Using View LUTs

Computer monitors can only display 8 bits per channel. (This setting results from the monitor's display adapter and settings.) Usually, you would set the display adapter to "True Color", or a 16, 777, 216 color palette. This number equals a bit depth of 8 for the three color channels.

When you want to use the monitor to display a higher bit depth, you use a view LUT to display the higher bit depth in the 8-bit color space by mapping the colors. The image data is not affected by the conversion.

Using the view LUT is also useful for leaving footage in logarithmic color space from input to output (import to rendering) while displaying the data in a linear way in the viewport. Specifically, this lets you work with Cineon and DPX files without converting from logarithmic color space.

Finally, you can use a view LUT to calibrate a monitor. To help you with this, the View LUT panel includes a feature for displaying test patterns.