How to Easily Create Your Own Photography Style with Lumix Lab’s Magic LUT

One of the most exciting and creative features on recent Panasonic cameras is the ability to create and use your own custom LUTs (Look Up Tables). While Panasonic includes several built-in LUTs, the real fun begins when you create one that reflects your own photography style.

With the Magic LUT feature in the free Lumix Lab smartphone app, you don’t need to understand color grading or spend hours building Lightroom presets. Instead, artificial intelligence analyzes one of your favorite images and creates a custom LUT based on its color palette and mood.

In just a few minutes, you can build a unique look that can be applied to future photos—or even transferred directly to your camera for shooting with Real Time LUT.

In this article, I’ll show you how to create your first Magic LUT, transfer it to your Panasonic camera, and share a real-world example of a custom LUT that I created called Pastel Peach.

Note: Magic LUT is available in the free Lumix Lab app and works with Panasonic cameras that support Real Time LUT, including the Panasonic Lumix S9 and L10. You can also use the Lumix Lab app to create and apply LUTs to photos taken with any camera, making it a useful creative tool even if you don’t shoot with Panasonic cameras.

What Is a Magic LUT?

A LUT (Look Up Table) is simply a collection of color adjustments that gives your photos a specific look or mood.  Think of it as a recipe for color.

Traditionally, photographers create presets by manually adjusting sliders in editing software. Magic LUT takes a completely different approach. Instead of building a look from scratch, Lumix Lab analyzes a reference image and automatically creates a LUT based on its colors and overall mood.

That’s an important distinction.  Magic LUT doesn’t copy the subject or composition of your reference image. Instead, it captures the color palette and applies it to another photograph.

If you build a LUT from a sunrise over sand dunes, it won’t make your mountain photograph look like sand dunes. It simply borrows the warm tones, pastel colors, and overall atmosphere from the original image.

Why Create Your Own LUT?

There are thousands of presets and LUTs available online.

But why settle for someone else’s style?  One of the things I enjoy most about Magic LUT is that it encourages photographers to create a look that’s uniquely their own.

Maybe your favorite images feature:

• Warm desert sunsets
• Vibrant autumn forests
• Moody coastal scenes
• Soft pastel landscapes
• Rich black and white tones

Instead of downloading someone else’s preset, you can build a LUT from one of your own favorite photographs and begin creating a consistent style across your portfolio.

Reference Image Ideas

The quality of your reference image has a big impact on the finished LUT.

Some great candidates include:

• One of your favorite landscape photographs
• A sunrise or sunset with beautiful colors
• A well-edited travel photo
• A photograph that represents your editing style
• A still from your favorite movie or TV show if you love its color grading
• A painting or artwork with colors that inspire you
• Even a photo from a magazine or website that captures the mood you’re after

The possibilities are almost endless.

Creating Your First Magic LUT

Creating your first custom LUT only takes a few minutes.

Step 1 – Open Lumix Lab

Open the Lumix Lab app on your smartphone and select the image you want to edit.  During the install of Lumix Lab, you’ll need to give it access to your Photo Library. 

Press the LUT icon (cube) at the bottom of the screen.

Step 2 – Select Magic LUT

Tap the Magic LUT button.

You’ll then be prompted to select a reference image from your phone’s photo library.

Choose the photograph that contains the colors and mood you’d like to recreate.

Step 3 – Let AI Do the Work

After selecting your reference image, Lumix Lab analyzes its color palette and automatically generates a custom LUT.

Within a few seconds, your original image is displayed with the new color treatment applied. 

Don’t expect the result to perfectly match the reference photograph.  Instead, think of Magic LUT as borrowing the overall feeling of the image rather than recreating the scene itself.

Step 4 – Fine Tune the Look

The automatically generated LUT is only the starting point. Lumix Lab allows you to refine the look before saving your LUT. You can adjust settings such as:

• Exposure
• Contrast
• Saturation
• Color adjustments
• LUT opacity
• And more

I often reduce the opacity slightly for a more natural appearance.  Sometimes a LUT at 70–80% opacity looks better than applying it at full intensity.

Experiment until you’re happy with the final result.

Step 5 – Save Your LUT

Once you’re satisfied with the results, save your Magic LUT as a custom LUT. Rather than accepting a generic name, give it something descriptive. As your LUT collection grows, descriptive names make it much easier to find the right one later.

• Tap the Upload / Share icon at the bottom of the screen.
• Select Create LUT.
• Enter a descriptive name and choose the Photo Style to use as the base. For my Pastel Peach Magic LUT, I used Standard, but it’s worth experimenting with other Photo Styles to see how they affect the final look.
• I usually enable Add Image Qlty. Adj. Info so any additional image quality adjustments are saved with the LUT for future use.
• Tap Set.
• Your custom LUT is now saved to your LUT Library, which you can access by tapping the LUT icon in the bottom-right corner of the main LUMIX Lab screen.
• You can now apply your custom LUT to edit future photos in LUMIX Lab or transfer it to a compatible LUMIX camera for use while shooting.

Note: If you use LUMIX Lab on multiple phones or tablets, be aware that custom LUTs and edited photos are stored locally on each device and are not automatically synchronized. One way to transfer your custom LUTs is to first download them to a compatible LUMIX camera, then use the second device to upload the LUTs from the camera. This keeps your custom LUT library available across multiple devices without having to recreate each LUT.

Example: Creating My “Pastel Peach” LUT

One of my favorite uses of Magic LUT was creating a custom LUT from a sunrise photograph at White Sands National Park.

The original image featured soft peach-colored sand, warm sunrise light, and subtle pastel skies. I loved the overall mood and wondered how those colors might work on an entirely different landscape.

Rather than applying the LUT to another White Sands photograph, I chose an image that I captured at Goosenecks State Park in Utah.

Using the White Sands photo as the reference image, Magic LUT generated a completely new color palette that I saved as Pastel Peach.

Here’s the before and after image of Goosenecks State Park.

Magic LUT borrowed the soft peach highlights and subtle pastel tones while preserving the dramatic canyon landscape. The warmer canyon walls and gentle lavender sky create an entirely different mood without changing the character of the scene.

That’s what I enjoy about Magic LUT. Instead of copying another photographer’s style, I can build LUTs inspired by my own favorite photographs.

Transferring Your LUT to Your Camera

One of the biggest advantages of Panasonic’s Real Time LUT system is that your custom LUT isn’t limited to your smartphone. Once transferred to your camera, you can apply it while shooting to create JPEG images with your custom look.

After connecting your camera to LUMIX Lab:

1. Connect your camera to LUMIX Lab by enabling Bluetooth on the camera and pairing it with your mobile device.
2. Open the LUT screen. You’ll see separate tabs for the LUTs stored on your device and the LUTs stored in your camera.
3. Select the LUT you want to transfer. A menu will appear at the bottom of the screen.
4. Tap Transfer to Camera. If prompted to join the camera’s Wi-Fi network, tap Join.
5. Choose the camera location where you want to store the LUT. If you select a location that already contains a LUT, it will be overwritten.
6. Tap Set. The LUT is transferred to the camera and is ready to use while shooting.

Shooting with Real Time LUT

Once transferred, your custom LUT is available directly in your camera.

Simply press the LUT button and select your custom LUT from the Real Time LUT menu. You’ll immediately see the effect applied in the LCD or electronic viewfinder while composing your photograph.

Note: When you select a custom LUT, the camera automatically switches the Photo Style to LUT. To stop using the custom LUT, choose another Photo Style, such as Standard or Vivid, from the Photo Style menu.

You can further customize the look by pressing down on the control dial to adjust settings such as LUT opacity, contrast, highlights, and shadows. These adjustments let you fine-tune the final look without creating a new LUT.

For maximum flexibility, I recommend shooting RAW + JPEG. The JPEG captures your custom look straight out of the camera, while the RAW file gives you complete freedom to edit the image differently later if you choose.

Tips for Better Magic LUTs

After experimenting with Magic LUT, here are a few things I’ve learned.

• Start with one of your favorite edited photographs that has a look you’d like to recreate.
• Create different LUTs for different types of photography instead of trying to build one that works for everything.
• Reduce the opacity if the effect feels too strong.
• Give your LUTs descriptive names.
• Experiment with unexpected reference images—you might discover combinations you never would have created manually.
• Build a small library of LUTs tailored to different seasons, locations, or types of photography.
• Shoot RAW + JPEG when using Real Time LUTs.

Like any creative tool, Magic LUT becomes more rewarding the more you experiment. After creating just a few LUTs, you’ll likely start developing a visual style that’s uniquely your own.

Final Thoughts

One of the things I enjoy most about Magic LUT is that it encourages experimentation.

Instead of relying on presets created by someone else, you can build a collection of LUTs inspired by the photographs, artwork, movies, and colors that inspire you.

My Pastel Peach LUT started with a sunrise at White Sands National Park and found a completely different expression in a landscape from Goosenecks State Park.

That’s the real power of Magic LUT.

If you own a Panasonic camera that supports Real Time LUT, spend a few minutes creating your first custom LUT. You may discover that developing your own photographic style is easier than you ever imagined.

Want to Learn More?

If you enjoyed learning about Magic LUTs, you might also enjoy these Panasonic photography articles:

• Panasonic Lumix L10 vs Leica D-Lux 8: Two Different Approaches to the Premium Compact Camera
• Panasonic Lumix L10 vs Panasonic LX100 II: Finally a Modernized LX100?
• How to Customize the Panasonic Lumix L10 Quick Menu for Faster Shooting