Look! Hedgehog

DaVinci Intermediate Look LUT

A Smooth, Scene-Referred LUT with a Filmic Color Palette.
Analytic Look baked into LUT for performance.

More info and demo stills are available here, READ IT CAREFULLY, THEN COME BACK HERE.

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.

What's Included

• 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

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 🦔