Sony has partnered with Picture Shop to work with the legendary Josh Pines (Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, The Revenant) and Chris Kutcka (Kill Bill, Pirates of the Caribbean) to create a custom set of LUTs for the VENICE 2. Sony is releasing these LUTs free of charge.
Josh Pines is Picture Shop’s Chief Color Scientist. He has worked on color grading on dozens of Academy Award-winning movies, from visual effects shot on film to look development on projects shot with digital cinema cameras.
Among the new LUTs developed by Pines and Kutcka is Sony’s new Lo Con Base LUT, which was created after gathering user feedback. The Lo Con Base LUT is a low-contrast base LUT that’s intended to be modified and graded. It offers a low-contrast starting point and has the S-curve built into it. This base LUT is designed for DITs and DPs who want to create their own LUT or look development for each project. This LUT is kinder and gentler than the standard Sony 709 and that’s what this whole range was designed around. It is low contrast and doesn’t severely limit the color gamut.
In addition to the Lo Con Base LUT, Pines also developed two other versions of the base LUT. These LUTs offer more contrast and saturation while remaining color accurate. They include:
Hi Con LUT
This is the high-contrast version of the Lo Con Base LUT.
50-50 LUT
This is the Goldilocks version of the LUT trio with more contrast and saturation than the Lo Con Base LUT.
Look 1 & Look 2
Developed by Picture Shop Senior Colorist Jason Fabbro (Captain Marvel, Thor: Ragnorak, Ready Player One), this look was created using the Lo Con Base LUT. It offers slightly more contrast and saturation, while the reds and highlights have been pulled down to look less digital.
Look 2 was also developed by Jason Fabbro, this look was also created using the Lo Con Base LUT. It offers more warmth to skin tones in addition to added contrast and saturation. Like Look 1, the reds and highlights have been pulled down to look less digital.
Additional LUTs
In addition to this LUT family, Picture Shop Senior Colorist and Director of Creative Workflow Tony D’Amore (Fargo, Elementary, Daredevil, Mayans MC) have also developed three additional LUTs designed specifically for the VENICE series.
In addition to D’Amore’s daylight LUT, he also provided a stylized look LUT and a tungsten LUT.
The look LUT pushes the color separation a bit further than the daylight LUT by adding a warm shift to the highlights and mids for rich skin tones. The warm shift has been offset by cooling off the blacks to help maintain good color separation.
Can you use these LUTs with other Sony cameras?
The new family of LUTs can be used with any Sony camera that supports S-Log3/S-Gamut3.Cine. The Josh Pines family of LUTs are available in Rec.709 and HDR color spaces, while the D’Amore LUTs are available in Rec.709. The entire collection of LUTs offer a gentler alternative to the stylized LUTs that Sony and Picture Shop have released in the past. They are now available to download exclusively on the Sony Cine website at no cost. To download the LUTs, please visit sonycine.com under the resources tab.
