The Absolute Best Way to Preview LUTs

by Sean Setters

If you're like me, after having purchased the 5DayDeal Complete Video Creators Bundle (especially over multiple years), you may have a ton of LUTs (Look Up Tables) that can be used to color grade your videos and images. For instance, the last time I counted, I had over 600 LUTs sitting in a folder on my hard drive. Unfortunately, sifting through my LUTs to find one that's appropiate for a specific video/photo project has has been a painfully slow and tedius process, requiring the of application of each LUT individually within the software editor for preview purposes.

Thankfully, there's a better way. A Swedish software designer has created an excellent (and free) program – Bulk LUTs Previewer – that allows for fast and easy previewing of your locally stored LUTs.

How Does Bulk LUTs Previewer Work?

It's really simple.

1. Open the program and click "Import" to point Bulk LUTs Previewer to the image you'd like to use as the sample. I'd suggest using a small resolution image as a full-resolution image will make the previews load significantly slower.
2. Click the "3D Luts" button and navigate to your folder containing the LUTs.
3. Click "Generate" to generate the LUT previews.

Once you've found the LUT you'd like to use, here are the steps for applying the LUT to an image in Photoshop.

• Open your image and add a Color Lookup Table adjustment layer.
• In the Properties panel of the adjustment layer, click "Load 3D LUT..."
• Click the "Load 3D LUT..." option and navigate to the appropriate LUT.

While the sofware is free, I highly suggest donating to the author (using the "About" menu option) to encourage the software's further development (I did).

Download: Bulk LUTs Previewer