As a colorist, I always try to minimize time I spend on Look development, to focus more on matching and relighting shots.

It's common to see Look dev as the most creative part of the color grading, but almost every look ends up being some slight variation of what was done many times before. All the major differences come from very broad and basic corrections like exposure, contrast and white balance.

The true art happens during per-shot work, relighting, local corrections, when you create out of a good image something beautiful. And Look dev, at least for me, is not the moment of an artistic expression but more of a color science task: it's easy to do a nicely looking image, but how to make the look as smooth and as universal as possible, to avoid any surprises later?

So many look LUTs out there already, why create another one? Well, just as with MEOW pack, I made this LUT for myself. Smooth, filmic, but not too much filmic, very saturated (it's easy to reduce it, but hard to add more), preserving neutral darkest shadows and so on. And flexible enough to be easily modified to everything I usually need for my projects.

• 16 smooth LUTs in total (+1 legacy LUT)
• 2 main variants of the look: Normal and Vibrant
• Higher saturated versions
• Less RGB curves split-toning versions
• No RGB curves split-toning versions
• Palette Only versions (no contrast and no split-toning)

List of all the LUTs included:

• Complete Normal
• Complete Vibrant
• Complete Normal Saturated
• Complete Vibrant Saturated

• Less RGB Curves Normal
• Less RGB Curves Vibrant
• Less RGB Curves Normal Saturated
• Less RGB Curves Vibrant Saturated
  
  
• No RGB Curves Normal
• No RGB Curves Vibrant
• No RGB Curves Normal Saturated
• No RGB Curves Vibrant Saturated

• Palette Only Normal
• Palette Only Vibrant
• Palette Only Normal Saturated
• Palette Only Vibrant Saturated

• legacy_alpha_version

• Vibrant – vibrant was intentionally created by utilizing per-channel tonemapping skews to compress and shift very saturated colors in a filmic manner.

• Normal – basically Vibrant, but with a small mixture of the alpha version of the LUT palette, that was incredibly smooth, but lacking filmic behavior with very saturated colors.

Shot by Anna Patarakina

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Normal LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

Complete Normal (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

General recommendation:

Use Vibrant. If you see artifacts, choose Normal. If you still see artifacts, check everything else with the image pipeline and corrections. If you still see artifacts, well... sometimes it happens, it's not magic. Yet it never happened with my test footage during the testing.

Yet I kept the name of Normal as Normal, as it absolutely can be preferred as the first choice.

This is a scene-referred DaVinci Wide Gamut Intermediate LUT, meaning:

• It should be applied to an image, that is encoded using DaVinci Intermediate OETF (often incorrectly called "Gamma")  and DaVinci Wide Gamut color primaries (called "Color space" in DaVinci Resolve).

• After the LUT, the image remains in the same color space.

• This allows for adjusting the LUT’s intensity or blending it with other scene-referred Look LUTs.

This LUT is designed to be as smooth as possible. While I can't guarantee it is completely artifact-free under every extreme lighting conditions, this was my primary goal: to make it look filmic, but smooth.

LUT Stress Test image was downloaded from truecolor.us

Complete Normal saturated LUT + DaVinci DRT

Complete Vibrant saturated LUT + DaVinci DRT

Complete Normal saturated LUT as is

Complete Vibrant saturated LUT as is

Footage from Fabian Matas

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Vibrant saturated LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Vibrant saturated LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

As you've probably noticed, in movies shot and printed back on film, dark red colors in the final image tend to desaturate and shift toward orange. This effect is so common that I've added it to the LUT.

Here are some gradients based on Rec709 Red (1,0,0) color with Look! Hedgehog LUT applied. The line on the vectorscope shifts to desaturated orange in the darker colors of the image (displayed as the brighter part of the line in the center of the vectorscope). Additionally, brightest saturated reds also shift towards desaturated orange.

And here are the same gradients, but under DaVinci DRT only.

DaVinci DRT only

Shot by Dastan Zhumagulov

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

While lifting and tinting blacks is an easy way to add more "filmness", removing that effect is much harder. That’s why this LUT preserves true blacks. However, grading under a filmic LUT often introduces tinting of the darkest black area of the real image, even if the trure 0.0 lens cap black remains neutral.

This happens because digital images rarely have areas of a true lens cap black. Instead, the darkest areas of an image often often fall into the lower brightness range, where split-toning still applies. Depending on the artistic intent, this may require manual balancing of the image black level by adding some "warmth" into the shadows. It takes time. On longer projects I used to spend up to an hour on this pass.

To counter this, I’ve applied split-toning slightly higher in the brightness range than usual. This means, shadows remain clean from unwanted tinting. And if you or a client decide on a more neutral look, removing the split-toning won’t leave your blacks looking unnaturally warm.

Shadows are cleared from the split-toning without using any color model-derived brightness channel but by using independent per-channel keying, making it identical to true channel-independent RGB toning.

Each LUT also includes a variant with 50% less strong RGB curve split-toning, suitable for projects requiring more neutral split-toning while keeping the strong filmic palette.

Each LUT also includes a variant with no RGB curve split-toning, but with the same contrast and strong filmic palette.

I've added per-channel tonemapping from 10K to 4000 nit because it's the default Timeline working luminance in the Output DRT of DaVinci YRGB Color Managed Color science. By default it keeps highlights up to 4000 nit only, clamping anything above that. So the LUT maps everything that fits DaVinci Intermediate 0-1 range (10K nit max) back from being clipped.

In case you don't like my beautiful RGB split-toning and contrast curve, each of 4 LUTs comes as a version without any contrast alterations and RGB split-toning.

Cases you need it for:

• You want to set you own contrast curve and split-toning.
• Client asked to add more filmness, but not alter already perfect and approved contrast.
• You want a misty, low contrasty, but saturated look. It is way better starting point, when you don't need to fight excessive contrast at first.

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Palette Only Vibrant Saturated LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

Each of 2 variants of the LUT comes as a higher saturation version (although, you rarely need them).

Complete Normal (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

Why they exist? Resolve has Saturation knob after all. Yes, it does. And as all saturation knobs, it is only good when used to decrease saturation. It is hard to add saturation without clipping or even artifacts. So it's better to have a highly saturated look and to dial it down as needed. Yet, typically you should use non highly saturated versions.

Also these versions are useful for building teal orange looks. Just add a node after the LUT and tint the overall white balance towards cooler colors. Best way is to set "Gamma" of the node, added after the LUT, to Linear and use Gain wheel to tint the image cooler (make sure Timeline "Gamma" in Timeline Color space settings is set correctly).

While it is designed primarily for DaVinci DRT (either by using DaVinci YRGB Color Managed Color science or node-based color management workflow),

You only need to use Color Space Transform if you prefer to use node-based color management workflow

it can also work well with alternative DRTs like JP 2499 in node-based color management workflow. Just make sure you change its already filmic defaults to something more neutral as a starting point:

Look! Hedgehog LUT should NOT be used with purely techincal DRTs like FilmLight's Truelight CAM or older versions of Jed Smith's OpenDRT, even if you set all the color space conversions correctly. These two DRTs are the examples of a different aproach to picture formation, and they require different types of Looks, that bring back what was intentionally removed from the picture formation of these DRTs.

There is no noise reduction and no pre-grading in any of the images. The only things changed are exposure and white balance either in RAW or in vendor gamut in Linear domain.

The frame was downloaded from arri.com

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Normal LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

Complete Normal (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Normal LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

Complete Normal (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

Shot by Dastan Zhumagulov

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Normal LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

Complete Normal (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

The frame was downloaded from cinematography.net

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Normal LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

Complete Normal (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

The frame was downloaded from arri.com

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Normal LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

DaVinci DRT (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

Complete Normal (left) vs Complete Vibrant LUT + DaVinci DRT (right)

In Project Settings:

• Set Color science to DaVinci YRGB Color Managed.
• Uncheck Automatic color management.
• Set Color processing mode to HDR DaVinci Wide Gamut Intermediate.
• Set Output color space to your target device color space. Common choices are Rec.709 (Scene), P3-DCI/P3-D65, Rec.2100 HLG and Rec.2100 ST2084.
• Set 3D lookup table interpolation to Tetrahedral.
• Right-click each clip and set Input Color Space according to the footage color space (RAW footage is handled automatically).
• Apply the LUT to a node.

Of course it's totally fine (you now what you're doing) to use the LUT with the node-based workflow instead of relying on Resolve color management.

It should be done with every LUT you use (exception - LUTs that support colors below 0.0 - maybe 0.0001% of all existing LUTs). Tetrahedral interpolation sometimes can introduce artifacts, if it has to deal with colors below 0.0, so I strongly recommend you to clamp all colors below 0.0 (darker than black) before a LUT (not just mine, basically any LUT, including built-in Resolve Film Looks LUTs).

• Load Gamut Limiter effect to the same node where a LUT is loaded.
• Set Current Gamma to Linear*. This will clamp values below black.

This will clamp everything below black color.

* Default Use timeline can also work, if your Timeline color space is set to Whatever Intermediate in Project Settings, but why rely on it and force Gamut Limiter to do unnecessary log decoding and encoding calculations under the hood, if we can just set it to Linear?

1. If it's analytic (code-based), why not ship it as a DCTL?

Initially, the idea was to release it as a DCTL, but it became too complex for real-time performance, so I decided to bake it into a LUT. Also this allowed to smooth the color lattice after baking.

2. Refunds?

No refunds, since LUTs are basically just plain text files and can't be protected from copying. Feel free to send me your stills — I can apply the LUT to your images so you can decide if it’s worth purchasing.

3. Why "Hedgehog"?

I like hedgehogs 🦔