Color.io User Guide | Create LUTs For Adobe Lightroom

How to create LUTs for Adobe Lightroom in 3 simple steps

Color.io is a web app with advanced color grading and film emulation capabilities that can be combined with Adobe Lightroom's robust image management and editing tools to significantly enhance your post-production. This short guide will walk you through a few straightforward and practical steps to convert 3D LUTs exported from Color.io into your own custom Lightroom profiles.

• Requirements and preparation
• Convert LUTs into Lightroom Profiles
• Apply LUTs to images in Lightroom and Camera Raw

Requirements and preparation

To convert 3D LUTs into custom Lightroom Profiles you need active installations of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom. You also need one or more lookup tables (LUTs) in .cube format. You can create and export high quality film emulation and color grading LUTs with the Color.io App. Simply select "Cube Generic" or "Davinci Resolve" under Export -> 3D LUTs. Adobe Lightroom will be able to read these files.

Convert a 3D LUT into Profiles for Adobe Lightroom and Camera Raw

To create a lookup table for Lightroom and Camera Raw, the LUT has to be embedded in a profile. The conversion process is easy but you need to know a few secret tricks to get it to work.

First, open Adobe Photoshop and apply the Camera Raw Filter:

Inside Camera Raw, find the three little dots on the right hand side of the interface and Option/Alt Click on them:

macOS: Press the option key ⌥ and click
Windows: Press the Alt key and click

Now click on "Create Profile..." in the context menu:

In the "Create Profile" window, assign a Name and Group to your profile and tick the "Color Lookup Table" box at the very bottom to load a 3D LUT.

Finally confirm by clicking "Ok". Your LUT is now embedded into a new Profile that you can apply in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.

Apply LUTs in Adobe Lightroom and Camera Raw

To apply 3D Lookup Tables (LUTs) to your images in Lightroom or Camera Raw, open the Profile Browser and find the profile(s) you have created in the previous step. You can open the profile browser by clicking on the tile icon in the Profile section of Adobe Lightroom:

You can now browse through your profiles and apply powerful 3D LUTs to your images that offer much more creative possibilities than Lightrooms built-in color tools alone.