A Look Up Table, is a table of values that represent a mathematical formula that has already been calculated for every value you could want. So instead of doing the calculation you look up the answer you want by tracing along a table. We use look up tables in programming when we it’s easier just to hand over the values than to try to describe the formula and/or when we need speed and have plenty of memory and memory access is faster than the actual calculation. (In some cases the table is combined with calculation)

From the point of view of a user a Look Up Table, just means a transformation, in our case the transformation of one color value to another.

A floating point number is a way of writing a number where the decimal point can move. (In computers its the binary point.) This is incontrast to a “fixed point” number where there is a certain fixed number of digits on either side of the point. Floating points are useful because they allows you to represent really large numbers by moving the point all the way to the end or tiny numbers (between 1 and zero) by moving the decimal point all the way to the front and to use either type of number together in whatever math you are doing.

From the point of view of the user floating points mean, more precision, so the color transformations are less likely to cause posterization for example.

Since floating point numbers are already in use internally in most post production software this could also help make Red’s color science more portable.

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IBloom

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