7298 – Autochrome LUT

Lumière Autochrome LUT

Violet Paris Blues.

Sample image of fsorvin Autochrome — *No LUT (above) vs Autochrome 040 LUT (below)*

This LUT set simulates the Lumière brothers beautiful Autochrome early colour film process. Put into production in 1907, Autochrome was an additive colour photographic and later attempted motion picture process that used a mosaic of coloured potato starch grains layered over monochromatic glass plate emulsion to both filter and colour the recorded image.

Color Film005 — An early Autochrome image. Photo by Mervyn O’Gorman.

Autochromes were not commonly printed (unless transferred for mass printing, like in National Geographic), but were more commonly viewed in a stereoscope or with a diascope, a box that used daylight, a mirror and a diffusion plate to illuminate the camera original plate from behind.

Autochrome's mosaic, dyed potato starch grains of red-orange, green and blue-violet, were so small as to be invisible but blended together to form the impression of colour, much like an RGB display does now. Visible were the clumps formed by the imprecise spread of grains on the colour mosaic. This LUT cannot simulate the clumping. If you want to simulatate it, add in a noise layer before the LUT in your image chain.

The orange-red, green and violet-blue can produce some seriously beautiful skin tones, as well as some interesting landscapes. Dial up the vividness or saturation for the colour of dreams, or dial it all back for a vintage faded look, if that's your thing. And if it's really your thing to be authentic, shoot with long exposure times. Autochrome had exposures of 3 to 4 seconds in daylight, so get your subjects to pose and bring your tripod.

Stanley Park, 2023 digital Autochrome — Digital Autochrome recreation of Frédéric Gadmer's 1926 image of Stanley Park totem poles. The poles have been replaced since 1926.

Hotel Vancouver, 2023 digital Autochrome — Digital Autochrome recreation of Frédéric Gadmer's 1926 image of the Hotel Vancouver. Gadmer's image in the Kahn archive is quite faded. I've seen better reproductions in *The dawn of the color photograph : Albert Kahn's archives of the planet.* I kept the saturation low to somewhat match. The building has been renovated a few times since 1926.

Autochromes tended to be blue shifted, so Lumiere recommended a yellow filter be used in front of the lens. Included in this LUT pack is a set of pre-filtered LUTs, set from 10% to 40% yellow, as well as an unfiltered LUT that you can dial in your own yellow filter. Just use a Yellow solid layer at Hue: 59, Brightness 100% and play with Saturation from 0 to 100%. Multiply the layer over your original and you should be good to go.

Cassie Autochrome 000 — 0% is no yellow filtering.

Cassie Autochrome 020 — 20% is some yellow filtering.

Cassie Autochrome 040 — 40% is more yellow filtering.

This and my other LUTs can be though of as colour transformation processes. They aren't designed with specific cameras in mind, or to transform log-encoded footage. They digitally apply the colour transform process that colour and density would go through in an Autochrome process.

Apply the LUTs using your favourite LUT utility. Comes as a 3D 32-bit LUT, so it works in all LUT situations like Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, monitors and even iPhone/Android apps.