What's s LUT

[Shapour Daneshmand]

I'm new to Red.
could some explain to me what LUT is please?
thank you guys in advance.

 

[Trevor Meeks]

google is a wonderful thing

http://nofilmschool.com/2011/05/what-is-a-look-up-table-lut-anyway/

so S LUT is your source... or a woman who really gets around..... :ihih:

 

[Jake Bastian]

M Most is probably the most qualified here to answer that question, but in short it stands for "look up table" and it's an equation to tell your image viewing *anything* how pixels should look in the color space they are being viewed.

 

[Shapour Daneshmand]

Thanks Trever.
I read Jay Friesen's article but still not so sure.
is it a software, plugin of sort to clean up your raw footage before you sent it to nle?

 

[M Most]

M Most is probably the most qualified here to answer that question, but in short it stands for "look up table" and it's an equation to tell your image viewing *anything* how pixels should look in the color space they are being viewed.

That's one thing it's often used for, but it's not what it is. A lookup table is simply that, a table that has a precalculated output value for any input value, or in the case of 3D LUT's, any combination of input values.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Steve Shaw wrote a book on Digital Intermediates for Quantel a few years ago, and the sections on Lookup Tables are still pretty relevent. The paper is skewed towards Quantel's way of doing things, but a lot of it still applies to any color-correction and viewing system:

http://www.pmotions.com/Public/PDFs/Quantel/di_book.pdf

Another good source for information is one of the major LUT companies in the world, Truelight. They have several documents that explain LUTs and monitor calibration in quite a bit of detail:

http://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/products/truelight/overview_tl.php

Again, it's very brand-specific, but the basic principles of 3D LUTs, calibration, input LUTs, output LUTs, and so on are all explained pretty thoroughly.

THX has some interesting "webinars" and documents on their Cinespace page:

http://www.thx.com/professional/thx-technology-professional/thx-color-science/cinespace/

All of these are good background materials to grasp the fundamentals of LUTs, and why they're necessary in color-correction and display technology.