In order to Create a CLUT you can either generate it using a custom program, or you can take an identity clut and color correct it in order to generate color correction CLUT. An identity CLUT is a CLUT that doesnt affect the image it is applyed to.
The great thing about Hald CLUTs is that you can use any color correcting appliaction to create them. For example if you start up an application like photoshop and use it to color correct an image, you can take the same color correction settings and correct an identity CLUT. The correction then gets embedded on to that CLUT. The CLUT can then be used to correct any image.
Original image
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Identity Hald CLUT
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Corrected Image
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Same correctinon applyed to CLUT
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Since cluts are simple images you can use any image manipulation application to presses them. For instance you can blend betwean two different cluts in order to create a color correction that avrages two different looks.
Identity Hald CLUT
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Image corrected using identity clut is unchanged
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Nonocrome CLUT
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Monocrome CLUT applyed to image
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CLUT created by avrageing Monocrome and Identity CLUT
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CLUT applyed to image creates a desaturated effect
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If you have several CLUT that you would like to apply, you can merge CLUTSs simply by correcting a CLUT with an other CLUT. The new CLUT will then contain both corrections and any image corrected using this CLUT will get the same treatment as if corrected by the two original CLUTs.
+ Programming CLUTs:
It is also very easy to program you own color corrections to create custom functions. Often it is very use full to programm a custom efect and then tweek the correction in a color correction application to get the special look you are after. Included in the files are varius example of programs that creats custom color corrections. This sample code can easely be modifyed to create you own looks.
+ File Formats:
Any Image format or bit deapth can be used to store But a Hald CLUT should never be stored using a destructive image format such as JPEG, since it can create artifacts. Thees artifacts may be very severe since the JPEG algorithem is not designed to compress CLUTs. How ever there are other efective ways to compress a Hald CLUT. Using a 4096 by 4096 identity CLUT It will take up roughly 50Mb in a raw file format such as Targa, Compressed using ZIP it will come down ot 36 MB, but RAR compression will render a file size of only 124Kb. With the PNG file format you can also get drastic compression down to 131Kb. We strongly recomend the PNG file format if size is a factor. Other file formats that may be useful are RGBe and OpenEXR for High Dynamic Range use.
+ Image Levels:
A color look uptable can have different dencity. Most often you dont need to represent every possible color in color space but instead you can interpolate the color with out any vissable artifacts. Therefore the Hald CLUT suport multiple different sizes. The larger the image the larger the presision, and the more memory is used. A clut can therfor be compute in a numbre of levels from 2 and up. Any implementation that suports Hald Cluts must be able to handle at least up to level 16. To compute the size of a clut of a specific Level one takes the level to the power of three. All Hald Cluts must always be square. In order to find out what level a clut has been encoded to you simply take the size of the image and compute the cubicrot. In order to comput how many colors for each component can be stored in the CLUT you take the level to the power of two. Using level 4 (64 * 64 size) or 8 (512 * 512 size)is recomended using 8 bit per chanel or lower images. Level 16 is recomended for advanced 8 corrections and 10, 12 and 16 bit images.
+ Encoding:
The concoding is very simple. The encoding encodes to a continius buffer as if the buffer was 3 Dimentional. where width is red, height is green and depth is blue. The first pixel is in the upper left, closer corner starting at black and the last pixel is in the lower right deep corner. (this means that in terms of scanlines of a tv or monitor, the image is right, where as in a cordinate system, or OpenGL Texture it is upside down)
Here is a typical example of a implementation on a identity CLUT generator.
cube_size = level * level;
image_size = level * level * level;
data = p = malloc((sizeof *data) * image_size * image_size * 3);
for(blue = 0; blue < cube_size; blue++)
{
for(green = 0; green < cube_size; green++)
{
for(red = 0; red < cube_size; red++)
{
*p++ = (float)red / (float)(cube_size - 1);
*p++ = (float)green / (float)(cube_size - 1);
*p++ = (float)blue / (float)(cube_size - 1);
}
}
}
Modern Graphics hardware is very capable of computing this color correction in hardware. The CLUT is then encoded in to a 3D texture that is applyed to a image in a shader program. Using OpenGLs Shading Language the pixel shader would look like this:
/* Fragment shader for color correction */
uniform sampler2D image;
uniform sampler3D clut;
void main()
{
vec4 color;
/* reading out a pixel */
color = texture2D(image, gl_TexCoord[0].st);
/* corecting the color using CLUT */
color = texture3D(clut, color.rgb);
gl_FragColor = color;
}
+ Download:
I have some sample Hald CLUTs and some sample applications for creating identity CLUTs, and correcting images with them. The archive also contains source code and a gallery of Hald CLUTs. find the files here.
