woofw wrote:
thanks for the informative write up in FB. I bought 3Dlut when it first came out from Oleg but did not use it as I find the tutorials a bit hard to comprehend and more structured to videos.

They are not video oriented but the very subject of twisting and shaping the 3D color space is not really simple to put into words. I also feel a big difficulty in explaining the whole matter, especially when people are so used to tools which really don't need any understanding of color space. We should thank Adobe for making more and more people just operators of "smart" tools.

Benski wrote:
I think would be great if Photoshop started building more tools with a LUT-editor-esque back-end.

Imagine being able to click on the red of a dress, and simply drag up/down/left/right to perfectly cleanly remap Hue/Saturation at the level of the colour space. Or being able to click on skin, and have a simple Uniformity slider.

Be awesome

Benski wrote:
Creative colour work's still done with colour wheels/curves and mask-based selective processes.

Everyone is free to do whatever one likes. Personally I like optimized and flexible workflows and I don't see anything creative in using 20 layers and 1-2GB files when the exact same thing can be done with 2 layers. It's a waste of time and resources.

Mouricz wrote:
If I put the LUT "Retouching-with-luts-1-prophoto" in Luminosity mode, it's perfect.

It may produce a certain effect which you like for a particular image but the right thing to do is to use LUTs in normal mode.

2thestudio - Ivan wrote:
It's a faster way to do do overall adjustments. It doesn't replace masking, it doesn't replace clean up and it doesn't replace DNB. So, is it really that faster for an experienced retoucher? No.

Nobody claims LUTs are a replacement for local adjustments or that it will make this part of the workflow magically faster. Read the first sentence and the last paragraph of the article.

However they can help you to work faster as a well because of the improved overall efficiency as explained. I don't know what you mean by "that faster" but it is significantly lighter and easier to work with a file with 3 layers without masks than with a file with 30 layers with masks.

anchev wrote:

Nobody claims LUTs are a replacement for local adjustments or that it will make this part of the workflow magically faster. Read the first sentence and the last paragraph of the article.

However they can help you to work faster as a whle because of the improved overall efficiency as explained. I don't know what you mean by "that faster" but it is significantly lighter and easier to work with a file with 3 layers without masks than with a file with 30 layers with masks.

Show me a workflow of 3 layers with no masks that can be applied on any image? You can't work on a professional level without masks. DNB using curves is essentially masking.

2thestudio - Ivan wrote:
Show me a workflow of 3 layers with no masks that can be applied on any image? You can't work on a professional level without masks. DNB using curves is essentially masking.

My working files are 2-4 layers maximum and I don't keep any masks. I cannot "show you" a workflow here because many years of work and optimization cannot be summarized in a forum post. Plus it will be 1) off-topic and 2) would raise many additional questions which would need 150 pages if I need to answer them. So let's leave this for another time.

2thestudio - Ivan wrote:
It's a faster way to do do overall adjustments. It doesn't replace masking, it doesn't replace clean up and it doesn't replace DNB. So, is it really that faster for an experienced retoucher? No.

It does replace masking. LUT masking is much cleaner and faster. And it can mask things PS can't even get close.

Tulack wrote:
It does replace masking. LUT masking is much cleaner and faster. And it can mask things PS can't even get close.

Yes but only if the masking can be related to the image data itself, i.e. if the mask value is a function of the RGB values in the image. For that LUTs are more powerful than masks created through selections. However a LUT cannot create a mask which is created as a selection independent of image data. It is simply not aimed to do that.

anchev wrote:

Everyone is free to do whatever one likes. Personally I like optimized and flexible workflows and I don't see anything creative in using 20 layers and 1-2GB files when the exact same thing can be done with 2 layers. It's a waste of time and resources.

I mean in a colour-grading suite .. If you've got a director telling you 'Take the magenta out of the skintones', 'Make the light in the door yellow', it's very quick with selections and colour-wheels, and more intuitive (especially working with other people) than a spiderweb of colour remapping points.

And layers can be useful, when you're making 20 different adjustments, being able to toggle or mix things in and out.. I've seen a Youtube video of someone working like that with 3DLUT Generator/Creator, and they did use a lot of layers.

I'm interested in LUTs as creative grading tools.. But then when you use things like Davinci Resolve, there is a very similar level of flexibility, in being able to isolate ranges of colours by Hue/Sat/Lightness, and shift or remap them.. It's really Photoshop that's been oddly lacking there (the HSL tool doesn't really do it very cleanly).

Benski wrote:
I mean in a colour-grading suite .. If you've got a director telling you 'Take the magenta out of the skintones', 'Make the light in the door yellow', it's very quick with selections and colour-wheels, and more intuitive (especially working with other people) than a spiderweb of colour remapping points.

And layers can be useful, when you're making 20 different adjustments, being able to toggle or mix things in and out.. I've seen a Youtube video of someone working like that with 3DLUT Generator/Creator, and they did use a lot of layers.

I'm interested in LUTs as creative grading tools.. But then when you use things like Davinci Resolve, there is a very similar level of flexibility, in being able to isolate ranges of colours by Hue/Sat/Lightness, and shift or remap them.. It's really Photoshop that's been oddly lacking there (the HSL tool doesn't really do it very cleanly).

I am not sure what you are comparing or objecting to, on what basis and for what purpose. You are talking about creative color work implying that using particular tools is the way to it. Now you are backing this up with speed, intuition, directors, team work.

It is quite detrimental to any discussion to add connotations just to make one particular thing sound paramount and decry another. This can only over complicate it, make it go in all kinds of off-topic directions like we have seen before and in the end the whole thing can easily turn into a meaningless argument clinic. So I would like to suggest, if I may: let's be clear when we discuss things and let's not dilute them with various verbal decorations however nice sounding that may be. We really don't need to start another endless off-topic discussion about what is creative, how one does business, what is it to work in a team etc. As noted I have just shared some info because people asked. As mentioned in the very beginning of the article this is not a recipe. One is free to use or ignore that info, use whatever tools one likes etc.

For me things are really very simple: there is color. You are not creating anything, you are manipulating what is already there. Personally I don't use YouTube to check if I am using the number or type of layers which another one uses. I just don't see why I should work like another. One may be used to a particular way just because for many years there have been no other ways. But quick association and repetition is not intuition. It is past knowledge, maybe even laziness to explore into new ways. Surely it is not recommended to do anything without understanding it fully. Also the tools mentioned in the article are not a recommendation. So of course - if you want to work 20 layers to make adjustments, I don't see anyone stopping you. But let's leave room for others to explore for themselves.