Film Stocks
How Cineon emulates analog film — 10 built-in stocks plus 124 LUTs across three categories.
What is a film stock emulation?
Each film stock in Cineon is a curated combination of four components applied together:
- Tone curve — the characteristic response of the film to light (shoulder, toe, contrast)
- Color response — per-channel biases (Kodak's warm reds, Fuji's cool greens, etc.)
- Grain — crystal size, density, chroma separation, and tonal zone distribution
- Halation — light bleed behind bright areas, emulating the anti-halation backing layer
When you select a stock, all four are applied simultaneously through the GPU pipeline. You can then fine-tune each component individually from the Effects panel.
Built-in film stocks
Cineon ships with curated emulations across color negative, reversal (slide), black-and-white, and cinema stocks. These are applied directly from the Library panel — no file import needed.
LUTs — 124 additional looks
Beyond the built-in stocks, the LUT effect lets you load any .cube file. Cineon ships 124 curated .cube files across three categories — import them via Effects → LUT → Load file.
Film stock LUTs (9)
Classic emulsions and cinema stocks in Rec.709 — emulsions not covered by the built-in stocks:
- Agfa Ultra Color 100
- CineStill 800T (Rec.709)
- Fujicolor C200
- Fujifilm Eterna-CP Type 3513DI
- Kodak Vision3 250D
- LomoChrome Purple
- Portra 160 NC
- Portra 400 NC
- Technicolor 2-Strip
Hollywood looks (100 LUTs)
Color grades extracted from iconic films and TV series — including:
1917, Blade Runner 2049, Breaking Bad, Django Unchained, Drive, Dunkirk, Game of Thrones, Gone Girl, Hereditary, Inception, Interstellar, Joker, John Wick, Knives Out, La La Land, Logan, Mad Max Fury Road, Parasite, Saving Private Ryan, Seven, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and 76 more.
Log removal (15 LUTs)
Technical LUTs that convert log footage to Rec.709 — use these as a starting point before applying a creative grade:
| Camera / Format | LUT |
|---|---|
| ARRI Alexa | LogC → Rec.709 |
| Blackmagic | Cinema Camera Film → Rec.709 |
| Blackmagic | 4.6K Film → Rec.709 |
| Blackmagic | 4K Film → Rec.709 |
| Canon | Log → Rec.709 |
| DJI | D-Log2 → Rec.709 (Phantom 4 + others) |
| Fujifilm | F-Log → Rec.709 |
| RED | Log Film → Rec.709 |
| RED | Log3 → Rec.709 |
| Sony | S-Log2 → Rec.709 |
| Sony | S-Log3 → Rec.709 |
| Panasonic | V-Log → V-709 |
| Generic | Log → Rec.709 |
If you shoot log and want full ACES color science instead of a simple LUT conversion, use the ACES effect with the correct Input Gamut set. See Color Spaces for details.
How the pipeline works
Film stock emulation runs through a multi-stage GPU pipeline:
- Input conversion — image enters the linear working space (ACES or sRGB linear)
- Color response — per-channel matrix simulates the dye layers of the specific stock
- Tone curve — characteristic S-curve matches the film's density response
- Grain — WebGPU compute shaders generate physically-modeled grain with Beer-Lambert light scattering
- Halation — gaussian blur on bright areas, blended back with a warm hue bias
- Output — converted back to display space for the canvas
Grain and halation run as WebGPU compute shaders when available, falling back to WebAssembly automatically.
Adjusting a stock
After applying a stock, every component is tunable from the Cinematic Palette:
- Film Grain — ISO, format (35mm / medium / large), grain type (negative/positive), roughness, chroma separation, zonal density
- Halation — radius, amplify, hue, smoothness, local/global diffusion
- Film Developer — exposure, contrast, shoulder/toe, color casts (cyan/magenta/yellow), film stock (Vision3 / E100), print stock (2383 / 3513 / none)