How to apply luts on a monitor

In today’s digital cinema workflow, you’d be hard-pressed to avoid exposure to Look Up Tables. Whether you’re a director, DP, editor or colorist, LUTs are something you need to be aware of, because they play a important role in many on-set, editorial, and finishing workflows. LUT have many uses, from calibrating monitors or giving your footage the look of a particular film stock.

Basics about LUT

Look Up Table (LUT) is called various things: "lut," "Cube," "table," and "L. U. T" depending on the industry. Generally speaking, a LUT is used to map a set of input values to a set of output values. Within the realms of image editing and video, we’ve traditionally used LUTs to map one colour space to another, both for non-destructive previewing and for colour grading. what it does the easiest way I can put it for you is imagine it as an Instagram filter.

source: what is a lut

1D LUT

When working with LUTs, you’ll quickly notice that there are 1D LUTs and 3D LUTs, with the key difference being the complexity of the adjustments you’re able to make. A 1D LUT handles each color (red, blue, and green) separately, with matrices mapping every possible output value for a given input value. For making basic color balance and contrast adjustments, this is usually sufficient. However, by treating each color separately, a 1D LUT lacks the complexity needed for serious grading work. For this, we must turn to 3D LUTs.

3D LUT

A 3D LUT is much more complex than a 1D LUT, mapping all color values together in a three-dimensional cube rather than using matrix combinations. Since having a specific output value for every input value would make it much too large to be useful, a 3D LUT instead uses input and output points for each color axis, with colors between these points interpolated by the system; the greater the number of points, the greater the accuracy. The most common number of points for each color axis is 17, producing what is called a 17 x 17 x 17 (17^3) 3D LUT cube. It is important to note that because there is interpolation involved, the same 3D LUT file may give you slightly different results between different software, but this isn’t something you should be overly concerned about.

Lut uses for monitor

While a Calibration LUT is focused on calibrating the display of the monitor, a Display LUT is used to convert from one color space to another, and is essential for on-set monitoring of log footage. Rather than viewing flat, desaturated log images on set, the Display LUT maps the log footage to the color space of the monitor, letting you view images with contrast and saturation resembling that of the final product. Some monitors and cameras even have built-in Display LUTs, with others offering the ability to load your own 3D LUTs. The LUT loading function of monitor makes the color calibration work of the previous shooting easier and more intuitive, optimizes the workflow and improves work efficiency. If you need one monitor with 3D LUTs, you can consider FEELWORLD  F6 PLUS, LUT6, LUT6S, LUT7, LUT7S, LUT7 PRO, LUT7S PRO field monitor what support up to 50 custom LUTs.

Here is a video about how to setup and use the LUTs on the Feelworld LUT7S DSLR camera monitor

• User Guide

A 3D LUT is a simple but very powerful way to apply a color grade to footage. 3D LUT files are quite small, (often around 1MB) and can be produced with almost any color grading software, and can be saved on to USB flash drive for use on the monitor or at any point in post-production.

3D LUTs are particularly powerful when used with Portkeys monitors – many can be applied simultaneously on several pages so visualizing color variants onset is made as easy as swiping from page to page. We have some sample LUTS that you can download.

3D LUT Settings

1. Access 3D LUT settings menu by swiping left on any page, then tap the 3D LUT icon, you can it is highlighted in the tool list.

2. Toggles the 3D LUT Off/On. You can select a LUT that is Stored from USB or import LUT from USB. Select the tool and activate or deactivate it as desired. Yellow tools are active, they are Grey when inactive.

USB Looks

Select this option and it will open a browser for your USB flash drive. There should be some default Internal LUTS that we have provided as a base, but we always recommend that you use one that is made for your production by either your DIT or Editor to give the closest results to Final.  

LUT import instructions

In this section, we’ll place a downloaded look on an SD card and apply it to a page.

1. USB format.
   Support for FAT32 and NTFS.
2. The number of imported files is limited.
   Up to 20 user files can be imported.
3. Document requirements.
   LUT file format suffix is ​​.cube (case insensitive).
   A single file must not exceed 7.9M.
   Supports files with LUT_3D_SIZE of 16, 17, 32, 33, 64, 65.
   Meet the above requirements as a valid document.
   The LUT file name is required to be in English or numeric to avoid unrecognized, resulting in incorrect file names.
4. Import steps and instructions:

Step 1: Make sure the USB flash drive is inserted correctly.

Step 2: Enter the [Color] item in the menu main menu and select the [Import LUT ] item, and then execute the item.

Step 3: The system will first recognize the USB flash drive.

(1) No USB recognized
Will prompt “access failed”, you can try again at this time, if not, you can restart the device to try once.

(2) Identify the USB flash drive.
The system will erase the user files that already exist in the device and prompt “initialize”.

How do I add LUT to small HD monitor?