Grading is the cheapest thing you can do to make phone footage look deliberate, and the easiest to overdo.
What a LUT is
A LUT — lookup table — is a file that says, for every colour that can appear in your footage, which colour it becomes. Feed in a slightly flat blue sky, get back a deeper one. A .cube file is the standard format, and it is just a long list of those mappings.
That is all it is. It is not intelligent, it does not know what it is looking at, and it applies the same transformation to a face as to a wall. Which is why the same LUT flatters some footage and ruins other footage.
Filter, LUT, adjustment
| What it is | When to reach for it | |
|---|---|---|
| Filter | A named look, built in | You want a mood in one click |
| LUT | Your own .cube file | You have a brand grade to match |
| Adjustment | Exposure, contrast, temperature sliders | One clip is off and needs correcting |
Why one grade, not many
Grading clip by clip is how you make a video that looks like eight videos. Cuts land every half second in a beat-matched edit, so a colour shift at each cut reads as a flicker rather than as variety.
Grade the whole timeline once, after the cuts are assembled. Every shot passes through the same transformation, so grain and tint read as one continuous texture across the cuts instead of restarting at each one.
How much is too much
- 100% — almost always too far. Skin goes orange or grey, and the look wears out by the third video.
- 60–80% — the usual answer. The grade is present, the footage still reads as real.
- 30–50% — for footage that is already strong, or a brand grade meant to be subtle.
An intensity slider is what makes a LUT reusable across different footage. The same grade at 70% on bright outdoor clips and 45% on indoor ones keeps the account consistent without wrecking either.
Easy Reels applies one grade across the finished edit with an intensity slider, and Ultra takes your own .cube files alongside the built-in looks.