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Guide2026/09/27

How to Use a .cube LUT in Your Video Editor

Follow the .cube import workflow for major video editors and set the correct input and output color spaces before applying your look.

A .cube file is a table, not a colour profile. Importing one correctly is mostly about telling your editor what the numbers mean. This guide covers the official import path for the three most common editors, then the settings that actually decide whether it looks right.

The rule that solves most problems

Normalise first, grade second. Convert camera Log to Rec.709 with your camera profile before you apply any creative LUT. A creative LUT expects display-referred values. If you feed it Log-encoded data, the result is dark, flat and wrong in a way that looks like a broken file.

If you are unsure what your footage is, check the codec metadata in your editor or in ffprobe. Rec.709 footage tagged correctly needs no conversion step.

DaVinci Resolve

  1. Open Color page.
  2. Select a clip, then open the ** LUTs** palette (Ctrl/Cmd + 7).
  3. Right-click in the palette and choose your .cube file, or drag it onto a node.
  4. Set the node's Input Color Space to the space the LUT was built for (Rec.709 Gamma 2.4 for the video export in this tool).
  5. Leave Output Color Space matching your timeline's colour management setup.

Resolve applies .cube files as 3D LUTs with trilinear interpolation, which is what this tool's tables are built for.

Premiere Pro

  1. Apply a camera profile or a correction first.
  2. Open the Lumetri Color panel and go to Looks → Look.
  3. Open the Custom Look folder, then choose Import .cube.
  4. Under Creative → Look, select the imported look and raise Intensity if you want a partial application.

The Intensity slider in Premiere is separate from the strength baked into the file. If you already exported at 100%, leave it at 100%.

Final Cut Pro

  1. Open the Color inspector and choose Color Correction on the clip.
  2. Choose Custom LUT, then Choose Custom LUT File and select the .cube.
  3. Set Input and Output color space. For the video export here, use a Gamma 2.4 input; leave the output matching your project.

After Effects

Create an Adjustment Layer above your footage, add a Color Correction effect, and set its 3D LUT input to the file. Keep Preserve RGB on for accurate maths on adjustment layers.

What has not been verified here

No desktop editing application was available in this environment, so this project has not performed a native import test in DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Filmora, CapCut Desktop or Avid Media Composer. The import paths above are from each vendor's own documentation.

The file format itself has been verified independently: this repository exports its .cube files and applies them with FFmpeg's own lut3d filter, then compares the result against the in-page preview on a controlled test image. See artifacts/lut-export/independent-comparison.json.

If you do test the file in one of these applications, note the version and the working colour space you used — that is the information that makes a bug report actionable.

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