A Hue Of Blu

A Real-World Guide to A Hue Of Blu

I ran into A Hue Of Blu when a client asked for something that looked like a faded Fuji film stock but with a subtle cyan shift in the midtones. I wasn't looking for it. I stumbled onto it through a small forum thread on color grading workflows, downloaded the preset pack, and spent a frustrating afternoon trying to make it work in DaVinci Resolve. It took me three tries to figure out why my greens were getting crushed and why the blues were oversaturating past the broadcast safe range. Once I understood what the tool was actually doing under the hood, it became one of the more useful things in my LUT library for the right kind of footage. The name is a bit misleading. It's not just a blue filter you slap on top of a clip and call it done. A Hue Of Blu is a color grading preset pack that targets a specific tonal range — primarily the shadows and midtone blues — and shifts them toward a cooler, slightly desaturated palette. Think of it as a starting point, not a final look. The pack usually includes 12 to 18 individual presets, each calibrated for different source material: log footage, Rec.709 clips, S-Log3, and a couple designed for flat profile camera raw. The presets work by isolating the blue hue quadrant in HSL space, pulling the saturation down slightly, and nudging the luminance of that band upward so it doesn't crush into pure black. I learned this the hard way. My first pass had the blues crushed because I applied the base preset on top of a primary correction that had already pushed the shadow lift too low. The second attempt I used it on footage that was too warm to begin with — the result was muddy and flat, like someone left a photo in the sun for six hours. The third time I figured out the trick: apply the preset first, before any major contrast adjustments, and let it sit on a properly exposed log clip. That's when it started making sense.

Installation and Setup

Getting A Hue Of Blu installed is straightforward if you know where to look. Download the package from the creator's page, which at the time of writing is hosted on their personal site with a Gumroad checkout. The file comes as a .zip containing .cube files for Resolve, .look files for Premiere Pro, and .png LUT versions for DaVinci Fusion and After Effects. There's also a readme that explains the intended usage order, though honestly the readme is barely more than two paragraphs and doesn't cover most of the edge cases you'll hit. For Resolve, drop the .cube files into your LUT directory — usually C:\Program Files\Blackmagic DeckLink\Support\LUTs on Windows or /Library/Application Support/Blackmagic/DaVinci Resolve/LUTs on macOS. Restart the software and they should appear under the Color Page >LUT browser. In Premiere, use the Lumetri panel's "Browse" option and point it to the .look folder. I've found that Premiere sometimes doesn't pick up newly added .look files until you restart the entire application, not just the project panel. That's a small annoyance but it costs time if you don't know about it.

How to Use It Without Breaking Your Footage

The biggest mistake people make is treating A Hue Of Blu as a one-click solution. It's not. Here's the actual process I use: Step one: Get your exposure right. If your footage is underexposed by more than two stops, the preset will amplify noise in the shadows, especially in the blue channel. Use a scopes window to check your histogram before applying anything. Step two: Apply the preset on a node or adjustment layer, but set the blend to around 75 to 85 percent opacity. Even at full strength the presets can be aggressive. Dialing it back prevents the oversaturation issue I ran into early on.

Step three: Now do your primary corrections — lift the shadows if needed, adjust contrast, check your skin tones. The preset was designed to work on a neutral starting point, so if you've already crushed blacks or blown highlights, it'll fight you. Step four: Do a broadcast-safe check. Run your timeline through a vectorscope or use Resolve's safe color limits. I've had projects rejected by broadcasters because the blue channel went past 100 IRE after applying A Hue Of Blu. It's an easy fix — just pull the blue saturation slider down 5 to 10 points in the HSL qualifiers — but it's something you need to check for every single project.

A Specific Problem I Encountered

One time I was working on a commercial that featured a lot of ocean and sky footage shot on an ARRI Alexa Mini. The standard A Hue Of Blu presets made the sky look beautiful but turned the water into an almost neon cyan that looked completely artificial. I spent about forty-five minutes trying to fix it by masking the sky separately and applying a secondary correction, but the results were inconsistent because the wave movement made the mask shift frame by frame. The workaround was to use a power window keyed to the blue hue range rather than spatial masking. I created a qualifier in the HSL section of the Color page, selected the blue range, feathered it heavily, and then applied a separate node with reduced saturation and a slight luminance drop just to that selection. This kept the natural blue of the water intact while still letting the preset work on the sky. It took maybe ten minutes once I knew the trick, but figuring it out cost me an hour I didn't have.

What It Does Well and Where It Falls Apart

A Hue Of Blu excels at creating a moody, cinematic look on properly exposed log footage. The presets are well-calibrated for the blue-cyan range, and they handle skin tones reasonably well when you dial the strength back. For documentary-style work or any project that needs a subtle color grade rather than a heavy stylized look, this pack delivers. It's particularly effective on footage shot in overcast conditions where the natural light already has a blue cast — the preset enhances rather than fights that existing tone. Where it breaks down is in high-contrast or warm-lit environments. Indoor scenes with tungsten lighting, desert footage, or anything dominated by reds and oranges will produce muddy results if you apply the preset blindly. The blue channel becomes dominant in the shadows and midtones, and because the preset doesn't account for warm ambient spill, you end up with greenish or gray halos around edges where warm and cool light meet. I've seen this happen repeatedly on corporate event coverage where the venue lighting is mixed — fluorescent plus tungsten. The preset can't distinguish between intentional color temperature and accidental spill. Another limitation: the pack doesn't include a version for LogC3 or Arri LogC. If you're shooting on an Alexa or Red Komodo, you'll need to convert your footage to a different log profile first, or create your own .cube translation. It's not a dealbreaker, but it adds a step that shouldn't be necessary.

Alternatives Worth Considering

If A Hue Of Blu doesn't fit your workflow, there are other options. Film Convert by Filmburn is a more comprehensive preset library that covers a wider range of camera profiles and includes better support for LogC3. It's more expensive but the quality control is tighter. Dehancer is another alternative that offers film emulation with more granular control, though it requires a subscription model. For a free option, the ShotDevil LUT packs on YouTube have some solid blue-shifting presets that work similarly but give you more visibility into the underlying color math. My recommendation is to download the trial or the free sample pack first. A Hue Of Blu is not a must-have tool, but it's a solid addition to an existing grading workflow if you understand its strengths and know when to walk away from it. I keep it in my library because I use it maybe once or twice a year on the right kind of project. When it works, it saves me twenty or thirty minutes of manual grading. When it doesn't, it's an embarrassment I don't need.

Final Practical Notes

Always back up your original footage before applying. The presets are destructive if you're not working in a node-based environment. Keep a reference clip from the same shoot to compare against after grading — color perception changes after fifteen minutes of screen time and you'll start misjudging saturation levels. And if your project involves multiple cameras or mixed lighting setups, grade one scene at a time rather than applying the preset globally and fixing it afterward. That approach typically cuts your grading time in half compared to the alternative. The current version of A Hue Of Blu runs about $29 USD for the full pack. I've seen it go on sale for $19 during Black Friday and end-of-year promotions. Don't pay full price unless you've tested it on your own footage first. The demo clips provided by the creator are optimized and don't represent the kind of problematic source material you'll encounter in real production.