How to use Lumix Lab app
The new Lumix Lab smartphone app offers users comprehensive video and still image editing on the go, making it quicker and easier to get sparkling-looking content online says Damien Demolder
This image was created using a LUT I’d made in Lumix Lab from another picture taken at the same time. I was able to use the same LUT to edit all the images I took on this occasion, so they all have the same look
The new Lumix Lab app allows videographers and photographers to skip some of the lengthy processes involved in producing finished films and stills for posting on social media – and even delivering to clients. Instead of having to load pictures and footage to your computer to edit and grade, photographers and videographers can simply connect their camera with the Lumix Lab app on a smartphone. They can then make the adjustments, cuts, crops and colouring right there in the app – and then send the finished result directly to the web from the phone. The app makes light work of tasks that traditionally might bog us down, and it makes life easy for those with no experience of editing programmes but who still want professional-looking results. For pros it allows all this work to be done on the go, so jobs can be delivered in a fraction of the time it usually takes, and so clients can see what they are going to get at a much earlier stage of the project.
Some basic steps of the processing sequence in the Lumix Lab app, showing the picture’s progress through the Light, Color, Tone Curve and Split Tone tools
Lumix Lab Compatible Cameras
- Lumix S9
- Lumix GH7
- Lumix S5ll
- Lumix S5llX
- Lumix G9ll
- All Lumix Cameras that accept LUTs – more limited compatibility
The Lumix Lab app was launched alongside the Lumix S9, but it is also compatible with the Lumix GH7, and in the future will be compatible with the Lumix S5ll, Lumix S5X and the Lumix G9ll
At the moment the Lumix Lab app is compatible with Lumix S9 and GH7 cameras, but will come to the Lumix S5ll/X and G9ll cameras soon. Users of other models can also use the app for editing, grading and for creating LUTs to use in their cameras, just without the same direct connection S9 and GH7 users have access to – so it is still really useful even if you don’t have a completely compatible model.
What is Lumix Lab app?
The Lumix Lab app is a new Panasonic smartphone app that’s designed to connect camera and smartphone together so we can import images and video from the camera, edit them and then publish directly to social media, email, or Whatsapp etc. Like Lumix Sync and the Lumix Imaging App, Lumix Lab can read your memory card via the camera, and images can be downloaded to the phone, but Lumix Lab then gives us tools to alter the exposure, contrast and colour of stills as well as videos before we post our work online. The series of changes we make to a video or still image can be saved too, so we can apply exactly the same changes to other pictures or clips. The changes are saved as a LUT file (what’s a LUT?) that we can name so we remember what effect it has. That LUT can be kept in the app for future work or sent to the camera so those changes can be applied as we shoot video and stills in the future. You can also share your LUT files with your friends or to your other cameras, and you can use LUTs made by other people – via your Lumix Lab app or directly in the camera.
Once you have imported your pictures or videos, edited them, coloured them and adjusted the contrast, you can crop them – including video – and then share them. So the Lumix Lab app is really doing the job of a desktop computer loaded with sophisticated software, but you can use it while sitting on the beach, when you are up a mountain, walking or on the bus.
Lumix Lab: Getting Started
The Lumix Lab app is available for download from the Google Play Store and Apple app stores, and it’s free. If you are using the Lumix S9 or Lumix GH7 you won’t need to update your camera’s firmware, but when the app become available for Lumix S5ll/X and G9ll cameras you will need to latest firmware. You’ll be able to download it from the Panasonic Lumix Firmware Support Page.
The Lumix Lab app connects very quickly to the camera via Bluetooth in the first instance, and then changes the connection to Wi-Fi when images need to be transferred
With the camera’s Bluetooth on, open the app on your phone and wait for the phone and camera to find each other. This should happen pretty quickly. When you ask the app to download a picture or video to the phone the connection will switch to Wi-Fi for the transfer to take place.
Once the image or clip is in your app’s gallery you can apply one of the six LUTs the app has pre-installed. Each LUT has a specific look that can be moderated by tapping that LUT’s icon or you can hit the Tools button to edit the image/clip manually.
Images can be imported from the memory cards of your camera, or from the gallery of your phone, so you can also use pictures taken with your phone or pictures shot with a Lumix camera that you’ve imported to your phone via the Lumix Sync or Lumix Imaging apps
The app tools include Light which allows exposure, brightness, contrast, highlight and shadow adjustments to be made. The Color tool lets us change white balance, tint and saturation, while the HSL tool gives us access to the hue, saturation and luminance of eight colours so we can alter the way they appear in our pictures. The Tone Curve offers a contrast curve for grey, red, green and blue, Split Tone lets us add colours to shadow and highlight areas, and Detail offers noise reduction and sharpness controls. The Effects tool gives us the chance to introduce grain and vignetting to the image, and lastly we can crop to one of 12 pre-set aspect ratios and rotate in 90° increments.
These screen grabs show some of the tools offered in the Lumix Lab app, including the window where we can apply ready-made or ready-loaded LUTs, the Light window, colour controls, a tone curve for red, green and blue and the finished product inspection window. When we have got to the end of the tools list we can go back and readjust changes we made earlier - nothing is baked in
Once all that is done you hit the upload icon to either save the edited picture or clip, to create a LUT from the sequence of changes that you made in the edit, or to share the picture or clip to the image sharing apps on your phone – Facebook, Instagram or TikTok etc. The process is simple, clear, quick and very convenient.
What to do with your LUTs
If you have saved your sequence of edits and adjustments as a LUT you need to give it a meaningful name so you remember in the future what effect it has. If you’ve made a LUT that adds a bit of warmth to an image or clip you might call it ‘warm up’ or one that creates a contrasty black and white ‘High Contrast Mono’, for example.
Once I was happy with the look of this picture I was able to save the sequence of adjustments as a LUT to use on other similar images. I named it ‘Cool Shadows’ to describe what it does. As the picture was taken with the Lumix GH7 the app was able to automatically identify that the LUT was applied to the Portrait Photo Style. Once saved the LUT appears in the list of LUTs you can apply to other images and videos in the Lumix Lab app
If you are creating a LUT from a picture or video clip shot with your Lumix camera the Lumix Lab app will automatically detect which Photo Style you were using when the original picture was shot. This is important as a LUT created to change the way a picture shot with the Natural Photo Style will have an unexpected result when applied to an image shot with the Vivid Photo Style. So we need to make sure the Photo Style in use in the camera is the same as that used when creating the LUT. If you load the LUT back to a Lumix camera the camera will automatically know which Photo Style to use, but as we can also make LUTs based on images we’ve shot with our phone or stored on our phone we might need to specify which Photo Style we want each LUT to apply to.
To load the LUT you’ve just made back to the camera, select the LUT icon bottom right in the app display and then select the LUT in the Device menu that you want to send. When we select the LUT we’ll be given the choice to Transfer to Camera. When transferring to the camera we’ll be asked at which slot in the LUT library we want the LUT stored. Once transfer is complete you’ll be able to see the LUT listed in the camera’s LUT library.
Opening the LUT library in the Lumix Lab app you can see all the pre-installed LUTs as well as those you’ve made yourself. Here the Cool Shadows LUT I made in the last example is shown. Tap the LUT’s name and a series of options appears on the screen. I’ve chosen to send the LUT to the camera. You then determine the LUT’s position in the camera’s LUT library (set 6 in this case) and hit LUT Transfer. Tapping the Camera tab at the top of the screen allows us to see all the LUTs installed in that camera – including the Cool Shadows LUT we just transferred. You’ll also see that the camera can use .VLT LUTs, but those can’t be used in the Lumix Lab app
You’ll see that you can also Share your LUT from the app. If you choose this option the app makes a .zip file that can be shared via all the usual routes for someone else to upload to their camera or app.
LUTs that you’ve made in the Lumix Lab app can also be loaded to your desktop software package, so you can use them in Davinci Resolve etc when editing other footage. The LUTs are standard 33x33x33 3D .cube LUTs that can be used for many other applications. Likewise, you can load 3D .cube LUTs made in Resolve/Photoshop to the camera or to the Lumix Lab app. While .VLT-type LUTs can be used in camera for Real-Time LUTs and VLog View Assist on the camera’s screen or your HDMI monitor they can’t be used in the Lumix Lab app.
Here’s the Cool Shadows LUT loaded from the Lumix Lab app into the LUT Library of the Lumix GH7. I also loaded Sunset Lift, which was used to process the picture at the top of this article
Batch Processing in Lumix Lab
When you tap the Batch button at the bottom right of the app’s image editing screen you can select a number of images to apply a LUT to in one go. This saves a whole lot of time, and each of those images can have the LUT’s adjustments reworked at any time
Lumix users have been able to process RAW files in-camera for a very long time, and with processing tools far superior to those other manufacturers. What we haven’t been able to do though is copy the edits to other images on the card, so we’ve had to remember what we did to the last image to make sure the next one looks about the same. Now with the Lumix Lab app we can create sets of images that look as though they really are a part of a set, with the same settings applied to each. And, with the Batch processing feature we can apply those settings to multiple images in just a few seconds.
Now we can’t do this to RAW stills in the app as Lumix Lab works only with JPEGs and MP4 files, but if we download a collection of compatible still or moving images we can edit one file until we are happy with the look, create a LUT and then apply that LUT to all the other files we downloaded from the camera. This also means that stills and video clips can be made to look the same – so long as they were shot with the same Photo Style.
We can now though use the LUTs we’ve loaded to the camera’s LUT library with the in-camera RAW processing feature, so we can also process a series of RAW images (individually rather than as a batch) in-camera to all have the same look. That’s a great function to have, and takes in-camera RAW processing another step forward.
This sequence of images shows how the changes applied to one image in Lumix Lab can be saved as a LUT and then applied to further images later on. I created a LUT called Sunset Lift after processing the first image, shown top left. This LUT was then applied to a second image so that the two, which were shot around the same time, would look the same. Note the grain added to the first image appears in the processed file but can’t be saved within the LUT format, so the second image doesn’t have it and neither would images shot with that LUT if the LUT were sent to a camera. Images processed with a LUT in Lumix Lab though can be processed further using the Tools in the app, so grain can be added after – and images and video can be cropped too, here to 16:9
Lumix Experience Facebook Group
If you have any questions on this piece, or any other, join the Lumix Experience Facebook Group where you’ll find other Lumix users and Lumix experts who will be delighted to help.