Blog
Applying a look across a whole shoot, converting LOG footage, and getting photos and video to match, without editing one file at a time. Written for people who would rather be shooting. Each guide opens with the short answer to its question, then gives the detail behind it: the camera profiles, the conversion LUTs, the settings in Lightroom, Resolve, Premiere or Final Cut, and the steps, by hand or in BatchTone.
HLG is an HDR format, so on a normal SDR screen it looks flat with muted colours. To deliver in Rec.709, convert it with a tone-mapped transform: a Color Space Transform from Rec.2100 HLG to Rec.709 in DaVinci Resolve, the HDR Tools effect set to HLG to Rec. 709 SDR in Final Cut Pro, or a Rec.709 sequence with tone mapping in Premiere Pro. For a whole card, bake that transform into a .cube LUT once and apply it to every clip.
Read itFilmora reads .cube LUTs. Select a clip, open its colour settings, find the LUT section and choose the option to load or add a custom LUT, then pick your .cube file. A strength or opacity slider sets how much of it applies. For many clips, put the LUT on an adjustment layer. Menu names differ between Filmora versions, but the steps are the same.
Read itLightroom cannot export a LUT, but you can capture a preset as one. Generate a HALD identity image, apply the preset to it in Lightroom, export it as a 16-bit TIFF, then convert that image into a .cube file. The LUT reproduces the preset's global colour and tone, and works in video editors. Local and texture settings do not carry over.
Read itPixelmator Pro reads 1D and 3D LUTs in the .cube format. Select a layer, open Color Adjustments, turn on LUT, and choose Choose LUT from the menu beside its pop-up. An intensity slider sets the strength. It can also convert a LUT into editable adjustments and export your own adjustments as a .cube. For a folder, the route is a Shortcut.
Read itTeal and orange colour grading pushes the shadows and backgrounds toward teal and keeps skin and warm highlights toward orange. The two are opposite on the colour wheel, so faces stand out from their surroundings. To build it, correct the footage first, nudge the shadows toward teal and the highlights toward warm, then protect skin so it stays natural rather than orange.
Read itS-Cinetone is a Sony picture profile that records a finished, film-like image with natural skin tones and soft highlights, based on the colour science of Sony's Venice cinema camera. Unlike S-Log3 it needs no conversion LUT: it looks right straight from the camera. Choose it when you want to deliver quickly; choose S-Log3 when you need the most highlight range and plan to grade.
Read itChoose Final Cut Pro if you edit only on a Mac and want the fastest, lightest editor for cutting, with colour tools that cover most online work. Choose DaVinci Resolve if colour grading matters most, if you want to start free, or if you may work on Windows or Linux. Editing speed favours Final Cut; colour depth favours Resolve.
Read itA LUT is a fixed colour map stored in a file, usually .cube, that turns every input colour into one output colour, and almost every photo and video app can read it. A preset is a saved set of slider settings for one editor, such as Lightroom, applied relative to each photo. Use a LUT when you need the same look across photos, video and apps; use a preset when you work only in that one editor and want adjustments that adapt to each frame.
Read it8-bit video stores 256 levels per colour channel, about 16.7 million colours. 10-bit stores 1,024 levels, about 1.07 billion. Straight out of the camera the two look almost the same. The difference appears when you push the image, in a grade or a log conversion, where 8-bit runs out of in-between shades and smooth skies break into bands.
Read itiMovie has no way to import a LUT. Its colour tools are Color Balance, Color Correction and a fixed set of clip filters, none of which takes a .cube file. To use a LUT with iMovie, apply it to the clips before you import them, then edit the graded copies in iMovie as normal, or send the project to Final Cut Pro.
Read itTo install a LUT, unzip the pack and either copy the .cube files into the app's LUT folder or load them through the app's own browse button. Resolve and Premiere list LUTs from a folder; Final Cut, After Effects, CapCut and Photoshop load a file when you pick it; Lightroom needs the LUT turned into a profile first.
Read itLightroom cannot open a .cube file directly. To use a LUT in Lightroom, open a photo in Photoshop's Camera Raw, Option-click the Create Preset button to get Create Profile, load the .cube under Color Lookup Table and save. The LUT then appears as a profile in Lightroom's Profile browser, with an Amount slider for strength.
Read itChoose DaVinci Resolve if colour matters most, if you want a free editor with no time limit, or if you work on Linux. Choose Premiere Pro if you already pay for Creative Cloud, move work between After Effects and Photoshop, or join a team that edits in it. Both edit well; colour and cost decide most cases.
Read itTo apply a LUT with ffmpeg, pass the .cube to the lut3d filter: ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf lut3d=file=look.cube -c:a copy out.mp4. Wrap that in a shell loop for a folder. ffmpeg has no strength setting and no preview, so a partial look needs a hand-written filtergraph, and you check the result after the run.
Read itLUT intensity is how much of the LUT's change reaches the image, as a mix between the graded and the original picture. Most tools control it with an opacity, mix or intensity slider: Final Cut's Mix, Premiere's Look Intensity, a node's Key Output Gain in Resolve, layer opacity in Photoshop. Lower it on a creative look; leave a conversion LUT at 100% unless one shot needs less.
Read itThe free DaVinci Resolve is the full editor and the full colour page, including nodes, scopes, tracking and LUTs, with no watermark on normal exports. Studio, a one-off $295 licence, adds noise reduction, timelines and renders above UHD or above 60 frames a second, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ delivery, the AI tools such as Magic Mask and voice isolation, film grain and halation effects, and wider H.264 and H.265 support on Windows and Linux. Upgrade when you hit one of those walls, not before: most people grading SDR video at UHD or below never do.
Read itThe right Lightroom alternative depends on why you are leaving. To stop paying monthly, DxO PhotoLab, ON1 Photo RAW and Luminar are one-payment, and Capture One sells a perpetual licence. To pay nothing, darktable is the closest free equivalent, RawTherapee is the leaner one, and Apple Photos is already on a Mac. For studio colour and tethering, Capture One. None of them opens your Lightroom edits as edits, so switching means finishing current work where it started. If you need Lightroom's catalogue, mobile sync and masking, the honest answer is to stay.
Read itGrade in Resolve in a fixed order: set colour management first, then balance each shot with the primaries, then match shots to each other, then apply a look, then finish with secondaries for skin and sky. Each step goes on its own node so it can be adjusted or switched off without touching the others. Most of a professional-looking grade is the first three steps (balance and matching), and almost none of it is the look.
Read itLog footage is video recorded with a logarithmic gamma curve, which spreads the sensor's full dynamic range evenly across the file instead of shaping it for a screen. That is why it looks grey and washed out straight off the card: it has not been finished yet. To use it, expose it correctly for the profile (usually at its minimum or native ISO, and slightly bright), then convert it to Rec.709 with the manufacturer's conversion LUT or a colour space transform, and grade on top of that.
Read itRec.709, formally ITU-R BT.709, is the international standard for HD video. It fixes the colours a screen can show (three primaries and a D65 white point), the brightness curve between signal and light (about gamma 2.4 on a display), the 16–235 legal range for 8-bit video, and the 1920×1080 frame. It shares its primaries with sRGB and covers roughly a third of visible colour, far less than Rec.2020. It remains the default delivery target because almost every phone, laptop, TV and streaming platform shows SDR video as Rec.709.
Read itCapture One has the better colour engine, the better tethering and the better tools for studio and product work, where a small number of images each get real attention. Lightroom has the better catalogue, far better mobile and cloud sync, and a much larger preset and plugin ecosystem, which suits high-volume work like events and weddings. Colour quality is close enough now that the decision is usually workflow and cost rather than rendering. Both are subscription unless you buy a Capture One perpetual licence.
Read itThe reliable way to create a LUT is to grade one representative clip until it looks right, then export that grade as a .cube file. Resolve does this with Generate LUT on a node, Premiere through Export Color Look, and Photoshop through Export Color Lookup Tables. Grade on neutral, correctly exposed footage and put the creative work on its own node, because a LUT bakes in everything upstream of it, including exposure mistakes you did not mean to share.
Read itA Rec.709 LUT converts log or flat footage into the colour space screens actually display, so it is a technical correction rather than a style. The right one is specific to your camera's profile (S-Log3, C-Log3, V-Log, N-Log and D-Log each need their own), and the manufacturer's own conversion LUT is almost always better than a generic pack. Apply it first, as the base, then grade on top of it; doing those in the other order is what makes a conversion look wrong.
Read itAdd a LUT adjustment layer, load the .cube, and set the opacity for strength. For a folder, File → New Batch Job takes a set of images and applies a saved macro, which can contain the LUT. That is the batch route and it is genuinely capable, provided every image wants the same treatment. It has no preview per file, so you find out how it landed after it has run.
Read itCopy adjustments from one image and apply to a selection, or save a Style and apply that. Capture One's advantage over Lightroom for this is its colour editor and its layer system, which let a style carry masked adjustments. The gap is the same one every catalogue tool has: a batch applies identical numbers, so images that were not shot alike need individual work afterwards.
Read itUse Apply Color LUT for a straight technical conversion, Lumetri Color when you want the LUT plus adjustments in one effect, and an adjustment layer when the same LUT has to cover several layers. After Effects is a compositing tool, so it applies LUTs per layer and per composition. That makes it a poor place to convert a folder of clips, and a good one to apply a look to a finished comp.
Read itBRAW is not log footage with a LUT to apply. It is raw with the colour science inside the file, so you change the gamma and gamut in the clip's decode settings rather than stacking a conversion on top. Set Colour Science to Gen 5, gamma to Film for grading or Extended Video for a quick turnaround, and only then add a creative look. The batch problem is unchanged: those settings have to reach every clip.
Read itCapCut desktop imports .cube LUTs (Adjustment, then the LUT section, then import your file) and applies them one clip at a time. The mobile app has filters but no custom LUT import. There is no batch route in either, so a folder of log clips means repeating the same import and apply for every one, which is where people stop using it for that job.
Read itUse Nikon's official N-Log to Rec.709 LUT as the starting point. The Nikon-specific complication is where the footage came from: on several bodies N-Log is available internally in 10-bit on recent models but was external-recorder-only on older ones, and the file you are holding determines how much room the conversion has. Convert the whole folder at once rather than clip by clip.
Read itUse Fujifilm's official F-Log to Rec.709 LUT, and check whether your body records F-Log or the newer F-Log2, which has more range and its own conversion. The complication specific to Fujifilm is that the film simulations are already a finished look, so shooting log means giving those up deliberately. If you were not planning to grade, they are often the better choice.
Read itSkin sits along the same line on a vectorscope regardless of complexion. The line runs from the centre toward between red and yellow, and what varies between people is distance along it, not direction. If skin drifts off that line after a grade, the grade is wrong, not the skin. Fix it by correcting white balance before the look rather than by pushing a skin-tone control afterwards.
Read itThe cinematic look is mostly frame rate, shutter, depth of field and lighting: decisions made at the camera. In the grade, three things do the work: consistent colour across every shot, contrast placed deliberately rather than raised globally, and restraint with saturation. Teal-and-orange, heavy vignettes and black bars add nothing and are what people reach for first.
Read itUse Panasonic's own V-Log to Rec.709 conversion LUT, and check whether your body records full V-Log or V-Log L. The L variant on the GH-series has less range and its own conversion. Apply the conversion to the whole folder at once, then adjust the individual clips that were exposed differently, rather than treating each one as a separate grade.
Read itCheck which C-Log your body records (C-Log, C-Log2 or C-Log3), because the conversion differs and using the wrong one gives muddy blacks or clipped highlights. Canon publishes official LUTs for each. Apply the matching conversion to the whole folder rather than per clip, then adjust the few shots that were exposed differently, rather than grading each one from scratch.
Read itWork in this order: convert out of log if you shot log, set exposure, set white balance, match every clip to one reference, then apply the look. Four of those five are technical and have a correct answer you can verify on a scope. Only the last is taste, and it is far quicker than people expect once the first four are done properly.
Read itCorrection is technical and objective: neutral white balance, correct exposure, legal levels, and every clip matching every other clip. Grading is creative and subjective: the look. Correction comes first, always, because a look applied to inconsistent footage amplifies the inconsistency instead of hiding it.
Read itAdobe's own bundled profiles and the packs from camera manufacturers are the most reliable free starting points, followed by presets from photographers who show them applied to varied images rather than one hero shot. Almost every free pack is a mailing-list lead magnet, which is fine. The problem is not the price: it is that a preset encodes the light it was built in and yours is different.
Read itD-Log is a flat recording profile, not a look: it stores more range than a screen can show, and a Rec.709 conversion LUT maps it back to something that looks right. Converting a card means applying that one LUT to every clip, which is a batch job rather than an editing job.
Read itS-Log3 records flat to keep highlight range, and a Rec.709 conversion LUT maps it back to normal contrast. The conversion itself takes a minute; the work is applying it to every clip on the card, which is a batch job rather than an edit.
Read itBlackmagic ships its conversion LUTs inside DaVinci Resolve and on its support site, and the right one depends on the colour science generation your camera records rather than on the camera's name. Check the generation first, apply the matching Film to Rec.709 transform to the whole folder, then take down the few clips that were exposed differently instead of grading each one from scratch.
Read itOnly iPhone footage shot in Apple Log needs a conversion LUT; ordinary iPhone video is already Rec.709 and a conversion transform will wreck it. For Apple Log, use the Apple Log to Rec.709 transform that ships with your editor, apply it to the whole folder at once, and keep creative LUTs as a separate layer on top of the conversion rather than instead of it.
Read itLightroom batches well through Sync Settings and presets, and for most photo work that is enough. It stops being convenient when you want a .cube LUT, when the batch includes video, or when each photo needs a different amount of the same look.
Read itRecord an action that adds a Color Lookup layer with your .cube loaded, then run File → Automate → Batch over the folder. It works, and the setup is the cost: an action per LUT, and no way to vary the strength per photo without editing each result.
Read itLumetri has two LUT slots: Input, for converting flat footage before anything else, and Creative Look, for a style on top. A whole bin takes one LUT through Modify then Interpret Footage, which is faster than doing it per clip.
Read itCopy the .cube into Resolve's LUT folder, press Update Lists in Project Settings, and the LUT appears in the Colour page browser. Apply it to a node, to a whole timeline, or per clip through Clip Attributes.
Read itThe film look in DaVinci Resolve comes from four things stacked in order: a correct log conversion, a gentle highlight roll-off instead of a hard clip, some colour separation between shadows and highlights, and a small amount of grain and halation. A film-look LUT only supplies the third of those, which is why applying one to unconverted footage makes it look worse rather than more filmic.
Read itFinal Cut applies a camera LUT automatically when it recognises the log format, and takes custom .cube files through the Custom LUT effect. Applying one to hundreds of clips means pasting attributes or building a compound, neither of which scales well.
Read itMost colour grading software is an editor with a colour page attached, which is right for grading an edit and heavy for applying one look across a shoot. Pick by the job: an edit, a raw develop, a film emulation, or a batch.
Read itThere is no single best batch photo editor, because the tools split into two groups that barely overlap. Utilities like XnConvert and BatchPhoto are excellent at batching housekeeping (resize, rename, convert, watermark) and cannot apply a look. Lightroom, Capture One and Bridge batch a look across a shoot but are subscription-shaped and slow to open for a one-off job. Pick by which half of the problem you actually have.
Read itBatchPhoto is a solid, easy batch utility for housekeeping: resizing, converting, renaming, watermarking and date-stamping folders of photos on Windows or Mac, with saved profiles for repeat jobs. It is the right tool when the batch is about files. It is the wrong one when the batch is about colour: it has presets rather than a grade, and it does not apply LUTs, so it cannot take a log shoot or a consistent look across a folder.
Read itMost people looking for a Resolve alternative want one of three things: a lighter editor, a machine that can run it, or a way to apply colour to files without building a project. The third is not an editor problem at all.
Read itThe free LUTs worth having are the conversion LUTs camera manufacturers publish for their own log formats. Free creative packs are usually an email address in exchange for files, and are worth judging on your own footage before you keep them.
Read itA LUT is a lookup table: a file that says, for a grid of input colours, what each one should come out as. Applying a LUT means looking up every pixel in that grid and interpolating between the nearest entries.
Read itDJI's own apps are built for one clip and a quick share. A card of D-Log footage needs a conversion applied to every file before any editing, which is a batch job none of the editors on the list treat as their main event.
Read itGoPro's Flat profile records extra range and needs a conversion LUT to look normal, the same way log footage does. Underwater clips are a separate case, because water removes red before the sensor ever sees it.
Read itSeven days with everything unlocked. If it does not read your files, you will know within the hour and it will have cost you nothing.