One of the greatest advantages of lookup tables is that it makes it simple to apply the same adjustment to several photos. Instead of having to record an action or do a lot of extra work, we can actually take the lookup table, export it from one image, and apply it to several others. This makes it very quick to fix multiple problems. Another thing that you can use a LUT for is to quickly synchronize several images. Let’s add that adjustment layer here. And I’m gonna click to load the 3D LUT, and this time, I’m gonna go back to the exercise file folder and load the one called Black and White Film Stock and click Open.

Synchronizing multiple images with lookup tables from Photoshop: Advanced Adjustment Layer and Blend Modes by Richard Harrington

I like that. And what I wanna do now is just change that slightly, and I’ll use the soft light overlay mode. That’s good, a nice little bleaching effect with increased contrast. Now I can take that layer and just reuse it. Quickly dragging to other images and dropping. And as you see, it makes it really easy to synchronize images and to do this. Additionally, if you want, you can make this even simpler by just choosing to arrange these into a multiple up view.

Now you can see several images side-by-side. And now what I can do is just drag that across and you see it drops it in making it easy to reuse the effect. The window arrange command allows you to see many images side-by-side. And in fact, you can go four up or five up or even consolidate them all back into tabs if needed. But this allows you to quickly drag and drop from one canvas to another, which is a great way to synchronize things across multiple images that are similar.