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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Introducing LUT Creator for Still Images and Video

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I discovered this interesting software designed by a young Russian photographer who thought, why not put a grid of a chart of the gamut of a color space and simple be able to attach nodes on the grid relating to a picture and smoothly shift the hues and saturation at will in any combination might wish for.

So one can lock in say the skin tone and then select a beard and increase the saturation of hue as one desires.

I have not done more than spend 5 minutes, but I can shift the hues to the red and protect the skin somewhat. I am sure I can do much better after I RTFM, LOL!

Here is the interface and one form of presentation of the editing window.


LUT_02.png



LUT Creator: Gamut with grid editing window

The shift nodes represent areas of the beard to enrich and colors of the face to recover from spill. The program allows the face colors to be fixed, but that is my next read!


LUT_01.png


Asher Kelman: Redhead at Beverly Hills Farmer's Market "Before and After"

Adjusted with LUT Creator Trial Version



This is merely to demonstrate that new tools are available to us and this one seems worth investigating. It's about $400 or so, but potentially is a very powerful tool. I need to invest some time to discover how practical it is in delivering its promises.


Download the trial version and the manual here.


Asher
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

I discovered this interesting software designed by a young Russian photographer who thought, why not put a grid of a chart of the gamut of a color space and simple be able to attach nodes on the grid relating to a picture and smoothly shift the hues and saturation at will in any combination might wish for.<snip>

Way fascinating!

Certainly a nice result on your example.

Apparently, the lines that joined adjacent nodes in their original positions help us to figger out which ones are which when we have moved them. Very clever.

Thanks.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
What's especially interesting is that one can make the most sophisticated changes on a RAW file BEFORE processing to tiff files! This is especially important where the triad of saturation, color mapping and limits of exposure all have to be addressed in a valuable but poorly exposed image.

Changing the color of a Porche or the grasses in a meadow but nothing else seems to be very easy to accomplish!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I need help. Please get a good explanation for selecting nodes in the grid for face color to keep fixed.

The manual is far from clear.

How does one

close an image?

Do a complete reset?

Reproduce the changing of the boat color from blue to red using the A//B grid?

I have not found a clear tutorial dedicated to explaining the interface in detail.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
You may wonder why am I so hooked on this. Well it potentially allows one to slip in a series of ones beloved photos and reproduce that or another color scheme in a current image. One should be able to protect skin and change unique items. If colors are remapped, the color gradients will be smooth.

This has great creative potential.

Just that I haven't figured out the user interface well enough yet!

Asher
 

Cem_Usakligil

Well-known member
What's especially interesting is that one can make the most sophisticated changes on a RAW file BEFORE processing to tiff files!
Very interesting Asher. Can you please explain how this is achieved, i.e. the changing of the raw file before processing to tiff files? Does it change the raw file itself?
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Cem,

Very interesting Asher. Can you please explain how this is achieved, i.e. the changing of the raw file before processing to tiff files? Does it change the raw file itself?

I suspect it is similar to what I have, on a much more limited basis, with Silkypix Developer Studio.

Of course there the image manipulation is fairly limited, including cropping, exposure compensation, white balance color correction, and other color manipulation on a global basis. (In the Pro version, redeye removal is also among the available operations.)

The changes that are "set" are shown on the "preview" image on screen (sometime initially on a "primitive" basis, and then a little later on a refined basis), but no JPEG or TIFF file is created yet. When you are happy with the modifications, then a JPEG or TIF file is generated, based on the modified image, and a "sidecar" file describing the changes is also created (by default, in the same directory as the source raw file.

The situation is the same when starting with a JPEG of TIFF file. No change is made to the source file, and the output JPEG or TIFF file is not created until you are satisfied with the changes made to the image.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

I need help. Please get a good explanation for selecting nodes in the grid for face color to keep fixed.
I haven't yet even RTFM, so this is all speculation.

This probably does not relate to your actual question.

The little square nodes on the grid you showed represent points on the chromaticity plane (and thus "initial" values of chromaticity for any pixel of the source image.

If we drag one to another place on the chromaticity plane, it means that any pixel that originally had the chromaticity to which the node pertains (defined by the original position of the node) now gets a new chromaticity (that defined by the now position of the node.

No pixels having (original) chromaticity for which the node has not been moved will be changed in chromaticity.

However, you seem to be speaking about a way to protect certain regions of the image from the effect of chromaticity remapping, and I have no idea about that, not having RTFM.

The manual is far from clear.

How does one

close an image?

Do a complete reset?

I yet have no idea about such things.

Reproduce the changing of the boat color from blue to red using the A//B grid?

Well, conceptually, one would take the node representing the current chromaticity of the boat (somewhere in the "blue" region) and drag it to some place in the "red" region.

Now how one finds what node is at the current chromaticity of the boat I don't know. I assume there is some sort of eyedropper tool that would perhaps make the pertinent node light up.

Sorry to be of so little authentic help, but at the moment I have neither the program nor the manual in place, so the above is all unscientific wild-ass guessing.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Robert Watcher

Well-known member
What's especially interesting is that one can make the most sophisticated changes on a RAW file BEFORE processing to tiff files! This is especially important where the triad of saturation, color mapping and limits of exposure all have to be addressed in a valuable but poorly exposed image.

Changing the color of a Porche or the grasses in a meadow but nothing else seems to be very easy to accomplish!

Asher

A raw fle is not an image - simply contains all of the colour data from the sensor. However the raw file is tagged with contrast and saturation information that the camera user has set on the camera --- maybe that is the information that is being changed - but not likely that the image data has been changed. Or the software may create its own sidecar file that stores some proprietory metadata for use when processing out as a final image or continued editing within its own software.

I guess a jpeg file isn't much different - just that the colour data part is compressed data, and the metadata is stored as part of the header of the same file instead in a separate XMP file. Same 2 parts with tiff or any other image type file.

-------------

Is masking included so that you don't affect the same hues in other areas of the image?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I need help. Please get a good explanation for selecting nodes in the grid for face color to keep fixed.

The manual is far from clear.

How does one

close an image?

Do a complete reset?

Reproduce the changing of the boat color from blue to red using the A//B grid?

I have not found a clear tutorial dedicated to explaining the interface in detail.

Asher


Thanks guys for the responses!

I understand the programs intent and the purpose of the tools, but not the exact method in THIS tutorial video, (using A/B coordinates of the LAB color space), of actually "clicking on the pins" to move a portion of the grid but not another at the exact coordinates of skin color in the picture. When one hovers over the original image, the tiny cross pointer appears over the grid, but it is not at an exact intersection of the grid pattern. I can remember where the nearest intersections are and lock them, but I want to do this exactly. In the tutorial demonstration, it seems to work so easily without doing more than fixing the nodes nearest to the skin set of colors.

The issue is that a red beard and the skin contain sets of colors that are neighbors and I want to work not in replacing blue with red, but increase the redness of the bears without altering the face. One has no problem extending one set of areas over and beyond another fixed set. Fixed sets protect color.

I guess one just has to use a tighter grid.

Asher
 

Andrew Rodney

New member
A raw fle is not an image - simply contains all of the colour data from the sensor.

Right. So this product isn't doing anything unusual, it creates LUTs. And you need to use that LUT in your raw processor to produce a TIFF or something else. IOW, you need to render the raw file, something this product can do with the LUTs it produces.

It's a pretty slick product, I've played with the demo.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Wonderful to have you visit, Rodney!


Right. So this product isn't doing anything unusual,......


Well not quite! It actually can do all sorts of complex acrobatics with portions of the image in any color space model and not influence all other portions that are fixed. What other RAW processor can do that? It delivers the processed image!


Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Very interesting Asher. Can you please explain how this is achieved, i.e. the changing of the raw file before processing to tiff files? Does it change the raw file itself?


So here's an example of what manipulations can be achieved before processing.


The LUT we generate, from a Log C curve of the image, can be corrected before
that 3D LUT is applied to the RAW data. So that can include any changes e.g.
modest noise removal, removal of skin blemishes and more. So the changes are
made with the largest set of original data and not with some reduced subset.



Asher
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
Hi Guys.....

A brief comment. Looks like a cool application. But just to mention, that Michael Jonsson had implemented a Color Wheel that did similar things a long time ago in the early days of Capture One. Not saything that it was as versatile as this, but it had the same concepts if i remember correctly. I do not know C1 well now, so i cannot comment on what is in the program today except for this:

Here are 2 blog posts that discuss some of the current C1 tools.

http://blog.phaseone.com/trick-changed-approach-color-correction/

http://blog.phaseone.com/get-uniform-skintones/

Again, not comparing, just giving some credit to Michael J for his pioneering work back in the day. His overall architecture that he developed for C1 is still the basic paradigm that most of use today in programs like Lightroom (which obviously added a lot of functionality along the way, but the Raw image Workflow within the program is still modeled after the original C1. At least that is the way I look at it. BTW...I use Lightroom 99% of the time for my processing.

Good to see you all. Hope all is well with you.

BTW...if you are interested, on Monday, Luminous Landscape will be publishing my comparison of the Sony A7r II vs Nikon D810 and Canon 5DsR & 1Dx in terms of IQ and dynamic range. That Sony is a killer in terms of IQ.

Be well.....

~michael
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

So here's an example of what manipulations can be achieved before processing.

What a wonderful tutorial.

• It well illustrates the things that can be done with LUT manipulation.

• It shows incredible fluency on the part of the presenter (I didn't catch his name) in the use of PS. (It makes me tired just to watch it.)

• It never hurts to have an adorable subject.

It is important that we do not think of the work done during the construction of the LUT as "modifying the raw image" (there is really no such thing). Recall that what we see on the screen while we work on the LUT is a developed image. The changes we make via the properties of the LUT being created are a "recipe" for:

• Modifying on-screen this developed image (so we can see what we have done).

• Causing those modifications to be made on an actual developed image file (JPEG or TIFF) that we might generate from the program (I guess it can do that).

• Causing an adjustment layer in Photoshop, fed that LUT from the file in which we saved it, to make those same modifications to the image (to a controllable degree).

I noted as he worked with the chromaticity on the A-B plane how the grid was "warped" to make a coordinated chromaticity shift in a certain region of the plane.

Very neat.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Guys.....

A brief comment. Looks like a cool application. But just to mention, that Michael Jonsson had implemented a Color Wheel that did similar things a long time ago in the early days of Capture One. Not saything that it was as versatile as this, but it had the same concepts if i remember correctly. I do not know C1 well now, so i cannot comment on what is in the program today except for this:

Here are 2 blog posts that discuss some of the current C1 tools.

http://blog.phaseone.com/trick-changed-approach-color-correction/

http://blog.phaseone.com/get-uniform-skintones/

Again, not comparing, just giving some credit to Michael J for his pioneering work back in the day. His overall architecture that he developed for C1 is still the basic paradigm that most of use today in programs like Lightroom (which obviously added a lot of functionality along the way, but the Raw image Workflow within the program is still modeled after the original C1. At least that is the way I look at it. BTW...I use Lightroom 99% of the time for my processing.

Well Michael, you do right by Michael J and his contributions! We should never forget the pioneers who opened up the amazing world of controlled color correction based with manipulation via visual metaphors for the color spaces.

Good to see you all. Hope all is well with you.

Well Michael, this is a real treat and Shona Tova to you and your family!

BTW...if you are interested, on Monday, Luminous Landscape will be publishing my comparison of the Sony A7r II vs Nikon D810 and Canon 5DsR & 1Dx in terms of IQ and dynamic range. That Sony is a killer in terms of IQ.

Yes, this is amazing news and a great advance. I have switched to the A7R a year ago and it delivers images that have impact way above it's nominal pixel count, right up there with Phase One 800 MP sensor. It is easier for me to get a highly impressive 48" high portrait image from the Sony file! At 10", however, the hair resolution is clearly fine, (as expected), in the Phase One print, but only noticeable if one does a side by side comparison. I have no doubt that a regular Phase One pro, could match the impact of the Phase One 80MP files and surpass my own results with the Sony A7R, but at least in my hands, I have no advantage in renting the Phase One camera further!



One nagging small issue, of as yet unknown relevance, is the A7RII
RAW file compression in very high contrast areas, for example, a
bright lit sign on a dark b.g. Did you read that and is it a flaw?


..also a report appeared that the Leica M lenses don't do so well with the A7R/II - any comment?

anyway, a pleasure to have you visit!


Asher
 

Andrew Rodney

New member
It is important that we do not think of the work done during the construction of the LUT as "modifying the raw image" (there is really no such thing). Recall that what we see on the screen while we work on the LUT is a developed image.

Exactly! What we have is a very useful and it appears powerful LUT creator. The raw data is what it is, stays that way (it's read only). Again, what makes this product interesting is it's UI and how it creates 3d LUTs for image processing.
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

I understand the programs intent and the purpose of the tools, but not the exact method in THIS tutorial video, (using A/B coordinates of the LAB color space), of actually "clicking on the pins" to move a portion of the grid but not another at the exact coordinates of skin color in the picture. When one hovers over the original image, the tiny cross pointer appears over the grid, but it is not at an exact intersection of the grid pattern.

Indeed. The actual chromaticity in the image is on a much finer resolution that the pitch of the grid (which is somewhat arbitrary, an aspect of the LUT design).

The LUT is discrete, and only can return an explicit "mapped" chromaticity for a finite number of input chromaticities (presumably those associated with the nodes on the grid display). But of course it can indirectly return a mapped chromaticity for any input chromaticity through interpolation, which presumably the software that reads and applies the LUT does.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator


One nagging small issue, of as yet unknown relevance, is the A7RII
RAW file compression in very high contrast areas, for example, a
bright lit sign on a dark b.g. Did you read that and is it a flaw?

Hi Asher,

Thanks for the kind words...

As for the above, Sony has announced that they will add 14-bit uncompressed storage in a month or 2 via firmware upgrade for all of the A7 cameras. In my experience the compression has not done any harm for my images. I can see it sometimes because I know what to look for but in practice day to day shooting i suspect that i might continue to shoot compressed to keep the file size down. We will have to see. I do not own Leica M lenses and so cannot comment..I know there is a company who modifies the Sony series for better results with those lenses, but I cannot speak to it..

Be well, my friend(s)...

~michael
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,
I understand the programs intent and the purpose of the tools, but not the exact method in THIS tutorial video . . .

That is a very nice tutorial.

In the tutorial demonstration, it seems to work so easily without doing more than fixing the nodes nearest to the skin set of colors.

Yes, that seems to work quite effectively.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

It looks from the basic tutorial video that once you click on a spot in the image, and see where on the grid is that chromaticity, you can then drag the mouse where it is on the image and that will drag that point on the grid (that is, you do not need to remember where that chromaticity was on the grid and grab that spot on the grid proper with the mouse pointer to change the grid).

If that is in fact so that is a brilliant U/I concept!

I see that one can in fact save a modified file out of the program itself.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

I just looked at the "changing the color of the boat" example on the 3D LUT Creator Web page.

Here is a split-screen image showing the change (before on the left, after on the right):

3DLUT_boat_change-02.jpg

Here is the A-B grid for doing that:

a-b.jpg

We see that five grid nodes (presumably embracing all the original "blue" chromaticities of the boat) have been moved to the "red" region (a narrower range of chromaticities, in fact).

The quasi-luminance (L) is presumably kept the same for each pixel (although I did see about making L changes in one of the tutorials - I'm not sure just how that would work).

On a separate front, I see that the Professional version includes some type of mask capability.

This is a really neat tool!

Best regards,

Doug
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Thanks Doug for introducing this red-blue conversion. Isn't it remarkable!



3DLUT_boat_change-02.jpg



It was achieved without apparently influencing the cyan-blue-green colors of the water and is impressive. That so seems dramatic ..............but it's really an easy swop! These are such distant options! Don't we think it could be easily done in Photoshop too?

A new tool should be able to do better than that! So what is a more difficult challenge then?

Hard choices in life are not generally between extreme options, but from those that seem to be very close. So the test for this program is not between some sort of extreme of say good and evil, but between, for example "very good sample 1007" and its neighbor, "very good sample 1009", so to speak.

In another analogy, how does one "neutralize" from the air evil "terrorist" migrants from their innocent victims in the same packed swarm of refugees?

So let's approach such a daunting challenge, but without having to kill folk, just alter closely mapped colors. While we haven't figured out how to identify evil folk from the air, we can use LUT Creator, to select out a closely mapped subsets of hues in the digital file of a photograph.We use the LAB color space (on a log C remapped file converted automatically from the input photograph. The log C file allows for a much more gradual more asymptotic shoulder of brightness to replace the cut off highlight portion of the standard histogram).

We know that long hair ends can look a little less saturated We can try to remap low saturation red hair in one of my "Redhead from New York" photographs so that this hair approaches mid saturated red hair in the same image. I picked one picture of the three shown that was the least in focus to make this even more of a challenge!


Redhead_2.jpg


Asher Kelman: Girl From a Café #2

New York

"Redheads 2015"

Canon 5D 2.2, 1/50sec, 50 1.2L

So we are trying to make a subtle change and still not alter her skin color which maps awfully close.


So first we need to be in the LAB presentation grid. But we need to add more grid lines as we intend to work with very closely mapped colors of light hair and skin of her face and arms which has a wide gamut of low wo high saturation reds which we must somehow protect.


AB Skin distribution Pins

So here I have moved the curser over the skin and watched what vertices close to the cross hairs moving as different skin areas are sampled. Each of these intersections of vertices are clicked with the mouse and that FIXES or LOCKS a pin at that point. By creating a field of such locked pins, the range of skin hues can be protected.

Likewise, we need to know where we'd like to have the light red hair hues end up after correction. How saturated should they be. It seems that they should be medium-saturated, so such hair was sampled. Here we have the mid-sat red hair samplings represented by 3 additional fixed pins.


THE ADJUSTEMENT: Now the vertices to the left and below this gray triangle (i.e. mid-saturated red hair), and to the left of protected skin hues, were each dragged to the top corner of the gray triangle.


Grid with pins from selected areas of the image.jpg


One can benefit from marking the two sets of fixed pins differently, so we can distinguish between protected skin anGrid with pins from selected areas of the image.jpgd mid-sat red hair we want to use as an adjustment end point for the least red hair. This "goal area where we want to end up, is shown bounded by grey triangle.


FIXED SKIN & HAIR PINS and moved low sat hair.jpg


In the before and after picture, one can see that this results in an infusion of a satisfactory red hue into the lower part of her hair.


Before and After Low SAT hair adjusted.jpg



Good points:

  • Logical approach

  • Easy to understand grid/color space, color sampling and pin location, metaphor

  • Good result with her poorly colored hair ends, 18 cm or so, have gained matching color. :) Tiny areas that were "over-cooked" can be masked out. Can this be done in this software and what about layers or progressive modification of the LUT but each modification can be masked?

  • Just my second attempt!


Wants:

  • Different color choices for the fixed pins
  • Ways of further refining result from bleeding to the brightest highlights in the hair.
  • Brush to collect and select points as a set.
  • Ability to move the entire selected range of hues to be adjusted to a desired range of target hues and this allow preservation of gradients of "lighting" and/ variation in the hair.
  • Ability to place new fixed pins in between the vertices, if that's where that sample actually maps. That could allow for fine separation of and protection of hues in closely similar picture elements.
  • Easy to see reset and close image buttons on the same place in all views of the program.


Thanks for joining me ?

More to follow!

Asher
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

We know that long hair ends can look a little less saturated We can try to remap low saturation red hair in one of my "Redhead from New York" photographs . . .<snip>

Nice demonstration and presentation.

You cover a lot of ground and fast!

Best regards,

Doug
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

Wants:

• Different color choices for the fixed pins


What do you mean by that? That the vertices that are "pinned" should have a different color so that state can be more readily seen? [ADK] The different sources of those color "samplings" should be color-coded. So, for example, skin might be shown with green pains and hair with yellow pins.

• Ways of further refining result from bleeding to the brightest highlights in the hair.

• Brush to collect and select points as a set.

Can you select several with Shift-drag? Has that worked for you?

• Ability to move the entire selected range of hues to be adjusted to a desired range of target hues and this allow preservation of gradients of "lighting" and/ variation in the hair.

• Ability to place new fixed pins in between the vertices, if that's where that sample actually maps. That could allow for fine separation of and protection of hues in closely similar picture elements.

Not sure what fixed pins are. Do you mean vertexes that have been "pinned". Or do you mean added vertexes that are "pinned" to begin with?simply clicking on a vertex, "pins it" and so fixes the color, protecting it from alteration and remapping.

Of course, in the real versions (maybe even in the trial version - the specs are a bit ambiguous) one can increase the fineness of the grid, which could help that issue some.yes that helps, but adding exact sample points makes for more precise separation of hues

• Easy to see "reset" and "close image" buttons on the same place in all views of the program.

Yes, that often needs fixing in much software.

Best regards,

Doug
 
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