Bring your mesh to life with simple color enhancements
ArcGIS Reality Studio is great at turning your input data into accurate 3D mesh products. Out of the box, it uses the radiometry from your source imagery — which is often deliberately kept understated. That’s great for consistency and detail, but sometimes the resulting products can look a bit flat.
This isn’t a flaw — it’s a feature. Neutral color profiles help preserve fine details and ensure a uniform look across large datasets. That’s ideal for analysis, but maybe not what you want when it’s time to impress a client or showcase your work in an eye-catching presentation.
That’s where color correction comes in. A few thoughtful adjustments can make your mesh look cleaner, more vibrant, and easier to interpret—without compromising accuracy. And it’s not just about looks: color tweaks can also help counteract haze, pollution, or less-than-ideal lighting conditions during image capture.
Understanding the Color Correction Workflow
As part of the export functionality, ArcGIS Reality Studio allows you to apply a color transformation defined by a Color Lookup Table (often abbreviated as LUT). These LUT files act like an index, storing pairs of “before” and “after” color values. When you apply a LUT during export, Reality Studio uses this index to adjust the radiometry of each pixel, mapping it to its new, enhanced color value.
The process of creating and applying a custom is simpler than it might sound. It starts with capturing a screenshot of your mesh. Ideally, this image should include a variety of surfaces — buildings, vegetation, shadows, and bright areas—to serve as a balanced reference for color adjustments.
Once you have your screenshot, the next step is to create a duplicate version of it. One version will remain untouched, while the other will be used to apply your color edits. These edits should be subtle and purposeful — adjusting brightness, contrast, or color balance to improve the overall appearance without distorting the data.
With both the original and the edited images in place, you can generate a LUT by comparing the two. The LUT captures the difference between them and stores it as a reusable color transformation file.
Finally, you apply this LUT during mesh export in ArcGIS Reality Studio. Select the reconstruction that contains your 3D mesh and open the Export pane from the toolbar. In the advanced export settings, check the Color Correction option and select the Color Lookup Table file you just created. If you want, you can also use the Region of Interest option to export a small region of interest first. It’s a quick way to preview how your color tweaks will look in context, without waiting for a full export. This little step can help you catch any surprises and make sure the result feels right for your client.
Step-by-Step: How to Create a LUT in GIMP
If you’re using GIMP to create your LUT, here’s how the process works in more detail. In addition to GIMP, you’ll also need to install the G'MIC-QT plugin, which provides the functionality to create a LUT.
Start by opening your screenshot in GIMP. In the Layers panel, right-click the image layer and choose “Duplicate Layer.” This gives you two layers: the original (your “before”) and the duplicate (your “after”).
Select the “after” layer and begin applying your color adjustments. Here are a few tools in GIMP that can help:
- Curves – Great for adjusting brightness and contrast. Try nudging the curve to lift shadows or soften highlights.
- Levels – Helps balance the darkest and brightest parts of the image. This can also be done for specific color channels, allowing you for example to reduce the blue haze your images might have.
- Color Balance – If the image feels too cool or too warm, this tool lets you shift the tones toward a more natural look.
- Hue-Saturation – Lets you boost or tone down specific colors. Handy for making vegetation pop or calming down overly saturated areas.
The goal is to make the image look cleaner, more balanced, and visually appealing—without going overboard.
Once your edits are complete, open the G’MIC-QT plugin (Filters > G’MIC-QT) and use the search box to find the filter called “CLUT from After - Before Layers.” In the dialog that appears, set the output mode to “Save CLUT as a .cube or .png file”. Choose an output resolution — 64 is a good starting point — and provide a folder as output location. Also make sure the edited (“after”) layer is selected in your list of layers and the original (“before”) is located underneath. This way you can select the option “Active and below” to define the Input layers. Then click OK to generate and save your LUT.
That’s it—you’ve created your own custom Color Lookup Table! 🎉
You now have a LUT file that reflects your color adjustments and can be used when exporting mesh products from ArcGIS Reality Studio.
Bringing it all together
Applying a custom Color Lookup Table is just one of the ways ArcGIS Reality Studio allows you to tailor your 3D mesh outputs. Whether you're enhancing visual clarity, correcting for environmental conditions, or aligning results across datasets, LUTs offer a simple and effective way to improve the final appearance of your deliverables.
The export functionality in Reality Studio includes a wide range of options beyond color correction. You can fine-tune resolution, choose texture formats, define coordinate systems, and limit exports to specific regions of interest. These settings give you full control over how your mesh products are generated and delivered.
