Basic color correction options

Learn about the Basic Color Correction options and how you can use them to correct color in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Using controls in the Basic Correction section, you can correct videos that are 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.

Input LUT

You can use a LUT (Look Up Table) as a starting point for grading your footage and then use the other color controls for further grading.

Premiere Pro provides several preset LUTs that you can apply to your footage, or you can select a custom LUT that you saved.

White balance

The White Balance in a video reflects the lighting conditions under which the video was shot. Adjusting the white balance can effectively improve the ambient color of your video.

Adjust the White Balance in your clip by changing the Temperature and Tint properties. Use the eyedropper to click an area in the footage that is white or neutral in color. The White Balance will automatically be adjusted. Alternatively, use the slider controls to fine-tune the temperature and tint values until you achieve the desired color balance. 

• Temperature: Fine-tunes the White Balance using a color temperature scale. Move the slider to the left to make the video appear cooler and to the right for warmer colors.
• Tint: Fine-tunes the white balance to compensate for a green or magenta tint. To add a green tint to the video, move the slider to the left (negative values), and to add magenta, move it to the right (positive values).
• Saturation: Fine-tunes the intensity of the color. Move the saturation slider to the left to make the color more muted, or to the right to make it brighter and more intense. 

Tone

Adjust the tonal scale of the video clip using the different tone controls. 

• Exposure: Sets the brightness of the video clip. Move the Exposure slider to the right to increase tonal values and expand highlights. Move the slider to the left to decrease tonal values and expand shadows. Adjust the slider until the video looks good with the desired brightness.
• Contrast: Increases or decreases contrast. Adjusting the contrast mainly affects the midtones of color in your video. When you increase contrast, the middle-to-dark areas become darker. Similarly, decreasing the contrast makes the middle-to-light areas lighter.
• Highlights: This adjusts bright areas. Drag the slider to the left to darken highlights, or to the right to brighten highlights while minimizing clipping.
• Shadows: This adjusts dark areas. Drag the slider to the left to darken shadows while minimizing clipping, or to the right to brighten shadows and recover shadow details.
• Whites:  Adjusts white clipping. Drag the slider to the left to reduce clipping in highlights. Drag to the right to increase highlight clipping. 
• Blacks: Adjusts black clipping. Drag the slider to the left to increase black clipping, making more shadows pure black. Drag to the right to reduce shadow clipping.
• Reset: Reverts all tone controls to the original settings.
• Auto: To set the overall tonal scale, select Auto. When you select Auto, Premiere Pro sets the sliders to maximize the tonal scale and minimize highlight and shadow clipping.
• Saturation: This adjusts the saturation of all colors in the video equally. Drag the slider to the left to decrease the overall saturation, or to the right to increase it.