LUT (Look-Up Table)

A LUT is a table, not an effect. It says 'this color in, that color out', and the software interpolates everything between the sampled points. 1D LUTs bend each channel's curve on its own (contrast, gamma). 3D LUTs, usually shipped as .cube files, remap the whole color cube, so they can shift hue and saturation too. That second kind is what people mean by a 'film look'.

Two jobs get confused constantly. A technical LUT converts footage between spaces: an input transform that takes camera Log into your working space, or a display transform that takes the working space out to Rec.709. A creative LUT paints a style on top. Order matters, and each type has its own slot: apply the input transform first, correct exposure and white balance while the image is still in a scene-referred working space, then apply the creative LUT, then judge the result through the display transform. Dropping a look LUT straight onto untransformed log footage is why so many 'cinematic' presets come out muddy.

Gotcha: LUTs are dumb. They know nothing about your exposure. Push a highlight past the top of the table and it clamps, leaving flat blown skies and banding in gradients. Fix exposure before the creative LUT, not after, and pull that LUT's intensity back to 60 to 80 percent so you have room to steer.