Film LUTs

[Robert Houllahan]

Film LUTs are mostly used to emulate film color space when doing a DI, i.e. a film print LUT which takes into account the DI recording stock, the Print Stock and the lab variables. I don’t generally think that camera stock emulation LUTs are available outside of shops that have built them for internal looks.

Maybe someone like me could build some….

-Rob-

Robert Houllahan
Director / Colorist
Cinelab Inc.
http://www.cinelab.com

MAHC-PRO 6-Core 3X GTX285 20Tb SAS Wave Panel Panny 11UK SDI Plasma. Light-Space CMS + Hubble

[Jeremy Ball]

Thanks Robert but I am looking for the print stock LUTs mostly. Although, creating LUTs for camera stock would be a great idea since you work at a place with all the equipment you need to scan the film and create the LUTs. Let me know if you take on this venture, I would be one of the first to buy. : )

It would be great to find camera stock LUTs like Kodak Vision but I was pretty sure I would find the print stock LUTs. Any idea where I can find some. How do most freelance colorists acquire the LUTs when emulating a film out?

[Dan Moran]

If you are doing a flim out job you get the print emulation LUT’s from the Lab doing the film out. They will normally charge you for the pleasure too

—

Dan Moran
Colourist
Smoke & Mirrors: London
http://www.danmorancolor.com/blog

[Dermot Shane]

+1 to what Dan said… and will add that one on feature i had three LUT’s provided by the lab, as they were changing their chemistry at the time… a film emulation LUT is only good for the project you are working on & lab you are working with

But most compositing software has 1D LUT’s for viewing comps through, maybe grab something from one of those to play with?

Not very accurate in terms of wysiwyg, but that’s not your target

[Sascha Haber]

…which is one of the biggest nonsense thing in film history.

Imagine…you walk into Hertz to rent a car because you wanna drive somewhere.
They answer : NO , we wont give you the car, you might use it to open your own car rental .

I mean, We all know you need two LUTs… one to compensate for your own viewing pipeline to “see” things in P3 and one more that emulates the desired output.
And if the output is provided by a print lab, then it should be in their best interest to provide such a “preview”

And yes, it would only work for their lab, their magic sauce and so on, but hey, thats exactly why I wanna judge in advance and then place the order.
A lab that doesn’t provide it only wants to do the color work themselves and thus should be handled very carefully.
They have all the leverage in the end to claim the data delivered was flawed.

just my .02

A slice of color…

DaVinci 8.2.1 OSX 10.7.2
MacPro 5.1 2×2,4 24GB
RAID0 8TB
GTX 470 / Quadro 4000
Extreme 3D+

ICA Instructor
https://www.icolorist.com/Sascha.html

[Joseph Owens]

[Sascha Haber] “I mean, We all know you need two LUTs…”

!?

First LUT. Not if you were working in a calibrated environment- one that conformed with industry standards & practices.

Second LUT. Yes, the one that transforms from your originating colorspace (eg 709) to the target format, if its different (P3 XYZ should be a mathematical transform since there are no organic differences in the media and spectral display primaries among the projector population — or there shouldn’t be!). But you needn’t use it for grading unless you are in a P3 display environment…. but if you are using a DCP transform to simulate a DCP projection, to a LUT’ed 708 display simulating a DCP theatre…. uh…. wt(x)…?

Be that a corollary to the “what is the cheapest possible display that I can use to achieve questionable results” thread as it may be, my sense of the OP’s question is that it is really about simulating the “look” of a particular emulsion-based stock as the image makes its way through the neg/print process. Which would be more about the grain signature and dye curves than anything to do with overall gamut and colorspace transforms.

Apple SHAKE does something like this in their FilmGrain node, and offers a list of Eastman profiles.

’45 has a dramatically different contrast/toe than ’93, and even more wildly different from the later Vision2’s and (thank god it died!) Primetime. I remember struggling mightily with the first few batches of 79 (500T) until it was discontinued and ’77 settled down so that it was nice and sensitive at the toe and seemed to have no end to its shoulder. But blue grain like ping-pong balls, if you shot it under tungsten and tried to ‘correct-in’ the 80B.

BTW, I’ve still got a couple of day-loads of 7245 and one ’46 (which was a massively sweet emulsion) in the freezer that I don’t know if I’ll ever find a use for again…

I don’t think charging for services is a sin. In fact, I am professionally pledged to do it. Also, Yes, “usury” is. +20% compound interest on credit cards is immoral in today’s economy, when financial institutions are licensed to steal.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Dermot Shane]

I have not had a lab charge me for provideing a LUT that is in their format.

The rub is when THEIR lut format is not MY lut format.. and it seem fair enough to charge me for creating the transformed LUT, someone has to buy the software to do this and charge for it’s use.. that’s fair game in my books

It does not help if (as was one case) they used a propriatary LUT format that Truelight creates.. fortunatly for me Avid DS has “LUT builder” bundled with it that cracked the Truelight LUT cleanly

The other option was to spend coin on getting it done by a service provider, or buying software to do the same job.

Or i guess as Truelight hopes, force me to buy their LUT box… i hate being blackmailed 😉

d

[Chris Martin]

I’ll plug Steve Shaw’s Light Space software for anyone consistently needing to convert LUT’s to a more friendly format or provide LUTs to others in different formats.

Re: Labs and film out LUTs – the money they make on prints can far outweigh DI color rates. That’s why the big houses will give such good deals if it means millions of dollars in domestic and international print orders. That’s one gravy train lots will cry over when DCP’s are all that’s left.