Video explains how AI can turn the color palette from ANY movie into a Lightroom preset – color me impressed!

Man with red hat talking to camera with caption that reads "I just found an editing hack that will blow your mind" next to a color palette that reflects the color grading of the video
Vlad Manea's AI-infused hack will allow you to color grade images to look like your favorite film in minutes! (Image credit: Vlad Manea / Digital Camera World)

Photographer and Instagrammer Vlad Manea has come up with an ingenious hack to achieve the color grading of almost any film you can think of, using ChatGPT. He does this by first finding a film color palette he likes, by simply inputting "[film name] color palette" into Google images.

This works best with movies that have a very distinctive color palette. Vlad uses the example of Oppenheimer, but other examples of movies with heavy color grading would be Blade Runner 2049, Twilight and Saving Private Ryan.

He then saves the color palette and imports it into ChatGPT. The crucial bit is the prompt that Vlad has come up with, which is detailed in the Instagram Reel he released (below). This tells the AI to create a Lightroom preset that will add the same color grading effect to your images. How cool is that?

But while Adobe Lightroom presets are mentioned, this is essentially creating a LUT (look up table) that you can apply to your photographs.

LUTs vs presets

LUTs are commonly used in filmmaking but can also be applied to photographs. The key difference between a LUT and a preset is that a LUT affects color and tone, while a preset is broader in that it can make a wider range of adjustments beyond color and tone, such as lens corrections, cropping and exposure.

Both LUTs and presets are great ways to form a cohesive editing style. They’re very popular with photographers who require consistency throughout their work. Notice an Instagrammer or wedding photographer with a distinctive editing style? They probably use LUTs and presets to speed up their workflow and maintain consistency.

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Mike Harris
How To Editor

Mike is Digital Camera World's How To Editor. He has over a decade of experience, writing for some of the biggest specialist publications including Digital Camera, Digital Photographer and PhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine. Prior to DCW, Mike was Deputy Editor of N-Photo: The Nikon Magazine and Production Editor at Wex Photo Video, where he sharpened his skills in both the stills and videography spheres. While he's an avid motorsport photographer, his skills extend to every genre of photography – making him one of Digital Camera World's top tutors for techniques on cameras, lenses, tripods, filters and other imaging equipment – as well as sharing his expertise on shooting everything from portraits and landscapes to abstracts and architecture to wildlife and, yes, fast things going around race tracks...