubthegreat Another technique used to evaluate Luts, is to view them in a cube displaying the colour space and the effect of the Lut matrix upon that colourspace. Problems are often revealed when a lut pushes the pixels beyond the boundaries of the cube, or creates jagged holes, nasty clumping or fold backs. Basically you look for hues and saturations to be adjusted smooth and clean.
Another way is to obtain your creative (and camera >>rec.709) Luts from known good sources (note it is not uncommon for camera manufacturer Luts to break on less than ideal media.)
Or you can build your own with a creative tool like Cullen’s Contour plugin which is designed to stay within colourspace bounds and retain middle grey. This costs a bit to buy however. And using that tool comes with a few helpful extras like a training video, a series of test images, and it has a built in cube generator to look at your lut through a different perspective. Several of his recent videos refer back to this plugin. So if you are a commercial colourist this may be you next best investment after software scopes.
Ultimately though every lut has a task it excels at, and your eyes will tell you if the image is being made ugly. One of the easiest signs the lut is wrong is in low bit rate footage that is fragile and goes blocky or begins to smear, or colours jump inconsistently as saturation increases.
The most reliable lut is the one that serves your present project well in every shot, despite baby colourist fingerprinting underneath. Early daysI made a very bad lut, that worked well until very pink faces in broad sunlight appeared and then the images became weird, and sunburnt would be an understatement. So one checks and rechecks before simply slapping. And your scopes can help ID bad Luts too.
Cullen has demonstrated using his exposure chart DCTl to pin middle grey in the curves many times in the past year.
For a demo on how to check whether a LUT preserves mid gray, check out this week's Grade School: th-cam.com/users/liveyjyUdiCOvkg?si=egRDRwDZ740Qv1EB&t=1888
Re reliable LUTs, I can vouch 100% for my Voyager LUTs since I built them, and you can also explore building your own LUTs/looks using my new look development plugin Contour (which will automatically preserve mid gray).
@@CullenKelly hey that's amazing! Thank you for the link with the timestamp too 💙
One of the video for color balnace you use linear node and gain wheel is the same hdr global wheel? Thanks!
I noticed this as well, I believe that it’s the same-just another method of doing it-but I’m curious to know for certain.
Great question! For balance, linear gain vs HDR global are actually quite different, and I prefer linear gain. For exposure, the two are identical. (I know, kinda confusing!)
@@CullenKelly I think this distinction might offer the kernel of yet another grade school.
I am not sure I am on the same page in regards to the term “balance” used here. The other day you discussed using linear in separate nodes set to composite mode luminance ( for exposure) and composit mode color for balance. Have I missed something?
@@JohnnoWaldmann In this case when I say balance I'm just referring to using the color trackball for HDR Global vs the Exposure slider below it.
Great stuff as always. What is your take on tweaking opacity on nodes with luts assigned?
Thanks! Using key output gain to scale back intensity of a LUT can work great, though I'd generally only do this with a pure look LUT.
Question : any particular reason you use Global Exposure under HDR rather than Offset under Primaries?
Great question! I compare the two and discuss my preference for Global Exposure here: th-cam.com/video/pRCd1VkmycQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=9B085wfPX14Cl4Ve&t=462
@@CullenKelly thanks for your service! Love that your library is getting big enough to just drop timecodes as answers
Thanks, Cullen!! It's always good learning from you! Just wondering if I could contact via email if I have a question about colour grading work. Or here is better? many thanks!
If you'd like to book for me grading work, you can reach out via the contact form on my website! cullen kelly color dot com
Do you consider a 2383 to be a "look LUT" or can it be treated as a film print emulation that can be used in down stream with a "look LUT"
Depends on which 2383 -- for example, my free DWG 2383 is an isolated look LUT, but it's unusual in that respect. Most FPEs are going to combine a creative look with a technical transform, meaning they can't be slotted into a color managed workflow. Hope this helps!
is not rocket science you guys, the Lut is expecting for the image to be well balance before applying the Lut 😑
Is it normal for LUTs to look completely wonky in Davinci Wide Gamut color space? Or do I have to convert to 709 and then back again to use it?
Depends on the LUT! That's why it's so important to know what a LUT is set up to to do -- otherwise you're shooting blind and almost certain to have a mismatch between what the LUT expects/returns vs the way you're actually using it...
That new Lut Kelly dropped.
I like your channel because you're a little different from the others.
I always knew luts are supposed to use subtly, but I never knew how to do it subtly.
Great, thank you!
You changed your audio and it’s not for the better.
This. Sounds like there's a compressor/limiter set up waaaay too aggressively.
yup, I'm happy he's not teaching me about audio
Lol yeah, major snafu here, thanks for calling it out
What's the best way to get from ADX10 to DaVinci Wide Gamut?
You can go from ADX10 to ''No output transform'' in ACES and then using a CST from ACES AP0 / Linear to DWG/D. Intermediate!
@@RafaelBernabeuParreno Thanks. I will try that.
Rafael nailed it!
Why do you output gamma 2.2 and not 2.4?
Mobile devices like 2.2 better, if I remember correctly.
Most YT content ends up being viewed on computer or mobile screens, which are typically gamma 2.2.
Super!
All my LUTS work. But then, I bought the Voyager Pro Pack 🎉
🔥
Phantom luts by Joel Famularo are my go to...for months now.
Have never come across something like that ever.
Would love to try out the voyager luts.
👍✅🔥
Audio sounds worse than ever.. what happened here?
Yikes, thanks for calling this out...
Bro, roll some low and low-mid frequencies off your voice. Audio is awful on this one. Other than that, great vid as usual!
Eek, not sure what happened here...
@@CullenKelly I think it might be your lav mic pointing at your throat.
LUTs are a scam. No two scenes are close enough for a LUT to be applied to both. You end up spending as much time tweaking your LUT to achieve consistency as it would take to just do it from scratch.
Not true. One uses a lut to establish commonality between shots and scenes. The Lut’s job is not to make them look the same, it is to make them feel like they were shot on the same planet.
A good lut might subtly twist hues in the reds towards yellow, and clamp in the greens. It will then do so precisely the same across all shots it is applied to. Like when wearing pink sun glasses everywhere your eyes end up doing some high level colour grading and exposure control under the pink shaded look the sunglasses applied. Take the sunglasses off after wearing them for 18 hours and the world just looks subtly wrong -until your eyes regrade the image.
I think of good Luts as a multiplier -of both- problems and beauty. Making it easier to spot when you’re grading in the wrong direction, and easier to see when approaching the aesthetic sweet zone. The trick is to know when not to tweak anymore. To move between shots often and grade in passes to avoid fixating.
As for tweaking the lut itself well that is another task and skill set altogether to grading.
Yes. It is true that you need to work with the LUT. But if all the shots use the same few or one show LUT. You spend less time recreating that specific look for each shot and can concentrate on balancing and fun stuff like relighting.
I tend to not use LUTs per se in my own stuff... But... I do keep film look creator on an adjustment clip above my edit... And that is technically a LUT itself. It's just a bit more flexible than a single LUT file.
LUTs are essentially like choosing negative and print stock combos. You still need to light and color time correctly. But you set in a few overarching transforms that are predictable.
I'd say that depends on what you're expecting from the LUT. Going by the philosophy I describe in this and other videos, there's zero work required to achieve consistency with your LUT, as it's by definition perfectly consistent across every shot. You of course still need to grade underneath, but that's the main theme of this video...
Haha I love the film look creator... An always-on for me too. But one thing that annoys me is that it desaturates the reds... I had a shoot with fire engines in it a few days ago, and I had to change everything up... Unusable with the film look creator
I'm gonna be the asshole here: for a colorist, your video is noisy :D
Subtle gradients in a low-key frame combined with 8 bit can definitely be tricky 😉. The noise you're seeing is actually added in to fight the resultant banding...