Color grading with LUTs

Upload .cube LUT profiles and have footage.one grade previews of log and raw footage automatically — per storage folder, per event or per asset.

Why LUTs

Cameras that record in a log or raw profile (DJI D-Log, S-Log, V-Log, RAW …) deliver deliberately flat, low-contrast images. That footage is meant for grading — but in a media library it just looks grey and washed out, which makes browsing, selecting and sharing hard.

A LUT (lookup table, a .cube file) is the recipe that maps such a profile onto a normal display colour space, usually Rec.709. footage.one applies the LUT when it renders thumbnails, previews and keyframes, so your library shows graded images. Your original file is never modified.

The LUT profile catalogue

Upload your .cube files once under LUT profiles in the sidebar:

  • Give each profile a recognisable name, e.g. "DJI D-Log → Rec.709".
  • Only .cube files are accepted, up to 32 MB.
  • Profiles belong to your team, so everyone works with the same looks.
  • Deleting a profile leaves already graded previews untouched.

Uploading a profile alone changes nothing yet — you also have to say where it applies.

Four ways a LUT reaches your footage

Source How you configure it
Sidecar file A .cube file lying next to the media (or in its folder) on the storage — picked up automatically
Storage folder Bind a profile to a storage sub-path under a storage's LUT bindings
Event Bind a profile to an event; optionally apply it to every asset already in it
Manual, per asset Pick a profile in the Colors section of the asset

If more than one applies, footage.one uses this order:

Manual → Sidecar file → Storage folder → Event

A manual assignment is sticky: it survives a re-import and is never overwritten by a configured source.

Binding a profile to a storage folder

  1. Open the storage and click the palette icon (LUT bindings) in the toolbar.
  2. Enter the sub-path the LUT should apply to — for example /Drone/D-Log. Leave it empty to cover the whole storage.
  3. Pick the profile and save.

Sub-paths match on folder boundaries: a binding for /Academy covers /Academy/clip.mp4, but not /Academy2/clip.mp4. When several bindings match, the most specific one — the longest path — wins.

In the storage overview, every storage with at least one binding carries a small LUT badge; hovering it shows which profiles are bound.

Grading during import

When you import from a storage, the confirmation dialog tells you what to expect:

  • LUT configured — the profile that is configured for the selected path is named.
  • No LUT configured — you own LUT profiles, but none of them covers this path. The import runs normally; previews are simply generated ungraded unless a .cube sidecar sits next to the media.

That way an unbound profile no longer goes unnoticed until you wonder why your material looks flat.

Checking the result on an asset

Open an asset and expand the Colors section. Badges show where the grade came from:

Badge Meaning
Manual LUT Assigned by hand on this asset
Storage LUT From a storage sub-path binding
Event LUT From the event the asset belongs to
Sidecar LUT (file) / (folder) From a .cube file found next to the media

Below the badges you see the file name of the LUT in use. If you pick a different profile, previews are re-rendered in the background — a Re-grading preview… badge marks the wait.

Troubleshooting

I uploaded a profile, but nothing looks different. The profile is not bound anywhere. Bind it to a storage folder or an event, or assign it to individual assets.

Only new material is graded. Configured LUTs are applied at import. For material already imported, use the event binding with "apply to all assets", or assign the profile on the asset itself.

The wrong LUT is applied. Check the precedence: a .cube sidecar on the storage beats your folder binding, and a manual assignment beats everything. The badge on the asset tells you which source won.

Next steps

Relations