Lutify.me – Preview LUTs & Create Looks in a Web Browser

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by Olaf von VossMarch 1^st, 2019

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If you’re a creative dealing with shooting and post production, you’re familiar with LUTs. These tiny text files come in handy for both color space conversion and creative effects. However, dealing with them and their organisation is a completely different story. Lutify.me is a subscription-based LUT service and its latest addition is a web-based LUT Previewer tool that streamlines creating a look visually.

Lutify.me is around for quite some time now, but their new (included) service, called LUTs Previewer, is pretty new. And it seems to be super handy when it comes to browse, examine, tweak and compare LUTs. All in a convenient online workspace, all you need is a browser.

Lutify.me

Since this service is subscription-based, we have to talk about pricing first. Lutify.me comes in three flavors, ranging from $29 to $59 for the first year. All three tiers share a $19.90/year price tag for all following years while your subscription is active.

The difference between the three tiers is basically defined by the amount of LUTs included. The Basic membership ($29) includes 35 LUTs, the Standard one ($39) comes with 65 LUTs included. Want to go pro? The top tier offers a whooping 213 LUTs to choose from. However, the real kicker is a different one: Only the Professional tier ($59) allows for 3rd party LUT import for the online LUTs Previewer. This feature is not yet available, though, but it’s marked as coming soon. This feature is now live (see Lutify’s own Goran Ljubuncic’s comment below this article).

Also included with the Professional tier comes support for RED IPP2 tailored LUTs for those of you shooting on modern RED cameras.

LUTs Previewer

This new LUTs Previewer works like a real-time LUT online catalogue. Once you’re signed in you can browse all the LUTs included in your subscription. You then upload any log (or non-log) stills from your camera footage into your online library and apply an appropriate log correction LUT (Log – Rec709 for example). Just like in Photoshop another layer can be applied containing a creative LUT from your library. You can adjust exposure, white balance and LUT strength (opacity) while the preview is always updated in real time.

Once you’re happy with the result you can compare it to different grading ideas. Up to 12 finished looks can be saved to your selection, selected stills can be exported for reference while all applied parameters and LUT names are reflected within the file name. Judging a created look is easy with the included before/after swipe tool.

One thing to keep in mind: This tool only works with stills, not with actual video footage. However, pretty much any still image format is supported, including RAW files such as CR2, NEF, ARW, DNG or RW2. For video applications the workflow would include importing your footage into your NLE or grading software of choice and export stills of key scenes. These stills can then be imported into the LUTs Previewer.

Conclusion

If you’re into LUTs, a Lutify.me subscription might be worth a closer look. Being relatively affordable in comparison to other services or LUT packages is one thing but the real benefit might be the LUTs Previewer which really seems to be very handy when it comes to creating a look visually rather then digging through piles of LUT files on your computer.

Link: Website

What do you think? Might this speed up your LUT workflow? Share your thoughts (including alternatives) in the comments below!