How to make a LUT from your grade, app by app

To make a LUT from your grade, finish the grade in an app that can write one, then save it as a .cube file. In DaVinci Resolve that is a right-click on the clip and Generate LUT. In Premiere Pro it is Export .cube in the Lumetri Color panel menu. In Photoshop it is File > Export > Color Lookup Tables. Adobe's Lightroom Classic help documents presets, not LUTs, so a Lightroom look has to go through another route. Leumos writes one .cube per shot on its Lite and Studio plans.

The menu click is the easy part. What decides whether the LUT works in someone else's timeline is three choices you make before it: which footage the LUT expects to receive, how many points it samples, and which parts of your grade can live in a LUT at all. Those come after the steps.

Steps checked on 16 October 2026 against Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve 21 documentation and Adobe's own help pages for Premiere, Photoshop and Lightroom Classic. Links are in each section.

What each app can write

DaVinci Resolve: Generate LUT

1. Grade the clip on the Color page.
2. Right-click the clip's thumbnail in the Color page timeline and open the Generate LUT submenu.
3. Choose 17 Point Cube, 33 Point Cube or 65 Point Cube. The fourth choice, Panasonic VLUT, is a format Blackmagic associates with Panasonic VariCam cameras.
4. Save it in Resolve's LUT folder if you want it to appear in Resolve's own LUT lists. The Open LUT Folder button in step 5 takes you there. Blackmagic gives the macOS path as Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/LUT/ and the Windows path as C:\ProgramData\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Support\LUT.
5. If Resolve was already open when you added the file, go to Project Settings > Color Management > Lookup Tables and press Update Lists.

Resolve combines all the compatible nodes into one file, and only certain tools count as compatible. Blackmagic's Resolve 21 documentation (Chapter 150, "Using LUTs") lists what carries over: Primaries palette adjustments, Custom Curves adjustments, and compatible Resolve FX, which include Color Space Transform, ACES Transform and Gamut Mapping.

The same passage says a node that uses a qualifier or a window is ignored completely, "as will all other correction operations made within these nodes." Sharpening, blurring and incompatible Resolve FX or Open FX go the same way. So if you pulled a key on the sky and nudged the contrast in that same node, the contrast change is gone too. Before you generate, move any global correction out of a keyed node and into a node of its own.

Premiere Pro: Export .cube from Lumetri Color

1. Open Window > Lumetri Color and select the graded clip.
2. Open the panel menu at the top of the Lumetri Color panel and choose Export .cube.
3. Name the file and save it.

That is the whole procedure on Adobe's page Save or export Look-up Tables (last updated 7 January 2026). A vignette can't be in the file, because it depends on where a pixel sits. Adobe doesn't say whether an Input LUT you set in Basic Correction is included, so test the .cube on an ungraded copy of the clip before you send it.

To use a .cube in Premiere, Adobe's Add Look-up Tables page has you open the Input LUT dropdown in Basic Correction and choose Browse. Adobe's install page separates the two kinds: under Adobe's shared Common/LUTs folder, files in Creative show up under Creative > Look, and files in Technical show up under Basic Correction > Input LUT. A look LUT built on Rec.709 belongs with the creative ones; a log-to-Rec.709 conversion belongs with the technical ones.

Photoshop: Export Color Lookup Tables

Photoshop is a common way to turn a still-image look into a video LUT, with one firm condition. Adobe's Export color lookup tables page says you can export "only from documents that have a background layer and additional layers to modify colors." In practice that means a flattened frame on the Background layer with adjustment layers above it.

1. Open a frame from your footage. It should be in the same state your LUT will receive: log if the LUT will go on log footage, already converted to Rec.709 if it will go on converted footage. If Photoshop asks about a color profile when it opens, assign the footage's profile rather than converting, so the pixel values stay the ones your footage has.
2. Build the look with adjustment layers, such as Curves, Levels, Hue/Saturation, Color Balance or Selective Color.
3. Choose File > Export > Color Lookup Tables.
4. Type a description. A copyright line is optional, and Photoshop adds "© Copyright" and the year in front of it.
5. Set Grid Points. The field takes any value from 0 to 256, or you can pick Poor, Low, Medium, High or Maximum. Type 33 or 65 yourself so you know which size you get.
6. Tick CUBE (and 3DL or CSP if another app wants those), press OK, and give the files a base name.

Adjustment layers act on every pixel of the same color the same way, and that is exactly what a LUT can hold. A layer mask, a gradient, or a filter like sharpening or noise depends on where a pixel sits in the frame, so none of it belongs in the file. Leave masks off the layers you export.

Lightroom: what it can and can't export

Adobe documents no way to write a LUT from Lightroom Classic. Its Apply Presets page (updated 13 October 2026) explains exporting a custom preset with a right-click (Control-click on a Mac) and Export, and adds that built-in presets can't be exported. What comes out is a Lightroom preset, not a .cube that Resolve or Premiere can read.

There are two ways across.

• Rebuild the look in Photoshop with adjustment layers on a frame from your footage, then export it as above. You lose the exact Lightroom sliders, but you control what goes in.
• Use a HALD image. A HALD is a picture of a grid of colors laid out so that a converter can read every color back as a LUT entry. You generate the HALD in a converter, import it into Lightroom, apply your preset, export it as a 16-bit TIFF at its original pixel size, in the color space your footage uses, with output sharpening off, and convert the graded HALD back into a .cube in the same converter. Lightroom isn't involved in the conversion itself, so this depends on the converter you choose.

With the HALD route, turn off everything in the preset that depends on position or texture before you apply it to the grid. That means vignettes, grain, sharpening, clarity, texture, dehaze, masks and lens corrections. Each of them changes pixels by where they sit, and that would scramble the grid. The tone curve, exposure, white balance, HSL and Color Grading are the parts that translate. Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks adapt to the picture they are applied to, so on a HALD they won't land the way they did on your photo.

Leumos: one .cube per shot

Leumos grades the video itself in a desktop browser, so this method fits when the grade is going to happen in Leumos anyway and you want a LUT per shot to take into your editor. On the Lite and Studio plans, select a graded shot, open the arrow menu beside Export and choose Download LUT. The file is a 65-point .cube of that shot's grade, so a camera or monitor that only takes 17 or 33 points won't load it. The Free plan can grade and export video, but LUT download needs Lite or Studio. The online grading page shows the rest of the workflow.

The LUT carries the color only. Spotlight, Diffusion, Halation, Texture, Detail and the skin mask stay out of the file, and the download says what it leaves out. Because each file is made for its own shot, a timeline with twenty shots gives you twenty files, not one look to paste everywhere.

When this isn't the right method: if you already grade in Resolve or Premiere, you don't need a second app to get a LUT. Generate it where the grade lives. As with any LUT, check the file on the original clip in your editor before it goes to a client.

17, 33 or 65 points

A 3D LUT stores the output color for a grid of input colors and works out everything in between. The point count is the number of grid steps on each axis, so the table grows with the cube of that number. A 17-point LUT has 4,913 entries, a 33-point LUT has 35,937, and a 65-point LUT has 274,625.

• 33 is the safe default. In the Photo page section of the Resolve 21 documentation, Blackmagic writes that "generally the 33 Point Cube option is the most compatible."
• 17 is for hardware that asks for it. The Sony FX5 accepts user LUTs as "17-grid or 33-grid" .cube files, per Sony's help guide (checked 16 October 2026). A 65-point file is outside what that page lists.
• 65 suits a finishing app where file size doesn't matter and the look has steep curves or strong hue moves. More points means fewer in-between colors are estimated rather than stored.

If a camera, monitor or recorder will load the LUT, read its documentation for the sizes it takes before you export.

Log before the look

Every LUT expects one kind of input. A look built on Rec.709 footage will be wrong on log footage, and the reverse is just as wrong. This is a common reason a LUT that looked right in one app looks flat or crunchy in another.

Decide which of these you are making before you start:

• A look LUT that expects Rec.709. Convert the log footage first, with the editor's color management, a color space transform, or the camera maker's own conversion LUT, then grade, then export. Whoever uses the LUT has to convert their footage the same way first.
• A combined LUT that takes log in and gives graded Rec.709 out. In Resolve, a Color Space Transform node in the node tree is folded into the generated file. A conversion set in Project Settings color management isn't a node, so don't assume it is in the file; test it.

Put the input in the file name, for example slog3-in-rec709-out-warm-dusk.cube or rec709-in-warm-dusk.cube. If the conversion part is new to you, why CST, ACES and LUTs look different explains the three routes, and the S-Log3 to Rec.709 guide walks through one camera.

Premiere adds its own wrinkle. Its color management can already convert a log clip before your LUT sees it, which turns a log-in LUT into a doubled conversion. Premiere applying a LUT to log footage covers how to spot and fix that.

What a LUT leaves out

A LUT maps one input color to one output color, the same way, in every pixel of every frame. Anything that needs to know where a pixel is, what is next to it, or which frame it is in can't be stored. That rules out:

• windows, masks, qualifiers and keys, and anything tracked to them;
• sharpening, blur, noise reduction and grain;
• glow, halation, diffusion and vignettes;
• keyframes, so a grade that changes over the shot comes out as one fixed look;
• face or skin isolation, beyond the color those pixels happen to have.

Two shots that need different corrections still need different corrections after the LUT goes on. A LUT carries a look across a timeline. It doesn't balance shots that started out different. If that is the job, matching video to an edited still covers balancing first and look second.

Questions people ask

Can I make a LUT from a photo someone sent me?

Only by grading to it first. Resolve, Premiere and Photoshop write a LUT from a grade you built, so you match your frame to the photo by eye and then export. In Leumos you can match a shot to the still and then, on Lite or Studio, download that shot's LUT. Either way, one still says little about how its colors got there or what the original footage looked like, so treat the result as a starting point, not a copy.

Why does my LUT look different in another app?

Usually the input is wrong: the LUT was built for log and is going on converted footage, or the other way round. The next suspect is a node or panel that didn't make it into the file, such as a keyed node in Resolve or a vignette in Premiere. Check both before blaming the LUT.