Free Apple Log LUT (and 8 more log to Rec.709 LUTs)

Nine free .cube LUTs that turn log footage into Rec.709: Apple Log first, then Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Fujifilm, DJI, Nikon and GoPro. Free for personal and commercial use. No email needed. And an honest answer to whether you need a LUT at all.

Do you actually need a LUT?

Often, no. Final Cut Pro has an Apple Log Camera LUT built in, so downloading one adds nothing. Premiere Pro can usually auto-detect Apple Log and color manage it for you. If your editor already converts the clip, a second LUT on top double-transforms it and looks crunchy. The two guides below walk through the built-in route in each app:

• Apple Log in Final Cut Pro: the built-in Camera LUT
• Apple Log in Premiere Pro: Auto Detect Log

When you would want this pack

• DaVinci Resolve without color management. If you grade with a plain node workflow and your version has no Apple Log entry in its Color Space Transform, a LUT on the clip is the quick route.
• Editors that do not convert log themselves. Anything that loads a .cube file as an input LUT can use these.
• The same starting look across cameras. All nine LUTs place 18 percent grey at the same level and share one highlight roll-off, so an iPhone clip and a Sony clip begin at the same exposure and contrast. You then balance white and exposure per clip instead of fighting two different built-in looks.
• A known-neutral baseline. No creative look is baked in. It is a conversion, nothing more.

What is in the pack

Each LUT does the same five steps: decode the log curve, convert the camera gamut to Rec.709 primaries (for Apple Log that is the BT.2020 step most tutorials skip), place 18 percent grey at a fixed level, roll off highlights with one shared curve, and encode with the Rec.709 transfer function. Grey lands at about 41 IRE.

How to use them

DaVinci Resolve. Project Settings > Color Management > Lookup Tables > Open LUT Folder, copy the files in, click Update Lists, then right-click a node on the Color page > LUT and pick the match. Set the timeline to Rec.709 Gamma 2.4.

Premiere Pro. Lumetri Color panel > Basic Correction > Input LUT > Browse. Skip this if Auto Detect Log already converted the clip.

Final Cut Pro. Apply the Custom LUT effect from the Effects browser and choose the .cube file in its controls. Skip this for Apple Log itself, where the built-in Camera LUT already does the job.

Whichever app, set exposure first. A LUT cannot rescue a badly exposed clip, and it will not match two cameras by itself: white balance and exposure per clip are still yours.

Where it can go wrong

• Wrong curve. The Apple LUT is for original Apple Log, not Apple Log 2. The DJI LUT is for D-Log, not D-Log M. The Fujifilm LUT is for F-Log2, not original F-Log. A mismatched curve gives wrong exposure and color.
• A second conversion on top. If footage looks crunchy or oversaturated, check whether your app already converted it before the LUT.
• Expecting a look. This is a neutral Rec.709 baseline, not a film emulation and not a camera-matched grade.
• Green or oversaturated iPhone footage. That usually means the gamut step was skipped. These LUTs include it; the full Apple Log workflow explains why it matters.

How they were made, and the license

Basecut generated these from each manufacturer's published transfer-function and gamut specifications, using the open-source colour-science library (BSD-3-Clause). No manufacturer LUT file was copied or used as a reference, which is why we can give them away.

Free for personal and commercial use, including paid client work. Please do not sell, resell or repackage the pack; send people to this page instead. No credit needed. Provided as is, so check the result on your own footage. Camera and log-profile names are trademarks of their owners, used only to name the input format; Basecut is not affiliated with them.

Doing this for a whole card dump

A LUT is one clip, one camera at a time. A wedding day is hundreds of clips from several cameras. Basecut culls the whole shoot and detects each camera's log profile (Apple Log, S-Log3, C-Log, V-Log, D-Log, Protune and more) to build a matched Rec.709 baseline per clip, locally on your Mac or PC. Its one-click color handoff is built for DaVinci Resolve; for Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro it exports FCPXML, Premiere XML and ALE, can render graded files, and can export a .cube per clip.