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What is StillsLab?
StillsLab is a reference library of high-quality movie stills and TV frames built for filmmakers, plus a small set of tools that turn those frames into practical production aids. The core idea is that a still isn't just a pretty image: it's a lighting diagram, a color reference, a composition study and a shot-list entry all at once.
What you'll find on the site
- A browsable stills library spanning films, series, music videos and commercials. Titles shown on the page range from The Lord of the Rings trilogy and True Detective to Ida, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Ex Machina, Sin City and Memories of Murder, alongside music videos and brand work.
- Per-title collections with still counts and, for series, episode counts — useful when you want a broad sweep of a film's look rather than a handful of frames.
- Rights-holder submissions, where official frames are supplied at full source quality and marked as such. The site states rights holders can submit work at no cost.
- A community showcase of projects built with the library, which doubles as a way to see how other people actually use stills.
- A LUT tool that generates
.cubefiles from a film frame for DaVinci Resolve, Premiere and on-set monitors, across 17 camera log profiles, with three free looks included. - Pre-production organization — shotlists, storyboards and call sheets in one place.
Who it's for
A cinematographer building a look book before a shoot; a director storyboarding a sequence and wanting a visual vocabulary; a colorist hunting a reference for a grade; a student who needs to study how a specific film handles practical light. The LUT feature is the most specialized part and will mainly matter to people working in a color pipeline, not to someone who just wants mood-board images.
How to decide if it fits you
If your need is looking at frames, the free browsing is the place to start — search a film you already know well and judge whether the frame selection and resolution are good enough for your use. If your need is reusing a frame's look in your own footage, the LUT generator is the deciding factor, and you should test it against your camera's log profile before committing to anything paid. Pricing and subscription terms are published separately on the site.
A practical first step: pick one film whose lighting you admire, open its collection, and save five frames that represent different lighting conditions — day exterior, night interior, mixed practicals. That set alone will tell you whether the library's depth and quality match how you actually work.
How can I use StillsLab stills for cinematography references or mood boards?
StillsLab is a reference library of movie, series, music-video and commercial frames, so the practical way to use it is as a visual research tool: find frames that match a look you want, then carry them into your own planning documents rather than treating them as finished assets.
For cinematography references
- Search by film or series when you already know the visual language you're chasing — for example Ida for austere black-and-white composition, Portrait of a Lady on Fire for painterly framing and candlelight, Ex Machina for clean sci-fi interiors and glass reflections, or Sin City for extreme stylisation.
- Pull several frames from the same scene, not just one. A single frame shows a look; a sequence of three or four shows how the lighting, lens and blocking evolve across a scene, which is what you actually need to reverse-engineer a setup.
- Annotate each frame with what you're stealing: key direction and quality, contrast ratio, colour temperature, lens feel, aspect ratio, camera height. This turns a pretty image into a shot note your crew can act on.
- Music videos and commercials in the library are often more useful than features for tight-budget work, because their lighting is frequently practical and achievable on small crews.
For mood boards
- Group frames thematically rather than by title — "night exteriors, single source", "window light, soft", "high-key comedy", "neon and rain". Directors and clients respond better to a mood argument than to a list of admired films.
- Mix in a few frames that are deliberately wrong for the project, marked as such. It sharpens the conversation about what you're avoiding and saves a round of notes.
- Keep the board small enough to present in one screen. Fifteen to twenty frames with clear intent beats sixty.
A quick comparison of the two uses
| Use | What you need from the frame | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Cinematography reference | Lighting direction, contrast, lens and colour detail | Shot list notes, lighting diagrams, LUT starting points |
| Mood board | Overall tone, palette, texture, energy | Look book, pitch deck, client alignment |
A concrete scenario You're shooting a low-budget night exterior and want it to feel like True Detective rather than generic blue moonlight. Save four or five frames from that series, note that the darkness is genuinely dark with small pools of warm practical light, and write your lighting plan around one or two sources plus negative fill. Bring the same frames to the grade as a target. The frames do the arguing for you.
Next step Build one board per project in a folder structure that mirrors your shoot days, and export a flattened PDF for clients while keeping the annotated version for yourself. If you want to compare how other filmmakers approach this, the community showcase on StillsLab shows boards and projects built from the same library, which is a useful sanity check on how much detail is enough. For broader visual research beyond film frames, ShotDeck and FilmGrab cover similar ground with different catalogues.
What subscription plans and pricing does StillsLab offer?
StillsLab does not publish plan names, tiers, or prices on its main page. The only pricing-related signals are links to a Pricing page and Subscription Terms (including a refund policy), plus a "lock founding pricing forever" prompt in its sign-up call to action. That wording suggests a subscription model with some kind of early-adopter rate, but the actual amounts and what each tier includes aren't visible here.
What to check on the Pricing page
- Number of tiers and whether billing is monthly, yearly, or both
- What counts against a limit: downloads, stills saved, LUT exports, or seats
- Whether the 3D LUT tool (17 camera log profiles, 3 free looks) is bundled or a separate add-on
- Whether the shotlist/storyboard/call sheet tool sits in the same plan
- Refund and cancellation terms on the Subscription Terms page
A quick decision criterion
If you mainly need frames for mood boards and cinematography references, a low-tier or free entry point is usually enough — the library itself is browsable across movies, series, music videos and commercials. If you plan to build LUTs for DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, or on-set monitors, check that the plan covers repeated .cube exports, since that is the feature most likely to be metered. Rights holders submitting their own work are described as doing so at no cost, which is separate from a viewer subscription.
A useful next step: open StillsLab's pricing page and compare the per-month cost against a single rental or stock-licensing fee you would otherwise pay, then confirm the refund window before committing to a founding rate.
How do I generate a 3D LUT from a film frame on StillsLab?
StillsLab provides a tool called Look LUT that turns a film frame into a .cube 3D LUT. According to the site, it generates files for DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, and on-set monitors across 17 camera log profiles, and three free looks are included so you can test the workflow before committing.
The practical workflow
- Pick a frame whose look you want to reproduce — ideally one with a clear grade, recognizable skin tones, and lighting similar to your own footage.
- Open Look LUT and load that frame as the reference.
- Choose the camera log profile that matches your source footage (the site cites 17 profiles, so confirm yours is covered).
- Generate the
.cubefile, then apply it in Resolve or Premiere, or load it onto an on-set monitor for a preview. - Compare the result against your own ungraded footage and adjust exposure and white balance first — a LUT assumes a neutral starting point.
What to watch for A LUT built from one frame is a stylistic starting point, not a shot-matching solution. It transfers a color transform, not the lighting, lens, or production design that created the original image. Frames with heavy stylization (Sin City, for example) will produce aggressive LUTs that fall apart on ordinary footage, while naturalistic references like Ida or Portrait of a Lady on Fire tend to translate more gently.
If you want to study the look before generating anything, browse the library and compare several frames from the same title to see how consistent the grade actually is. Useful references for that kind of study include StillsLab itself, and for general cinematography context, American Cinematographer and IMDb for crew and technical credits.
A sensible decision rule: use Look LUT when you need a fast, consistent starting point for a project with a defined visual target, and plan to refine it per scene. Skip it if your footage is far from the reference's exposure or color temperature, since the LUT will amplify those mismatches rather than fix them.
How can filmmakers submit their own work to StillsLab?
Rights holders can submit their own work directly through StillsLab at no cost. According to the site, the submission process is designed to include your frames in the same library, search and quality standards as the existing collection. Look for the "Submit Your Work" option on the site, which is how the platform invites rights holders to contribute.
A few practical points from what StillsLab states:
- Submission is free for rights holders.
- Accepted work joins the same browsable library as the rest of the catalog.
- Examples on the site show official frames supplied by rights holders at full source quality, such as the Ida set.
If you are deciding whether to submit, the main trade-off is visibility versus control. Your stills become part of a searchable reference library used by filmmakers for cinematography references, shot lists and mood boards, which can put your work in front of a professional audience. In exchange, you are relying on StillsLab's presentation and curation rather than distributing the frames yourself.
As a next step, visit StillsLab and use the "Submit Your Work" entry point. If you want a concrete example of what an accepted submission looks like, browse an official set like Ida before you submit, so you can match the quality and framing the library expects.
What tools does StillsLab provide for planning a shoot, such as shotlists and storyboards?
StillsLab presents itself as more than a stills library: its homepage promotes a planning tool that bundles shotlists, storyboards and call sheets into one place, aimed at filmmakers organising an upcoming shoot. Alongside that, it offers a LUT generator that turns a film frame into a .cube file for DaVinci Resolve, Premiere and on-set monitors across 17 camera log profiles, with three free looks included.
The stills library itself is the other half of the planning workflow. Browsing is split by Movies, Series, Music and Commercials, with individual titles carrying large frame sets — for example, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (567 stills), True Detective (964 stills across 8 episodes) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (237 stills). Frames marked "Official" were supplied by the rights holder at full source quality, which matters if you are pulling references for a lookbook rather than casual browsing.
H3 How the pieces fit a real project
- Pre-production: assemble a mood board from reference frames, then move into the shotlist and storyboard tool.
- On set: call sheets and a LUT built from a chosen frame can keep the monitor look consistent with your reference.
- Post: the same stills double as comparison points when grading.
If your priority is reference gathering, start by browsing a title close to your project's visual target and saving frames before touching the planning tools — that order makes the shotlist concrete rather than abstract. If you mainly need LUTs, note that only three looks are free, so check the Pricing page before building a workflow around it.
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