LUTs: Powerful Color Correction - The Guide

Ioxa wrote: Yes, those shaders have little performance impact, but each one runs in its own pass which creates additional overhead. Why wouldn't you condense multiple shaders into one simple pass?

Eh, good enough for me. I'll add a mention in the OP once you add it to your shader thread (or make a new one), unless you just want me to link to your initial reply/dropbox link. (?)

FierySwordswoman wrote:

Ioxa wrote: Yes, those shaders have little performance impact, but each one runs in its own pass which creates additional overhead. Why wouldn't you condense multiple shaders into one simple pass?

Eh, good enough for me. I'll add a mention in the OP once you add it to your shader thread (or make a new one), unless you just want me to link to your initial reply/dropbox link. (?)

If you want to add it to the OP you can just link to the post I made here, if I update it I'll update the link. As far as updating it, I think I'd just try to reduce the size of the texture, but I don't know if that would have any negative effects on the LUT. Have you experimented with compressing LUTs at all? Any suggestions for the best way to do it?

Ioxa wrote: If you want to add it to the OP you can just link to the post I made here, if I update it I'll update the link. As far as updating it, I think I'd just try to reduce the size of the texture, but I don't know if that would have any negative effects on the LUT. Have you experimented with compressing LUTs at all? Any suggestions for the best way to do it?

Alright. I'll make a note of it, but I'm going to wait to amend the post until McFly releases his LUT creator to the shader master in github so I can test it first.

Now, I know basically nothing about HLSL or any shader programming (most I've done is set up UIMask.fx to take a preprocessor variable as a mask texture), so I'm a bit unsure of what you're trying to achieve.
All I'll say is that using the defaults (32^3) is a pretty good setup.
-If you're trying to reduce the texture size as the shader sees it, I have no idea.
-If it's somehow as simple as reducing the filesize, exporting from GIMP at max .png compression makes some 32^3 LUTs smaller than 500 bytes. Hard to beat that.

I just want to reduce the file size of the texture I use for the createLUT shader, right now its about 8mb. I'm wondering if there is any noticeable loss of accuracy or quality when compressing a LUT, especially since anyone using the shader may compress the LUT again when they export it from their photo editor.

Never compress LUTs with a lossy compression (JPG is a no-go). Most compression algorithms that can be used with PNG are lossless however, meaning upon decompression/loading the entire data is fully restored. This is a necessity for LUTs to work, since they are data lookup tables (like an excel sheet) and not really images (they are just encoded as such).

Ioxa wrote: I just want to reduce the file size of the texture I use for the createLUT shader, right now its about 8mb.

That's nothing, dood. You should see some of my Skyrim textures.
128 megs for the body, 33 for the hands, 50 for the face....

Also, if you bump up the level of compression for the .png that file becomes 8 kilobytes.

crosire wrote: Never compress LUTs with a lossy compression (JPG is a no-go). Most compression algorithms that can be used with PNG are lossless however, meaning upon decompression/loading the entire data is fully restored. This is a necessity for LUTs to work, since they are data lookup tables (like an excel sheet) and not really images (they are just encoded as such).

Thanks Crosire! I didn't know PNG compression was lossless, I just figured something would always be lost when compressing a file.

FierySwordswoman wrote:

Ioxa wrote: I just want to reduce the file size of the texture I use for the createLUT shader, right now its about 8mb.

That's nothing, dood. You should see some of my Skyrim textures.
128 megs for the body, 33 for the hands, 50 for the face....

Also, if you bump up the level of compression for the .png that file becomes 8 kilobytes.

Yup! Dropped the file size down to 8.2kb from 8.2mb.

Ioxa wrote: ...I just figured something would always be lost when compressing a file.

A fair amount of image formats including .png, a fair amount of audio formats including .flac, and every generic-purpose archive is lossless. Even the .264 video codec has a lossless render option.
If you want to get *really* fancy there's hybrids where it exports 2 smaller files: one lossy and another that contains the information lost in said lossy file.

Ioxa wrote: I made a simple shader for people out there like me that are more comfortable using the shaders in ReShade to make color adjustments...

Looks like a great shader, but I'm having difficulties to get it to work. I created my own 1440p texture, but when I turn on the shader no changes are applied to the LUT and the transparent rest of the image is just white. Does the same with the 1080p texture the shader came with. And yes it's at the top on the load order.
I would appreciate any help with getting it to work.

Marty wrote:

Ioxa wrote: I made a simple shader for people out there like me that are more comfortable using the shaders in ReShade to make color adjustments...

Looks like a great shader, but I'm having difficulties to get it to work. I created my own 1440p texture, but when I turn on the shader no changes are applied to the LUT and the transparent rest of the image is just white. Does the same with the 1080p texture the shader came with. And yes it's at the top on the load order.
I would appreciate any help with getting it to work.

If you see the LUT on your screen when the shader is enabled then you should be fine, doesnt really matter what color the rest of the screen is. As long as its at the top of the load order and you see the LUT on your screen then any effects that follow will be applied to the LUT. All you have to do at that point is take a screenshot and then cut the LUT out of that screenshot. Also make sure the method you're using to take screenshots is capturing the changes made by ReShade.

If you have anymore questions post them here .

I usually do my preset with the lut method.
I prefer to use Photoshop, because I feel much comfortable with its adjustment levels.
Great tutorial btw!

I'm having an issue, any color,lighting or brightness settings I do, I end up with blue turning into purple.. What am I doing wrong??
Look at the sign truns from blue into purple..

Red wrote: I'm having an issue, any color,lighting or brightness settings I do, I end up with blue turning into purple.. What am I doing wrong??

wat

-Uhm. What neutral LUT are you using? The default one? If not, try the default one.
-Does the purple show up in your editor, or just in-game? Can you take a pic of the settings being adjusted?

Huh, apparently I was using the wrong LUT, its working now. Many thanks !

judging from your screenshots, we can do the same result with other shaders which are more simple, what's the point of using this complicated shader ?

sets wrote: judging from your screenshots, we can do the same result with other shaders which are more simple, what's the point of using this complicated shader ?

It's much faster. Also easier to manage a single LUT, compared to having 5 effects you need to match up.

sets wrote: judging from your screenshots, we can do the same result with other shaders which are more simple, what's the point of using this complicated shader ?

crosire wrote: It's much faster. Also easier to manage a single LUT, compared to having 5 effects you need to match up.

In addition to what crosire said, I'd like to point out that I did some really quick and simple edits for the sake of the tutorial. Using a full-feature image manipulator like I showed limits color corrections to your imagination.

Controlling saturation based on luminosity:

Per-channel HSV:

Controlling brightness based on color amount just because I can:


List goes on nearly forever.

i can make the same result with just technic color 1 or 2 or colorful + curves
having to do all the stuff like taking game screenshot and modify thru photoshop / gimp takes too long and much trouble, idk why you guys are saying it's faster
and one screenshot don't reflect the full game because different areas have different colors/effect etc. You have to take multiple screenshots then modify them for desired result. while you can do all these stuffs with the other shaders much easier

sets wrote: i can make the same result with just technic color 1 or 2 or colorful + curves
having to do all the stuff like taking game screenshot and modify thru photoshop / gimp takes too long and much trouble, idk why you guys are saying it's faster
and one screenshot don't reflect the full game because different areas have different colors/effect etc. You have to take multiple screenshots then modify them for desired result. while you can do all these stuffs with the other shaders much easier

     My point is is that with a full program you have unlimited control. Anything you can think of, you can make if you know how. It's not limited to whatever Ceejay and a few others thought would be the best method of color grading.
-Also, I don't know what shader set you're using, but the stock technicolor1/2, colorfulness, and curves almost certainly don't do any of what I displayed in my demo screenshots. The first three are instagram filters and the last is just contrast. Only thing that'd come close is marty's kinda-lightroom shader depending on what tools it offers.

     As for the "it's faster" thing, I think what crosire was saying is that it runs faster in-game.
However, using LUT's since ReShade..... 2.0.0? Sure. Using LUT's for a long time, I'd argue that once you figure out the workflow for making them, it becomes just as fast if not faster than fiddling with all the shader parameters.

Yeah, I was saying it's faster performance-wise.