The LUT image obviously contains the colors in the pixels of the image. This nugget of information is crucial to understand. The brilliance of the LUT is that it contains two sets of information. The brilliance of the LUT image above isn’t that it contains every single color. Remember how the RGB cube represents all the colors possible in RGB? Well, because the LUT is generated from the cube, the LUT also contains every color. It encodes all the edits of the filter artist, and it defines the filter. Once they’re happy with how their edits are affecting their bank of images, they save those edits, and they apply them to the unedited LUT, which looks a lot like the sample I showed you. They might have a bank of images that contain multiple colors and multiple tones, so they tune the edits to each subject matter, but they’re using Photoshop tools to manipulate the image. What a filter artist does traditionally, is that they open a sample photo, and then they manually edit it to accomplish a look they’re happy with. I’m not sure what they’re technically called, but for the sake of this article, let’s call them filter artists. So, now that you know what a color space is, and you know what a look-up table looks like, we can get back to filters. Image via How Filters Were Made (Before Darkroom) RGB is represented as a cube, with each side ranging in value from 0 to 1.Īn unedited 3-D LUT. For those unfamiliar with the RGB colorspace, a quick two sentence explanation goes something like this: Color Spaces can be represented as 3-dimensional shapes that contain all colors. Without getting into too many details (Look up the terms for a deeper understanding, no pun intended), the basic premise behind how LUTs work is that a simple image is generated, covering every possible color in the RGB color space. Before we continue, I think an understanding of what a LUT is and how filters work will really help demystify them. Further, I knew that VSCO’s filters (And all the other filter apps, for that matter), simply operated on the premise of LUTs (Look-Up Tables). I knew there was no technical reason why such a constraint and ineffeciency was necessary. Putting aside the amount of work involved in identifying which of the photos I wanted to edit in the first place and how much work it took to import them, anyone familiar with VSCO understands the pain of how much work it is to edit multiple photos. It was too warm, and it crushed my highlights. It was by far my favorite because of what it did to yellows/greens/blues, but it had some quirks I didn’t care for. What I quickly realized when I was going through that routine two years ago, was how repetitive the process was. Anyone passionate about photography is familiar with the feeling: You go on a trip, you take heaps of photos every day, then at some point you go through them, either piecemeal or all at once, and you try to identify which you want to edit and what you want them to look like, then you get to work.