LUT Weaknesses

Insane_Diego

Newbie Joined: Jan 18, 2009 21:00 Messages: 18 Offline

Solved by

Sep 26, 2020 18:42

I really want to use LUTs now and again but they are quickly falling out of favor, especially in PD 19. I'm pretty sure, in PD18 you could have a clip in your timeline, go into the LUTs (which I believe were in the Blending Mode for some of them), click on a LUT and you'd see them previewed immediately on the freeze-frame in the Blending mode. You could cycle through them rather quickly to see if you liked them or not.

Now, you apply them in the FX choice (which definitely makes them easier to find) but you don't get a preview until you drop it on the clip. Then you have to evaluate it and if you don't like it, drop another one on the clip and so on. If none of them suited you, you now have to do two extra steps, go to Effect and then remove the LUT. I don't know. Going into Blending Mode was a drag I guess but I could cycle through a dozen looks in a couple of seconds.

But now the biggie. You can't change the opacity of the LUT. Most of the time I find the LUT is way too strong. I found a workaround here. Put the clip on two timelines and lower the opacity of the one track. That works until you want to use a Time Shift. You can't apply a LUT to a time shifted clip.

It's just feeling like apply a LUT is more trouble than it's worth. Any words of wisdom in a technique that I'm not aware of?

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Sep 26, 2020 20:06

I haven't spent much time with the new LUTs but I do see what you're saying. A few thoughts:

Use Undo/Redo (Ctrl+Z/Ctrl+Y) after applying a CLUT while previewing the clip to instantly see the difference. This also works if you've tried various CLUTs as only one can be applied at a time, so Undo/Redo will cycle through them all.

For a more muted impact, you can place 2 copies of the clip on the timeline and apply the desireed CLUT to one. Select the second copy as well and use the Color Match tool to copy the color of the "overcolored" clip to the second copy, then use the Level, Hue, Saturation and Brightness controls as needed to get just the right look.

Finally, I guess I'm not quite clear on what you're referring to as a time-shifted clip, but the quick answer for any effects that are hard/impossible to apply when other edits have been made is to produce the clip first so the edits are "baked in." You then have a plain, new clip with all the hard-to-process changes already made, so you're free to do anything else with it on the timeline.

Insane_Diego

Newbie Joined: Jan 18, 2009 21:00 Messages: 18 Offline

Sep 26, 2020 20:16

Quote I haven't spent much time with the new LUTs but I do see what you're saying. A few thoughts:

Use Undo/Redo (Ctrl+Z/Ctrl+Y) after applying a CLUT while previewing the clip to instantly see the difference. This also works if you've tried various CLUTs as only one can be applied at a time, so Undo/Redo will cycle through them all.

For a more muted impact, you can place 2 copies of the clip on the timeline and apply the desireed CLUT to one. Select the second copy as well and use the Color Match tool to copy the color of the "overcolored" clip to the second copy, then use the Level, Hue, Saturation and Brightness controls as needed to get just the right look.

Finally, I guess I'm not quite clear on what you're referring to as a time-shifted clip, but the quick answer for any effects that are hard/impossible to apply when other edits have been made is to produce the clip first so the edits are "baked in." You then have a plain, new clip with all the hard-to-process changes already made, so you're free to do anything else with it on the timeline.

Thanks Opto. The undo is a good idea. Didn't think about that. My description of the multiple timeline was essentially what you described. Just painful. If there was an option in the Effect to simply set the Opacity, that's all that's needed.

And finally, ya, I ended up making all the edits and then applying the color grade. Again, definitely more work than I would have wanted but it got the job done.

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Sep 26, 2020 20:31

OK. I just checked in the new ColorDirector and it doesn't have any controls on adjusting the strength of the LUT either. I honestly don't know if that's even possible. I think you have to create it the way you want and then apply the whole thing.

Something else to try if you've got several clips to edit is to get everything with your first clip tweaked just right, then right click on it and choose Copy Keyframe Attributes. Then select all the other clips and use Paste Keyframe Attributes.

That will copy everything but the CLUT so you'll have to apply that to each one individually - but all the other adjustments can be applied in one fell swoop.