I have been working with LUTs I built myself since 2019. My toolkit holds twelve of them, split into four packages.
What is a LUT?
LUT stands for look up table: a table that assigns a new value to every color value in your image. Think of it as an elaborate color filter that handles the entire grade in one click.
It comes out of color grading in the film industry, where footage is recorded on flat profiles like S-LOG 3 and the color gets assigned later, in post. My LUTs need no such profile. They work on normally exposed photographs.
A shortcut. But a good one.
Let me not dress this up: a LUT is a shortcut. A finished look you drop onto an image instead of building it slider by slider. That is exactly what it is for.
The only question is how good the shortcut is. Mine are field-tested — I use them on commercial jobs, in my book projects and in editorial spreads for magazines. What I am offering here is not something I built in order to sell it. It is my own toolkit.
Why bother?
Color grading comes down to two things: an idea and speed. Nobody can hand you the idea. The speed is another matter.
In nude photography skin has to look appetizing, or the picture is lost. That is where my attention goes. A pale model, a tanning-salon glow, mixed lighting — and yet the skin tones stay under control.
Why four packages instead of one big pile?
No single LUT can do everything. But what good is a collection you have to click through thirty times? That was already tiresome with presets in Lightroom and Capture One. And color works like perfume: after the fourth one, your nose has no idea what it is smelling anymore.
So I sorted them. Each package holds three LUTs that belong together — not three random neighbors, but three answers to the same question. You buy the direction you need. And spare yourself the rest.
Each package is € 19.90. Take one, or take all four.
About the examples
Next to every description you will find a before-and-after image. Drag the handle left and right — on the left is the untouched original, on the right the result with the LUT applied.
And yes: some of the differences are subtle. That is deliberate. I do not build battering rams, I build improvements you feel without being shouted at. If you have to look twice, you have understood my point.
Package 1 — € 19.90
Cine Classics
SB Blockbuster
Orange and teal, the complementary contrast you know from the big screen. Skin tones turn richer and warmer, highlights and shadows pick up a restrained cyan cast. Gentle enough for everyday work, yet clearly visible. A classic — though here it reads bright rather than bleak.
SB Hollywood
Modeled on Kodak 2393 print film, the stock release prints were struck on for decades. Warm, saturated skin tones, solid blacks, that faintly golden sheen from classic studio productions. Not a record of reality, but the look you picture in your head when someone says the word "cinema".
SB Nordic Nature
Built on Fujifilm 3510 print film, the cooler counterpart to Kodak. More reserved, with a slight green cast in the shadows and a less dramatized palette. This is what I reach for when I notice my skin tones have gone too rich and I want to pull myself back toward reality.
Package 2 — € 19.90
Commercial
SB Play USA
Full, punchy color with a commercial edge — the look of glossy American campaigns. Luminous primaries, clean contrast, very little restraint. For images that need to stand out and carry energy.
SB French Kiss
Inspired by Eastmancolor negative film, the stock behind countless movies of the seventies and eighties. Velvety warm skin tones, a soft yellow-green cast in the highlights, lifted shadows that never quite reach black. It calls up the feeling of old celluloid instantly, without looking broken or washed out.
SB Honey
A modern, understated look with clean whites and tangible warmth, even though the underlying mood stays slightly cool. The warm-cool contrast carries the image without ever getting pushy. Grown-up, calm and easy to live with.
Package 3 — € 19.90
Alternative
SB Base Instinct
Deep, cool tones with a distinct thriller character — intense, tense, almost tactile. The contrast between the cool surroundings and skin tones that deliberately lean red rather than yellow creates real tension. Not a gentle look, but one with an edge.
SB Lemon
Summer color with some muscle and nothing cheap about it. The hues run marginally stronger, the skin tones only a touch sunnier. Subtle, but you feel it. A breath of nostalgia arrives by way of the faintly reddish shadows.
SB Oasis
For difficult light: harsh bright-to-dark transitions across the skin are gently defused, the skin tone damped rather than hardened. Cinematic instead of clinical. It rescues images that would otherwise be a slog to work on.
Package 4 — € 19.90
Signature
SB Home Run
The safe bet. It improves almost any image, indoors and out. Restrained warmth in the skin tones, gently lifted shadows, punch in the blues as they drift toward an oceanic depth. All of it held back, all of it noticeable. The look I keep coming back to.
SB Organic
Water is life. A look drawn from nature — green, close to the water, almost below the surface. Real depth in the color at reduced saturation. Organic and painterly, less a record than an interpretation. Well suited to dark, high-contrast frames.
SB Flamingo
Flamingos owe their color to the carotenoids in what they eat. This look works the same way: it wraps the earth and nature spectrum in a warm, dusty cloud of color and lends the skin tones a delicate flamingo cast. Soft, warm and very much its own thing.
Did I oversell it?
If you can barely tell some of these LUTs apart, I will take that as a compliment. It was the goal: delicate improvements in how colors and shading play together, not a sledgehammer effect.
Upsides
- Fast color grading
- Professional color looks
- Photos and video in the same look
Downsides
- My LUTs are no substitute for an eye for good color
- There is no black and white look included
No theory:
a real example from my spread for Playboy Germany, April 2023
I shot a production for Playboy in which I photographed the lovely Katérina with a 1972 Opel GT in an allotment garden. For one frame I placed her in the shade of an apple tree, since the midday sun was far too hard on skin and sheet metal alike.
The frame is underexposed. I wanted to be sure the background would not blow out and I find it easier to lift a darker image than to pull back one that is too bright.
So I adjusted the brightness. Here is how that looks:
Then I clicked my SB Blockbuster LUT. Done.
Installing the LUTs
Adobe Photoshop, CC2019 and later
The application should be closed. Unzip the package and copy the files it contains into an Adobe preset folder.
Windows
C:\Users\[YourName]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop[Your Version]\Presets\3DLUTs
On my machine the path reads:
C:\Users\Simon Bolz\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2026\Presets\3DLUTs
I deleted Adobe's own LUTs from that folder. Alternatively you can put mine here:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2026\Presets\3DLUTs
Macintosh
Unzip the package and copy the files to:
/Applications/Adobe Photoshop [Version]/Presets/3DLUTs
Affinity Photo
Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > 3D LUT. In the 3D LUT panel that opens, click Load LUT and pick one of the files.
Video software
You can also grade normally recorded video (without flat profiles such as S-LOG) with my LUTs. That works in DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere or directly in Adobe Photoshop, for example.
Using the LUTs in Photoshop
Open your photo. It should be normally exposed and have a natural white balance.
Click the LUT icon under Adjustments.
Pick the LUT you want:
If the result comes on too strong, reduce the opacity.
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SB LUTs 2026
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Twelve LUTs for grading ordinary photos and video, no special profile required. In four packages of three.
You will need image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop CC2019 or later, or Affinity Photo. Which camera you shoot with makes no difference.
€ 19.90 per package
Digital products cannot be returned or exchanged.
Buy packages
Choose the packages you want. Paying with PayPal gets you the LUTs by email right away.
Your address is needed only to issue the invoice.