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Best settings for Film Emulation LUTs

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Mark Bramley

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I'd like to use some film emulation LUTs and I'm wondering what the best settngs in Resolve are for these to work with R3D clips?
 
Mark,

It depends on what .R3D workflow you use. If you use a "LEGACY" workflow , make sure you use Film Emulation Luts that are compatible with one of the Legacy Colorspace and Gamma Curves ex..DRAGONcolor2 and REDgamma4.

If it's the IPP2 Pipeline, If they weren't designed to work the REDWideGamutRGB/Log3G10 Colorspace and Gamma Curve like say for example Phil Holland's "philmColor" Luts or Hrvoje Simic's "Primers" Luts, you're not going to get the Film Emulation look you are expecting.


And be sure to use a "Tetrahedral" 3D lookup interpolation for the best results.
 
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Hey Rand,

Thank you for the reply. I'm looking for workflow suggestions in Resolve using footage from a Helium sensor.

The LUT that I'd like to use is the Film Looks Rec709 Kodak 2383 D65, which needs a log colour space. I've had good results with the Camera Raw set to:

Colour Science > IPP2
Color Space > Rec 709
Gamma Curve > Log3G10

This was with the film emulation LUT Rec709 Kodak 2383 placed in the last node.

Is there a better way to do this?
 
Mark,

If you going to use an IPP2 workflow, you should really use REDwidegamutRGB for Colorspace to get the best results.


I tell you what, could you give me an example of what the Lut looks like in a non IPP2 workflow. Like for example, the Lut applied to a REC709/Gamma 2.4 image. And if you don't mind , the Lut you are wanting to use and a .R3d frame from Redcine-X?
 
Mark,


Thanks! Let me see what I can do to make it work better with an IPP2 workflow.


rand
 
Mark,


I'm sorry, I meant the actual Kodak Lut you used. If you don't want to make it public, You can PM it to me and I will PM it back to you in what I believe will be a more compatible format with an IPP2 workflow.
 
Thanks Aaron, it definitely looks better feeding it with RedLogFilm. I can bring the ISO way down as well.
 
Note that LUTs tend to be fairly destructive, and you may be able to match the look without unnecessarily crushing or clipping the image with a film-emulation LUT. There are some who do a node before the LUT and a node after the LUT to compensate for that, but to me it's wiser just to figure out what the LUT is doing and then match it manually if possible.
 
I would have to agree with Aaron . After further reading about these Luts from Juan Melara, This Film emulation Lut requires Redlogfilm and a Legacy colorspace, IPP2 has no place for this emulation. And like Marc, maybe this look can be recreated manually .
 
Aaron,


Thanks! I was unaware he had a PowerGrade for this as well. He appears to be a talented colorist. However, this powergrade is just a little "too involved" and really not for me.

Some of the approaches he uses will work but will need to be modified on a scene by scene basis. I think a lut that would involve a more mathematical remapping of the colors he had to qualify would give you much better results over a broader range of scenes. His approach, I think, would always depend on variables that may or may not be present in some scenes which would probably not give you the results you were hoping for.
 
rand thompson said:
Some of the approaches he uses will work but will need to be modified on a scene by scene basis. I think a lut that would involve a more mathematical remapping of the colors he had to qualify would give you much better results over a broader range of scenes.
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No, you'll find that the results with a LUT will also vary widely shot to shot as well. There's nothing "magical" about a LUT: it's just a mathematical version of a color correction. You can modify the LUT before and after, but there's a point where it may still damage the signal. And maybe that's a part of the look, or maybe that's something you won't want.
 
Marc,


I wouldn't ever use a Film emulation Lut anyway. If I wanted a Kodak 2383 film look I would just shot with Kodak 2383 film stock. I prefer to just grade manually and just use Luts meant to transform Log images to there respective colorspaces.

When the first IPP2 beta Luts came out, I tried manually transforming the RWG/LOG3G10 Log image with just a combination of luma Curve, Contrast and Pivot, and Log shadow. The images looked good but I had to use a lot of "Saturation"(about 65 to 72 in resolve) to give it a decent "REC709" look which I didn't like doing. When I used the IPP2 beta Luts, I got colors which I liked much more and at the 50 Sat.


I think a Lut and a manual grade could both be used. However in the Powergrade of Juan Melara, he seems to derive some of this look through "qualification" which I personally have been staying away from in the last year. I just don't think it's as elegant and refined as either correcting an image manually in it's entirety, not in bits and pieces. And a high quality Lut designed to give accurate colors in the first place which would give you a more consistant look in more scenarios than a manual grade that relies on qualifications which can sometimes be hit or miss.
 
IMHO film luts and IPP2 are pretty mutually exclusive if you use the IPP2 tone mapping which is basically doing the same job as the print LUT but the IPP2 mappings understand the red colourspace better and handle out of whack colours better. I even sometimes convert 709 footage back to linear, grade and run the end through IPP2 tone mapping.

I'd look at the Kodak LUT understand what it's doing and see whether you can grade similar, as Marc and Rand say - work out what it is you like about the look and work out how that was done - each shots shadows/mids/highs may be in a difference place to where the one baked LUT is looking.

Or being a print LUT them embrace the fixed nature of it but get your image into the right space first...

cheers
Paul
 
rand thompson said:
I think a Lut and a manual grade could both be used. However in the Powergrade of Juan Melara, he seems to derive some of this look through "qualification" which I personally have been staying away from in the last year. I just don't think it's as elegant and refined as either correcting an image manually in it's entirety, not in bits and pieces.
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There's a lot of "it depends" to this, and there's an art in deciding how narrow or how wide to grab a key, and how to use (or not use) softness to make the key more gentle and gradual. And to some degree you can do this with curves: check out what Melara did on the Koji LUT emulation.

And a high quality Lut designed to give accurate colors in the first place which would give you a more consistant look in more scenarios than a manual grade that relies on qualifications which can sometimes be hit or miss.
Click to expand...
That is not my experience, and I used every LUT that Kodak built for us at Cinesite and every LUT that Technicolor's color science department built as well during my many years there. You really have to custom-engineer the LUTs for a specific project, and even then, you wind up with situations where the LUT has to be modified, changed, or thrown out because it doesn't work. I promise you it doesn't make the look any more consistent than you can with your fingers.

There's also some interesting tweaks you can do with DCTLs that are beyond LUTs in some ways, plus they can work in more than one color & gamma space. It's fair to say this is not a simple area. My usual tactic is to get the show looking "normal," and then start throwing in a look and a style that's intended to change the essential Rec709 look (or the P3 look if we're in a theater). That can work with additional nodes or a group grade, but there's several philosophies that can work. But to me, the colorist is what gets the look consistent, not the LUT. I just came off a project where even "identical" takes did not match and required quite a bit of manual tweaking because things changed on the set (or the weather was wildly inconsistent). A LUT wouldn't have done anything to help; it all had to be eyeballed.
 
Marc Wielage said:
You really have to custom-engineer the LUTs for a specific project, and even then, you wind up with situations where the LUT has to be modified, changed, or thrown out because it doesn't work. I promise you it doesn't make the look any more consistent than you can with your fingers.
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When they are designed that way.

When they are designed differently, they are more precise than what one can eyeball. And yes consistent too.
 
Marc Wielage said:
You really have to custom-engineer the LUTs for a specific project, and even then, you wind up with situations where the LUT has to be modified, changed, or thrown out because it doesn't work.
Click to expand...


In the most ideal case, a show LUT is designed during prep and based on camera sample images shot by the cinematographer. LUT candidates are created and vetted by the cinematographer for use during production. During production the LUT is employed on set for viewing and exposure/camera adjustments/lighting adjustments are made while viewing that result. A LUT is only one part of an image pipeline, which starts with photography and ends with grading and delivery of the final images. All of those factors need to be working together for an optimized result. When any one of them are taken in isolation it is no longer yielding the optimized result that is intended. Now, I said "ideal case" because that kind of cooperation during prep is usually only available on properly budgeted features and broadcast/streaming productions, where the personnel are already in place, production design is already in place, the post vendor is already in place, and everyone is working together prior to prinicpal photography. A colorist might be (and often is) involved in the LUT choice(s), but it is never a case of "see the material after it's shot and decide what LUT to use." That is a sure path to the problems that Marc is referring to. But it's not simply the inevitable result of using a LUT in the pipeline, it is, in most cases, rather the result of not properly developing that pipeline during preproduction. It is also true that the pipeline that is developed for dailies and VFX is not necessarily identical to what is used in the DI. Consistency from dailies through VFX is necessary to ensure that screenings of the cut sequences in both editorial and previews are consistent when the VFX are dropped in, and cuts are not jarring or distracting. Once it gets to the DI, everything is "fair game" and the DI colorist, working with the director and often the DP can do what they want, although it's often guided by what has been seen throughout the editorial process.

The bottom line is that when everybody - both production and post production - is on the same page from the beginning, the results are usually optimal. When they're not, they're not.
 
I agree with everyone whom have posted.


My specific argument was not colorist vs Lut but a power grade that relied on qualifying parts of an image to complete the entirety of a film emulation vs a Lut expertly designed to recreate the color properties of a specific film stock applied to the entirety of the image and not parts of the image.


LUTS and Colorist can both be good or bad. A lut is only as good as its design, precision and for the purpose for which is was designed to be used. A Colorist is only as good as his years of experience dealing with many problematic footage and scenes, his creative talent and his ability to diagnose, define and properly remedy any and all problems using the right amount and targeted corrections with the proper tools. A poorly designed Lut can give just as shitty results as a bad colorist.

A colorist can use high precision expertly designed luts to aid In say a "first pass" correction of an image or a " Technical Lut" meant to bring and image into the desired colorspace in the most optimal way from a camera"s sensor. A lut will never be able to replace the sheer creative artistry of the human imagination of a seasoned highly skilled colorist. And a half- Assed colorist will never be able to replicate the properties of a expertly designed high precision Lut.
 
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