When you apply a LUT in post, on Darktable for example, do you apply it to the raw file or do you do some preprocessing, like applying the camera profile beforehand?
When you apply a LUT in post, on Darktable for example, do you apply it to the raw file or do you do some preprocessing, like applying the camera profile beforehand?
My experience is in Lightroom, not Darktable, but LUTs just take an RGB value at each pixel and map it to a different RGB value. The LUT (look up table) is just a big table containing these mappings. They are most commonly used near the end of the development pipeline to do color grading. It’s a common way to do something like emulate the color response of a specific type of film, even if you shot digitally.
So, typically I would do my developing (lens profile, crop, exposure, etc.) first, then apply a LUT. After the LUT, then I would tweak the color sliders if there are any I still want to adjust. The color is usually the last step of the process for me.
All that being said, these days I don’t really use LUTs any longer. I am mostly doing product photography using a flash in a controlled studio environment. So, I pretty much have some develop presets all dialed in.