Shoot through a LUT on iPhone: live .cube looks for photos

26 September 2026

You can shoot through a LUT on iPhone, but not in Apple's Camera app. You need a camera app that imports a .cube file and renders it live in the viewfinder, and there are a few that do this for stills. The part most guides skip is which LUT you use. Creative LUTs made for Rec.709 or sRGB footage work on photos. Log conversion LUTs, the ones for Apple Log, S-Log or F-Log, will look wrong.

People ask for this because it's how they already work in video. You pick a look, see it on the monitor while you shoot, and the footage comes back graded. A 2025 r/iPhoneography thread asked exactly that for stills: can I load my LUT and take photos through it? Most of the answers pointed to video apps or to editors that apply the LUT afterwards. Both are real options, but neither does quite what was asked.

Your options, sorted by what they actually do

Edit afterwards: RAWCraft, LUTify, Lightroom

These apply a LUT to a photo you've already taken.

• RAWCraft imports .cube LUTs and .xmp presets, develops Apple ProRAW, and blends the look from 0 to 100%. It keeps the original RAW.
• LUTify is a simple, free, offline LUT applier for photos.
• Lightroom doesn't take a .cube file directly. You turn the LUT into a profile in Camera Raw on a computer first, which we cover in the LUT export post.

These are good tools, and they're the free or cheap route if you only need the look on a few photos. What they can't do is show you the look while you frame.

Video apps with LUT preview: Blackmagic Camera, Mavis

The iPhone video apps are where live LUTs come from.

• Blackmagic Camera imports 17- and 33-point .cube LUTs and can show them as a monitoring LUT or record them into the clip (tutorial). It's built for video, not stills.
• Mavis Camera added custom .cube LUTs with its Film Kit in version 7.4 (December 2025), for preview only or burned into the recording.

Both are excellent for video. For stills they're the wrong tool.

Camera apps that shoot stills through a LUT

A few apps do what the Reddit thread asked for.

• Moment Pro Camera II lets you "apply creative Looks or import your own LUTs to video and photos", preview them live, bake them in, and adjust intensity. It also records the LUT name and intensity in the photo's metadata.
• VideoLUT says it can "record videos and take photos with your imported LUTs".
• Modipix has a camera that renders an imported LUT in the viewfinder so you capture "pre-graded" photos.

Chobial does it too, with one difference that matters, covered next.

Baked in, or a develop step

When you shoot through a LUT, one question matters more than any other: is the LUT burned into the file, or can you take it off later?

If it's burned into a JPEG or HEIC, the LUT is a decision you made at the shutter. When a LUT turns out to be wrong for a scene, clips a sky or goes muddy on skin, you're left editing a finished picture.

Chobial treats a LUT as part of a film. The camera always shoots RAW, and the film, including its LUT, is how that RAW is developed. You see the result live in the viewfinder. In the Library you can dial the film's strength down, swap in another film, or edit the film and change the LUT's Intensity, and the photo re-develops from the RAW every time (guide: Develop it again). For more on why RAW matters for this, see RAW vs HEIF for a film look.

Doing it in Chobial

1. Save the .cube file to the Files app.
2. Open Films: hold the film on the camera, or go to Settings › Manage Films. Tap + › Import Recipe or LUT… and pick the file. Chobial makes a new film built on it (guide: Work with .cube LUTs).
3. Open the film. In the LUT section, set Intensity from 0 to 100%. Many creative LUTs are too strong at 100%, and 60–80% is often the sweet spot.
4. Stack the rest of the film on top. The LUT is one stage, not the whole film. Adjust Tone (contrast, highlights, highlight rolloff, fade, curves), Color (saturation, the 8-band colour mixer, split toning), and add grain, halation or a vignette under Effects. Tap Save.
5. Load the film on the camera. The viewfinder shows it live. Touch and hold the viewfinder to peek without it.
6. Shoot. Later, open any photo, choose the Film tool, and dial Strength or pick another film. The RAW is untouched.

Which LUTs work on photos, and which don't

This is where most people get stuck, whichever app they use.

A LUT is a lookup table. For each input colour it stores an output colour. It has no idea what the input is supposed to be. It assumes the input is encoded a particular way, and when that assumption is wrong, the result is wrong.

LUTs come in two broad kinds:

• Creative (look) LUTs expect a normal, finished image: Rec.709 video or an sRGB photo, with normal contrast and saturation. They nudge it: warmer highlights, teal shadows, a filmic curve. These work in Chobial.
• Log conversion LUTs expect log footage: Apple Log, Sony S-Log3, Fujifilm F-Log and similar. Log footage is deliberately flat and grey, so it can hold a wide range of brightness. The LUT's job is to add back a lot of contrast and saturation to turn that flat picture into a normal one.

Chobial applies the LUT to the developed image. That's a normal, display-referred picture that already has contrast and colour. Put a log conversion LUT on it and it adds all of that a second time. Shadows block up, highlights clip, and colours go loud. Nothing is broken; the LUT is doing its job on the wrong input.

Three quick ways to tell which kind you have:

• The name. "Apple Log to Rec.709", "SLog3 to 709", "F-Log2 to …" or anything that names a log format as its input is a conversion LUT.
• The vendor's notes. Packs sold for "Rec.709 footage" or "after a conversion LUT" are creative LUTs. If the pack says "shoot in Log", it's usually made for log input.
• The first look. If Intensity at 20% already looks heavy and crushed, it's almost certainly a log LUT.

This includes Fujifilm's official film simulation LUTs, which are made for F-Log footage. Don't expect them to reproduce a film simulation on a normal photo.

Two more limits. Chobial imports only 3D .cube LUTs, not .3dl, .png HALD images or 1D LUTs. And the image it hands the LUT is in Display P3 with an sRGB-style tone curve, so a LUT built strictly for Rec.709 may come out slightly different from what you saw in Resolve. For a creative look that difference is usually small. For a technical transform it matters, which is another reason to keep technical LUTs for video.

Sharing a LUT film

Chobial's films normally share as a QR film code that anyone with the app can scan off a screen. A film built on an imported LUT is too big for a code. Use ••• › Share Film instead, which sends a .chobial file through Messages, Mail or AirDrop. The LUT travels inside the file, so the person receiving it doesn't need the .cube (guide: Share a film). If the LUT is someone else's commercial product, check its licence before you pass it on.

The other direction works too. If you build a look in Chobial and want it in your video grade, ••• › Export Color LUT writes a .cube file (how to use it in Resolve, Final Cut and Lightroom). And if you'd rather start from film looks than from LUTs, this post covers the film route.

Chobial is free to shoot, develop and make films, including LUT films. You pay only to export (save to Photos, or export DNG).

Questions