User Guide Cancel

Overview: Color grading workflows in Premiere Pro

Learn more about color grading footage directly on your editing timeline using professional-quality color grading tools in Premiere Pro.

Color and Grading in Premiere Pro (Video Tutorial)

For more videos like these, check out AdobeVideoTraining.com.

Color grading tools in Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro provides you professional-quality color grading and color correction tools that let you grade your footage directly on your editing timeline.

These color tools are available within a Lumetri Color workspace in Premiere Pro. Using these tools, you can adjust color, contrast, and light in your sequences in new and innovative ways. With editing and color grading working hand in hand, you can freely move between editing and grading tasks without the need to export or launch a separate grading application.

The Color workspace is designed not just for experienced colorists but also for editors who are new to color grading. You can apply simple color corrections or complex Lumetri Looks using intuitive sliders and controls. Or you can easily adjust cuts or fine-tune grades using advanced color correction tools like curves and color wheels. 

Set up a Color workspace

Premiere Pro provides a preset Color workspace that makes your task of color grading quicker and more efficient.

Select Window > Workspace > Color, or choose Color from the workspace switcher. The Color workspace opens a Lumetri Color panel to the right, and a Lumetri Scopes panel to the left of the Program Monitor.

Setting up a Color workspace
Setting up a Color workspace

A. Lumetri Scopes panel B. Lumetri Color panel with curves, color wheels, and slider adjustments 

The Lumetri Color panel offers powerful and easy-to-use color tools, like curves, color wheels, and slider arrangements, arranged in different sections. Each section of the Lumetri Color panel focuses on a specific task of the color workflow.

The Lumetri Scopes panel displays different analyses of luma and chroma as waveforms based on your adjustments, letting you evaluate as you grade your clips.

General color correction workflow

Want to try how it works? Open the Lumetri Color panel in Premiere Pro and get started!

  1. Ensure that you have set up the Color workspace.

  2. Place the playhead on the required clip in your sequence.

    When the Lumetri Color panel is open, Premiere Pro automatically selects the Selection Follows Playhead option from the Sequence menu. The auto-selection of the clip ensures that any color adjustments you make are applied to the selected clip.

    Note:

    Automatic clip selection is applied even for the linked audio clips in the audio tracks. To focus your color adjustments only to video clips, turn off audio track targeting.

  3. Start making color adjustments using the Basic Correction section.

     Get started quickly by using Auto Color - an Adobe Sensei ML technology that applies intelligent color correction to clips. You can then further refine the color using the Intensity, Color, and Light sliders.

    The controls in the Basic Correction section guide you through applying a LUT (Lookup Table), and making other technical corrections to exposure and light through easy-to-use controls.

  4. Use the Creative section to apply Looks. You can then make further adjustments using the Adjustments sliders.

    For more information, see Get creative with color using Lumetri looks.

  5. Use the Curves section to further refine the look using RGB Curves and the Hue Saturation Curve.

    For more information, see Adjust color using RBG and Hue Saturation Curves.

  6. Adjust shadows, midtones, and highlights using color wheels for more precise color adjustments.

    For more information, see Three way color correction using the Color Wheel.

  7. To make individual shots recorded under different lighting conditions look like they belong in the same scene, and not out of place when cutting from one shot to the next, use the Color Match section.

    For more information, see Match color between shots.

  8. After making all the color adjustments, create a high-quality vignette to make your video stand out.

    For more information, see Create vignettes.

    Note:

    To toggle between changes, click Toggle Bypass on or off on the Lumetri Color panel or the fx option on the Effects Control panel.

Apply basic color correction

Using controls in the Basic Correction section, you can correct video that’s too dark or too light, and adjust both the hue (color or chroma) and luminance (exposure and contrast) in your clip.  

To adjust a control, drag the slider until you achieve the desired result. Or, you can set a specific value in the box next to the sliders. To select the box and type a new value, click the current value.

Apply basic color correction
Before (left) and after applying basic color correction (right)

Note:

You can reset all color changes done using the Reset Effect option in the Lumetri Color panel, or from the Effects Control panel.

Create and edit multiple Lumetri color effects

You can create multiple Lumetri color effects, and stack or layer them in the Lumetri Color panel.

  1. On the Lumetri Color panel, click the Lumetri Color tab.

    In the fx drop-down list, select Add Lumetri Color Effect to create a new effect. When you add a new effect, Premiere Pro creates a new Lumetri Color with the name Lumetri Color.

    Lumetri color section is open with options to add, rename or delete Lumetri color effects.
    Use Lumetri Color for color correction and grading.

    Lumetri instances are placed in the same order as in the Effects Control panel (top to bottom). The currently selected instance is highlighted in blue and has a check mark to the left.

  2. You can rename these effects for better organization. To rename an effect. select Rename from the fx drop-down list.

    To delete an effect, select the effect you want to delete (it is highlighted in blue), and click Clear from the fx drop-down list.

    When no Lumetri instances are present, only the Add Lumetri Color Effect option is enabled.

    Note:

    When you delete an effect, Premiere Pro directly deletes it without prompting you for confirmation.

Control Surface Support for Lumetri Color

Lumetri panel grading controls can be mapped to control surface devices (such as Tangent Devices - Elements/Wave/Ripple).

To set up a Tangent control surface device:

  1. Install Premiere Pro and the Tangent Hub software (See the Tangent Devices Support website for details).  
  2. In Premiere Pro, click Open Preferences - Control Surface.
  3. Click Add and choose Tangent and save PR Project.

PR installs a pre-configured Tangent control mapping layout, which provides a good starting point to control PR/Lumetri. The default mapping has the following modes: [Editing], [Lumetri - Basic],[Lumetri - Creative], [Lumetri - Curves], [Lumetri - Wheels], [Lumetri - HSL], [Lumetri - Vignette]. Each mode has a set of pre-configured commands. The mapping of the commands can be manually changed in Tangent HUB software if necessary (See Tangent Support website for details).

Note:

Third-party control surfaces are also supported by installing a plug-in from third-party websites.

How to use the control surface with Lumetri

To get to the corresponding grading mode in Premiere Pro, select a section in Lumetri panel. For example, selecting the Wheels section in Lumetri panel maps the control surface hardware to Wheels mode and selecting Creative changes the mode and maps the corresponding wheels and sliders. You can also manually select a mode from the control surface device if the mode was mapped (that is Elements). The Lumetri panel UI then shows the corresponding section if the panel is visible. The last used mode remains active until manually switched to another one.

More like this

Get help faster and easier

New user?