Log or Lin

[ColourLuminance]

Hello, 

Curious in starting a Lustre project, there's the options of Logerithmic or Linear working environments. I was told by someone to almost always use Log environments, and not Linear. Is there any reason for this? My guess is that Alexa, RED, and perhaps even 5D are all Log working environments. Not sure when Linear comes in to play?

[cedriclejeune]

Hi,

it's just a matter of preference for the tools, it has nothing to do with the working colourspace.

I made a video on that couple back: https://vimeo.com/channels/wftvadsk/79447012

Cedric

[ColourLuminance]

Thank you Cedric!

[Andy-Dill]

While there's various reasons to use both, I'm fond of describing Log as a hack to fit a wider dynamic range into an integer colorspace, whereas lin (assuming it's float) is the more 'technically correct' colorspace.

THAT SAID

there's a number of things that make working with Linear color a pain when you are adjusting colors.  Chief among them is that linear color has a very un-linear dispersion across a basic 0-1 histogram wtih the majority of your values sitting in the 0 to 0.25 range and fewer in the other 3/4ths of the histogram.

I have no idea how Lustre handles these things.  Flame and Nuke have various ways to deal with this stuff, some more successful than others. 

[IgorRidanovic]

The "lin" in Lustre is really not linear light but toolset calibrated to work with 2.2 gamma, i.e. video.

[cedriclejeune]

Again there is no correlation at all between toolset and colorspace in Lustre. Log should be called "Film toolset" and Lin should be called "Telecine toolset".