Guides

Short, honest explainers on colour matching — no fluff, no jargon walls.

• How to create a LUT from a reference image
  Turn any reference image's colour and tone into a .cube LUT you can use in your video editor — what works, what to watch for, and the one-click way.
• Can a Lightroom preset copy another photo's look?
  What a Lightroom preset can and cannot reproduce from a reference photo — tone curves, white balance, HSL — and why some looks need a LUT instead.
• How 3D LUTs actually work
  A plain-English explanation of 3D LUTs: the lattice, trilinear interpolation, the .cube format, and why LUT size and monotonicity matter.
• How to match the colours of two photos
  Three ways to make one photo's colours match another — by eye, by histogram matching, and by fitted transform — and how to judge whether the match worked.
• How to install and use a .cube LUT in DaVinci Resolve
  Where to put .cube files in DaVinci Resolve on Mac and Windows, three ways to apply them, and the node-order mistake that ruins LUT results.
• How to install an .xmp preset in Lightroom
  Installing .xmp develop presets in Lightroom Classic and the cloud-based Lightroom — menus to use, where files live, and why some presets behave differently on raw vs JPEG.
• Why your LUT looks wrong on log footage
  Washed-out, grey, or wildly oversaturated results when applying a LUT to log footage: what display-referred vs log actually means, and the fix.
• What ΔE means: putting a number on colour accuracy
  ΔE (delta-E) measures how different two colours look. What the numbers mean, why ΔE2000 replaced simpler formulas, and how to interpret accuracy claims.
• How to keep colours consistent across a photo series
  Making a photo set from mixed light, times, or cameras look like one body of work — anchor images, batch application, and when consistency beats accuracy.
• How to get a film look from a reference image
  What actually makes photos read as 'shot on film' — tonal compression, colour crossover, halation, grain — and which parts a colour transform can copy from a reference.