# RawCut

> Browser-based tools for reading, converting and rebuilding photographic edits. Every tool runs entirely on the visitor's own machine using the File API and WebGL — no upload, no account, no server-side processing, and no file-size limit beyond available memory.

## What these tools cannot do

- Converting a 3D LUT to a Lightroom preset is lossy and is presented as an approximation, not an exact conversion. A LUT holds tens of thousands of independent values; a preset holds roughly sixty parameters.
- Masks and local adjustments cannot be baked into a LUT. A 3D LUT is a colour-to-colour mapping with no spatial component.
- Renders match Lightroom closely but not identically. Adobe's process versions and camera profiles are proprietary and are not part of an .xmp sidecar.
- An .xmp sidecar holds the final state of every develop setting, not an edit history. Lightroom does not write history steps to the sidecar.

## Tools

- [XMP → CUBE](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/xmp-to-cube): Lightroom preset to 3D LUT. Accepts .xmp, produces .cube or .3dl. Convert a Lightroom .xmp preset into a .cube or .3dl 3D LUT for DaVinci Resolve, Premiere or Final Cut — at any grid size from 17³ to 65³. Baked through the same colour engine that renders the preview, so the export matches what you see.
- [CUBE Viewer](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/cube-viewer): Inspect and preview a 3D LUT. Accepts .cube, produces Analysis + preview. Drop a .cube file to see what it actually does: the neutral-axis response curve, per-channel behaviour, hue shifts, and a live before/after on your own photo.
- [Metadata Reader](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/metadata-reader): EXIF and XMP, instantly. Accepts Photo or .xmp, produces Full metadata read-out. Drop a photo or a sidecar and read every field: camera, lens, the exposure triangle, white balance, tone curve points, the eight HSL bands, colour grading and masks.
- [Image Compressor](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/image-compressor): Smaller files, or WebP. Accepts Any image, produces WebP, JPEG or PNG. Compress a photo or convert it to WebP without uploading it. Shows the real saving, and says so honestly when a setting made the file bigger instead.
- [Histogram Viewer](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/histogram-viewer): Read a photo's tones and clipping. Accepts Any image, produces Histogram + clipping analysis. See the RGB and luminance distribution of any photo, plus exactly how much of the frame is crushed to pure black or blown to pure white — the two failures no edit can undo.
- [Social Crop](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/social-crop): Exact sizes for every platform. Accepts Any image, produces Platform-sized JPEG. Crop a photo to Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest or Open Graph dimensions with the subject where you want it, not stuck in the centre. Warns you when a crop would have to be upscaled.
- [Palette Extractor](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/palette-extractor): Pull the colours out of a photo. Accepts Any image, produces Hex, CSS, Tailwind or JSON. Extract a photo's dominant palette with hex codes, weighted by how much of the frame each colour actually occupies. Copy it out as hex, CSS custom properties, a Tailwind fragment or JSON.
- [EXIF Remover](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/exif-remover): Strip metadata before you share. Accepts Any image, produces Clean JPEG, PNG or WebP. See exactly what your photo is carrying — GPS coordinates, camera body, timestamps — then remove all of it. Unlike server-side strippers, the file never leaves your device, which rather defeats the purpose otherwise.
- [Aspect Ratio](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/aspect-ratio-calculator): Letterbox and crop maths. Accepts Frame dimensions, produces Bar and crop pixel sizes. Work out the exact letterbox bars, visible area and export size for any target ratio — 2.39:1 anamorphic, 16:9, 4:5, 9:16 and the rest. Shows the bars answer and the crop answer side by side, because they are not the same number.
- [CUBE → XMP](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/cube-to-xmp): 3D LUT back to a Lightroom preset. Accepts .cube, produces .xmp. The reverse conversion. Tone curves are extracted exactly from the LUT's own response; colour and saturation are estimated. Shows you the round-trip error rather than hiding it.
- [LUT Strength](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/lut-strength): Dial a LUT to 40% and bake it in. Accepts .cube, produces .cube. Reduce or exaggerate a 3D LUT and export the result. Node opacity lives in your project file and cannot travel; this writes the strength into the LUT itself, so it survives to OBS, a camera monitor, or whoever you send it to.
- [LUT Resizer](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/lut-resizer): Resample a LUT to 17³, 33³ or 65³. Accepts .cube, produces .cube. Convert a 3D LUT between grid sizes when software demands a specific one. Reports the largest channel shift the resample actually caused, measured on your LUT, rather than implying the conversion was free.
- [3DL ↔ CUBE](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/3dl-to-cube): Autodesk .3dl and Adobe .cube, both ways. Accepts .3dl or .cube, produces .cube or .3dl. Convert between the two 3D LUT formats. They store their entries in opposite channel orders, so a naive converter returns a file that opens fine and renders red and blue swapped — this one transposes, and is tested against a hand-written reference file.
- [LRTEMPLATE → XMP](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/lrtemplate-to-xmp): Rescue presets Lightroom stopped importing. Accepts .lrtemplate, produces .xmp. Lightroom Classic stopped accepting .lrtemplate in 2018 and offers no way back, so preset packs bought before then are simply refused. This converts them to .xmp — faithfully, not approximately, because both formats name their settings identically.
- [Batch Converter](https://www.rawcut.art/tools/batch-convert): A whole preset pack in one pass. Accepts .xmp, .lrtemplate, .cube, .3dl, produces .zip. Drop a folder's worth of .xmp, .lrtemplate, .cube or .3dl files and get them back as one archive. No limit, no account, no upload — the same converters as the single-file tools, run in a loop on your own machine.

## Guides

- [What Is a LUT? Look-Up Tables in Photo & Video Explained](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-a-lut): A LUT (look-up table) remaps colors to create a consistent look in photos and video. Learn how 1D and 3D LUTs work, when to use them, and how to make your own.
- [What Is a .cube File? The 3D LUT Format Explained](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-a-cube-file): A .cube file is the standard text format for 3D LUTs — plain text you can open in any editor, read by Premiere, DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut. What is inside one, what the size number means, and a free browser viewer that plots what any .cube actually does to an image.
- [What Is an XMP File? Lightroom Sidecars & Presets Explained](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-an-xmp-file): XMP files store editing instructions and metadata for photos — Lightroom's sidecar and preset format. Learn what's inside, why they exist and how to use them.
- [What Is a RAW Photo? RAW vs. JPEG Explained Simply](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-a-raw-photo): A RAW file stores the unprocessed sensor data of a photo — far more editing latitude than JPEG. Learn how RAW works, its pros and cons, and when to shoot it.
- [How to Edit a Photo Step by Step: The 7-Stage Workflow](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/how-to-edit-a-photo-step-by-step): Learn the professional photo-editing order: white balance, exposure, tone, presence, curves, color grading and local masks — and why the sequence matters.
- [LUT vs. Preset: What's the Difference and Which Should You Use?](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/lut-vs-preset): LUTs bake a finished color transformation; presets store editable slider instructions. Learn the real differences, strengths and when to use each.
- [What Is EXIF Data? Photo Metadata Explained (and Why It Matters)](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-exif-data): EXIF data records how a photo was taken: camera, lens, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, even GPS. Learn how to read it, learn from it and control what you share.
- [The Teal & Orange Look: Why Hollywood Loves It and How to Create It](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/teal-and-orange-look): Teal and orange is cinema's signature color grade. Learn the color theory behind it, why it flatters skin, and how to build the look with curves, HSL and split toning.
- [How to Install and Use LUTs in DaVinci Resolve (Step by Step)](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/how-to-install-luts-in-davinci-resolve): Where to put .cube files so Resolve finds them, the difference between applying a LUT on a node and in the Color Management settings, and why your LUT looks wrong on log footage.
- [Colour Grading vs. Colour Correction: The Difference That Matters](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/color-grading-vs-color-correction): Correction makes an image accurate. Grading makes it feel like something. Doing them in the wrong order is why looks that work on one photo fall apart on the next.
- [What Is a Camera Profile? DCP, Adobe Standard and Camera Matching](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-a-camera-profile): Camera profiles decide what your RAW file looks like before you touch a slider. Here's what a DCP actually does, why Adobe Colour and Camera Standard differ, and when to change profile.
- [How to Match Colours Between Two Photos (Without Guessing)](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/how-to-match-colors-between-photos): A repeatable method for making two frames look like they belong together — matching exposure and white balance first, then contrast, then hue, using measurements rather than your eyes.
- [What Is a CR3 File? Canon's RAW Format Explained](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-a-cr3-file): A CR3 is Canon's current RAW format, introduced in 2018 to replace CR2. It uses a completely different container and codec — and offers a lossy C-RAW mode that is about 40% smaller. Here is what that costs.
- [What Is an ARW File? Sony's RAW Format Explained](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-an-arw-file): ARW is Sony's RAW format. The part worth understanding is compression: Sony offers lossy, lossless and uncompressed options, and some shooting modes silently drop you from 14-bit to 12-bit.
- [What Is a NEF File? Nikon's RAW Format Explained](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-a-nef-file): NEF is Nikon's RAW format. It offers three compression choices, two bit depths, and — on recent bodies — High Efficiency modes that are dramatically smaller. Here is what each one actually does.
- [What Is a RAF File? Fujifilm RAW and X-Trans Explained](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-a-raf-file): RAF is Fujifilm's RAW format. What makes it genuinely different is the sensor underneath: X-Trans uses a 6×6 colour filter pattern instead of the usual Bayer grid, and that changes how the file must be processed.
- [What Is a DNG File? Adobe's Open RAW Format Explained](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-a-dng-file): DNG is an openly documented RAW format. It comes in two quite different varieties — written by a camera, or converted from another RAW file — and the difference decides whether converting yours is a good idea.
- [What Is a .3dl File? Autodesk's 3D LUT Format Explained](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-a-3dl-file): A .3dl is a 3D LUT in Autodesk's format, from Lustre and Flame. It holds the same kind of data as a .cube but writes it differently — including in the opposite channel order, which is how conversions go wrong.
- [What Is an .lrtemplate File? The Old Lightroom Preset Format](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-an-lrtemplate-file): An .lrtemplate is a Lightroom preset in the format Adobe retired in 2018. Current Lightroom will not import one. Here is what the file contains and how to get your presets back.
- [What Is a DCP File? DNG Camera Profiles Explained](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/what-is-a-dcp-file): A .dcp file is a DNG Camera Profile — the colour science a RAW converter uses to interpret your sensor. It is not a preset and not a LUT, and it applies at a different point in the pipeline than either.
- [How to Convert a Lightroom Preset to a LUT](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/how-to-convert-a-lightroom-preset-to-a-lut): Lightroom cannot export a LUT and Resolve cannot read a preset. Here is what actually transfers between the two formats, how to make the conversion, and why masks and grain never survive it.
- [How to Use a LUT in Lightroom](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/how-to-use-a-lut-in-lightroom): Lightroom has no LUT slot, but there are two real ways to get a .cube working on a photograph — and one of them is better than people expect. Here is what each costs you.
- [How to Use Lightroom Presets in DaVinci Resolve](https://www.rawcut.art/learn/lightroom-presets-in-davinci-resolve): Resolve cannot read .xmp files. The route is a LUT — but where you put that LUT in the node graph decides whether it looks like your photographs or like a mistake.

## Other

- [Studio](https://www.rawcut.art/studio): Opens an .xmp sidecar alongside the photograph and replays the edit in six cumulative stages — RAW, light, curves, colour, masks, finish — each rendered separately.
- [About](https://www.rawcut.art/about): Who operates the site and why it was built.
- [Contact](https://www.rawcut.art/contact): Corrections, bug reports, privacy requests.