One LUT for Apple Log: How to get the ARRI Alexa look on your iPhone

If you’ve got an iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max, you can now boost your grading of its images by quickly applying an ARRI Alexa look to make it more cinematic than ever.

The One LUT for Apple Log is one of those simple tools that opens up a whole new range of possibilities for mobile filmmaking. It’s the second eponymous release from Australia’s One LUT, a company set up by Australian filmmakers Paul Henri and James Ballard, and follows on from a tool created to apply the ARRI Rec 709 LUT look to the BMPCC4K and its “rather underwhelming” (their words) 6K LUTs.

The One LUT for Apple Log is a whole new ballpark for them, though, as a) there are rather more iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Maxs about than BMPCC4Ks, and b) one of the original team members from FilmicPro, Eliot Fitzroy, is now at the company and helping drive it forward.  

The latest iPhone 15 Pro series already has some decent filmmaking capabilities, with its implementation of Apple Log offering 12 stops of dynamic range. What the One LUT team has managed to do, though, is add the cinematic quality of the ARRI Alexa K1S1 rec709 look on top of that, creating a LUT that delivers beautiful skin tones and emulates the ARRI's justly world-renowned color response.

Color matching in a controlled setting

Of course, you can do this yourself by hand. But the whole purpose of LUTs is to get to the final grade with greater speed, and that’s precisely what happens here.

The critical breakthrough came with the iPhone 15 Pro series’ introduction of a new pipeline that deactivates digital sharpening and dynamic tone-mapping. This was crucial as dynamic tone-mapping previously hindered true camera matching. By profiling the ARRI Alexa Mini cinema camera in a controlled studio setting against the iPhone 15 Pro Max in Apple Log, Henri and Ballard achieved the match between these cameras and could go on to create the LUT.

It can be effortlessly applied as a preview-only LUT or permanently burned into the final recording using the free Blackmagic Camera app for iOS.

The One LUT for Apple Log is available directly for $25 from the company, and you can see what it’s capable of below.