LUTs versus presets: which one do you need?

Presets and LUTs both change how an image looks, and people often buy the wrong one. The difference is less about quality than about where in your workflow the change happens.

Presets move sliders

A preset is a saved set of adjustments inside a photo editor. You can open every slider it touched and change it, which makes presets ideal for stills, where each frame gets individual attention.

LUTs remap colour

A LUT is a table that turns one colour into another. It is fast, it is the same in every app and it suits video, where you want one decision applied to a thousand frames.

The short version

If you mostly shoot stills, start with presets. If you mostly edit video, start with LUTs. If you do both, the all-access pass covers the two.