Vanpelt Studio LUTs - how to apply
==================================

You downloaded the pack for YOUR footage type, so every .cube in this folder is
already correct for it. One file per look:

- Sora ........... the house signature: turquoise skies, warm mids, cold whites
- RetroSurf ...... 70s surf postcard: pink clouds over a cyan world
- Horror-Green ... night dread, fluorescent teal - keeps your exposure exactly
- Horror-Blue .... night dread, steel blue - same rules, colder metal
- Vinland ........ the elf-world glow: golden highlights, luminous greens
- CalmBlue ....... luminous blue-green daylight: colour in the shade, pure whites
- Panelka ........ the cold one: crushed blacks, grey-blue floor, capped colour

Each LUT expects your footage in, FINISHED GRADE out. No conversion needed
before it, and no second LUT after it.

HOW TO APPLY
------------
DaVinci Resolve: right-click a clip thumbnail (Color page) -> LUT -> browse, or
drop the files in the LUT folder (Project Settings -> Color Management -> Open
LUT Folder) and restart. Apply on a node AFTER any exposure correction.

Premiere Pro: Lumetri Color -> Creative -> Look -> Browse.
Final Cut: Custom LUT effect -> choose the file.
CapCut: Adjust -> LUT -> import.

Exposure matters: get skin around its normal zone before the LUT and it lands.


DID YOU GRAB THE RIGHT PACK?
----------------------------
This is the one thing worth getting right, because the wrong pack fails QUIETLY:
the picture just looks wrong and it is easy to blame the LUT.

  Shooting LOG (S-Log2/3, C-Log3, V-Log)?  -> the pack named for your profile.
  Shooting FLAT/Cine (GoPro Flat, Sony Cine2-4, Canon Neutral, "flat" styles)?
                                           -> the Flat pack.
  Not sure, but your footage looks washed out and gray straight out of camera?
                                           -> that is log. Generic log pack.
  Footage already looks normal (phone, drone, standard profile)?
                                           -> the Flat pack.

Why it matters: log footage stores its blacks LIFTED (measured around 0.09-0.21),
and the log packs put them back down. Flat and standard footage already sits at
true black, so a log LUT subtracts a black point that was never there and crushes
the bottom of your image. Symptom: everything but the brightest areas goes to
mud. If you see that, you are one pack away from the fix.

All packs are free at vanpelt.studio/free-luts/ - grab another door, same looks.


"CAN I JUST LOWER THE OPACITY INSTEAD?"
---------------------------------------
Only for taste, never as a fix.

Opacity (Resolve's Key Output Gain / Lumetri's Intensity) blends the graded image
back toward your original. That is a fine TASTE control: 70% if the look is
stronger than the video wants.

It is NOT a fix for the wrong pack. Blending down a crushed image gives you a
half-crushed image with half a look, and the shadows never come back, because
the detail was clamped away before the blend. Fix the input, then use opacity for
taste if you still want to.


WHAT A LUT CANNOT DO (and the 10 seconds that finishes the job)
---------------------------------------------------------------
A LUT maps one colour to another colour. It sees a single pixel and knows
nothing about the pixels around it. So three things can never live in a .cube,
no matter how good it is:

  GRAIN     - the film texture in our reference stills
  BLOOM     - the halo around bright signs and speculars
  SHARPNESS - detail, clarity, "crispness"

All three are SPATIAL: they depend on neighbouring pixels. Add them in your
editor, after the LUT:

  Resolve:  Film Grain OFX (subtle 35mm) · Glow OFX (high threshold)
            Midtone Detail around 15-25 in the primary wheels
  Premiere: Unsharp Mask, small amount · Lumetri > Creative > Sharpen

CALM BLUE especially rewards this. What reads as "clean and detailed" in a
photograph is mostly tonal separation, which the LUT does supply, plus edge
detail, which it cannot. A little Midtone Detail after it is the difference.

CALM BLUE also wants frames with real shade in them. It puts the colour in
the shadows, so a scene with genuine dark areas (a canopy, an interior, deep
water) has somewhere for that colour to live. On a flat hazy scene it will
look pleasant but cannot invent depth the camera never captured.
