All About LUT Color Correction

[Shroomblaze]

So I've been making a few LUTs lately for fun. I wanted to start this thread to learn more about LUTs and if anyone has more information about them to please do share with us. I started off by searching how to do it and came across this great reddit post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkyl...nstructions_on_making_colour_correction_mods/

I did some tests to figure out where certain parts are located on the table so I can easily find and adjust certain areas later on. This information may not be fully accurate such as windows showing reflections of white when I did my tests, I realized after... But this has some good information on where certain parts are located. When I said buildings I just means parts of them, each square may only represent a small portion of the building, for roofs it only really shows bits and pieces of the roof, not the entire thing. I'm not really sure how LUTS fully work yet to be honest. But if you take a look at the neutral LUT bar and go from 1 starting at the left and working your way to the right end this is how I noticed things to work. Also there may be more sections where cars are affected and I missed them probably in the 24-32 area.

I also want to note that Affecting one color on a certain square can also affect the color on another square from what I can tell so far. This test was based on the simple fact of making each square completely white and seeing what parts of the world were affected with the color white.

1 Trees, Farmland color
2 Trees Mainly, Very small Building Parts
3 Trees, Some Buildings
4 Trees, Buildings, Some Shadows for buldings trees and bridges
5 Dirt, Trees, Buildings, Road Shadows
6 Dirt, Trees, Buildings
7 Dirt, Trees, Buildings
8 Dirt + Building Parts
9 Dirt, Sewage and Shadows
10 Dirt, Sewage and Shadows
11 Water + Dirt + Buildings
12 Water + Dirt + Sky
13 Water + Roads + Sky
14 Water + Roads + Sky
15 Water + Roads Highlights + Some Sky
16 Ground Sky Level + High Sky 2
17 Ground Sky Level + High Sky 1
18 Horizon 1 level higher + sun
19 Horizon 1 level higher + sun
20 Horizon 1 level higher
21 Horizon 1 level higher
22 Horizon 1 level higher
23 Horizon Starting Point
24 Building Edges + Roofs + windows
25 Building Faces + Roofs + Windows + Cars + Road Sides on Bridges
26 Buildings Edges + Windows + Cars
27 Building Edges + windows + Cars
28 Building Edges + windows
29 Buildings + Windows
30 Buildings + windows
31 Buildings + Windows
32 Buildings + Cars

 

[Zed68]

Wait... the roofs can be made white just with a lut ??? Like... snow ??

 

[Shroomblaze]

Wait... the roofs can be made white just with a lut ??? Like... snow ??

No, Actually what I meant by that thread was that thing will be affected. It's not like you could just change the roof colors and be good, it also causes major distortion and only changes parts of the roof color. This technique is more so for people who wish to make some different color combination luts that are more artistic than practical for game play. Although some are actually quite nice enough to play for a little while if it's done right.

 

[templeofdoom]

So if I get this right - basically the process is:

1) take a screen shot in game to test your color corrections on
2) use Photoshop to apply LAYER corrections to the image and make a sharp note at each layer's settings so you can duplicate them later on the neutral LUT.
3) Load in the neutral LUT to a PS image.
4) Apply the same PS layered corrections (ie a layer that does "brightness" a layer that does "contrast" a layer that does "saturation" etc.) to the neutral lut.
5) Load in game.
6) Profit

Does this sound about the ELI5 version of this workflow?

 

[Shroomblaze]

Yes but I usually just place the bar on top of the image and merge the layers together and do whatever I want and then just select the bar and copy it and save it.