Start here · Zero skills needed · iPhone 15 Pro and later
Shoot Apple Log with the camera you already have. Open the clip in LutKit. Slide one ruler. That is the whole lesson. Everything after it is taste.
Playhead · follows your scroll
00:00Shoot
Log is the iPhone keeping everything the sensor saw. It looks flat and grey on the screen. That is correct. The colour comes back in the next step, and you get to choose how much.
It lives in Apple's own Camera app. By default it switches itself off when you leave Camera, so make it stick: Settings › Camera › Preserve Settings › Apple ProRes on. After that, Log is your default.
The badge at the top reads ProRes Log while it is on. No badge, no Log. iPhone 17 Pro records Apple Log 2, older Pros record Apple Log, and LutKit reads both. If your Camera app looks different, the same switch is in Settings › Camera › Formats.
Set once, preserved
00:20Lens
Every phone shoots at 24 mm. That is why phone footage looks like phone footage. Tap 2× and take three steps back until your subject is the same size again. The subject has not changed. The background has: it got bigger, closer and softer. That is the compression people read as cinema.
Try 2× first. Then 4× from across the room. Keep the subject the same size by walking, never by pinching. Your lens row may read 5× instead of 4×. Same idea.
00:30Import
Tap Choose from Photos and pick the clip you just shot. LutKit reads off the file that it is Apple Log or Apple Log 2 and sets itself up. You never tell it what you shot.
The editor opens with the clip in the black well and no LUT applied. It still looks grey. Ten more seconds.
00:40Look
Tap any LUT in the strip and the colour snaps back. That is the moment. But a LUT arrives at 100, and 100 is almost never the look. It is the LUT shouting.
Drag the intensity ruler down until the skin looks like skin and the shadows still have something in them. For most LUTs that lands between 60 and 80. Where exactly is your taste, and it moves a little from LUT to LUT.
Intensity · drag it
LUT · Golden02
100 %
KodakGo…
Golden02
Golden03
Manage ›
01:10Light
A LUT sets the colour. It has no idea how bright your clip was. If the picture feels dark or washed out after the LUT, leave the LUT alone and open Light.
Nudge Exposure until faces sit where you want them. Add a little Contrast if it still feels flat. If the white balance was off, Color has Temperature and Tint on the same ruler. Small moves, one tick at a time. If you can see the adjustment, it is probably too much.
01:30HSL · Optional
Skip this on day one. When you come back to it, HSL gives every colour its own three rulers: Hue, Saturation and Luminance. Pull the green of the grass down, push the orange in skin up, leave everything else alone.
It is how graded footage gets that quiet, controlled look where nothing fights for attention. Same rule as Light: one tick, look again.
01:40Grain
Phone footage is too clean. Cinema cameras are not. A whisper of fine grain breaks up that digital smoothness, and the eye reads the result as a bigger sensor and a more expensive camera.
Choose the finest grain, keep the amount low, and stop before you can see it in the sky at arm's length. If you notice the grain, back off one tick. The trick only works when nobody can point at it.
01:50Export
Tap Export. HEVC to Photos is the fast path and plays anywhere. Choose ProRes 422 to Files if you are handing the clip to an edit on the Mac.
Then open Photos and play it next to the original. That is the aha. Next time you shoot, LutKit remembers the look, and Batch applies it to a whole day of clips at once.
02:00The whole lesson
Eight lines. Everything above, in the order you do it.