LUTs or look-up tables are extremely flexible resources that can be used for color grading images or video. Our LUTs are sold in .CUBE format and designed primarily for use with film/video editing. However, they can be super effective and beautiful tools for coloring your images, or for coloring your images to match your video using compatible photo editors like Photoshop and Affinity Photo.

Here we'll walk you through how to apply a LUT to an image in Photoshop via a Color Lookup Adjustment Layer so you can quickly & easily edit your images with LUTs! 

How to Apply LUTs in Photoshop 

1. Download & Unzip your new Luxe LUTS. Once unzipped these will appear as individual .CUBE files within your collection folder. 
2. Save your LUTs to a secure location where they can easily be found by searching!
3. Open an image in Photoshop. 
4. Go to Window > Adjustments to be sure you can see your layer Adjustments options (the Color Lookup option is indicated by an arrow):
   
5. Select “Color Lookup” from your adjustment options – This will create an adjustment layer:
   
   and a Properties box for the color lookup layer will pop up.
6. In the Color Lookup Properties box select “Load 3D LUT…” and then press “Load 3D LUT” from the top option – This will open your file explorer (or finder) to locate your LUTs:
   
7. Select the LUT you’d like to apply to your image to color grade your image from your files and click "Load" to apply:
   
   The first time you use your LUTs, you’ll want to likely try each one to familiarize yourself with the custom toning provided by each one by loading one at a time. You can change your LUT at any time via the the "Load 3D LUT..." dropdown you used under properties for your Color Lookup layer. You can also cross-reference with the examples on our product pages! 

This guide shows you how to apply adjustment layers within your workspace, you can also create a Color Lookup layer & apply LUTs by opening an image and then navigating to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Lookup... in your top menu and then load a 3D LUT from your files via the layer properties panel.

How to Install your LUTs in Photoshop

You can also install LUTs in Photoshop, so you don't have to load individually each time! 

1. Unzip your downloaded folder
2. Select all of your .CUBE files to copy
3. For Windows: paste the files into "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2021\Presets\3DLUTs" on your computer. For Mac: paste the files into "Applications\Adobe Photoshop\Presets\3DLUTs" in Finder.
4. Restart Photoshop
5. Apply them in Photoshop as an Adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Lookup... and then select an installed 3D LUT from the drop-down). 

Bonus Tip: Once applied you can adjust opacity of the Color Lookup layer to lessen the effect or you can add a layer mask and remove some of the effect from parts of your image selectively. Some use color grading LUTs specifically for skin or to grade specific parts of an image with masking.

You can view examples of this sort of localized modification via our Instagram Reels with photographer Bri Viglianco HERE & HERE. 

Run into any trouble? Reach out to our team for 1:1 support at support@theluxelens.com!