Creating LUTs For Video And Photo In Photoshop

On this video tutorial by photographer Nathaniel Dodson (from the website tutvid) we look at how you can create a lookup table in Photoshop to be used both for stills and for video work.

Although this video isn’t short (it includes quite a few demonstrations and examples), the basic idea of creating a lookup table is really simple. Bring in an image (you can use a screenshot from a video or a stills image if you are working in stills) and apply any color changes that you want to it (just make sure you do the changes on different layers so you can “turn off the background layer).

This can be done using any tools you want in Photoshop (curves, adjustment layers or even just playing with some settings in-camera RAW). After you are done just turn off the background layer, select all the layers you do want to export and go to file>export>lookup tables and save the LUT (you can mark 3DL or Cube or both).

Now you can easily import it to Premiere (or any other similar video editing software) on the Lumetri color panel or use it in Photoshop in the adjustment later tab under Luts.

Its worth mentioning infinite color panel add-on to Photoshop which Dodson shows in this video – it isn’t exactly cheap for a plug-in (even after the $35 USD it is still around $100) but if you want a tool that can help you play with colors you can try it.

You can find more tutorials on the video editing section here on LensVid. You can also check Dodson’s previous videos here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.