The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

(https://frame.io) Explore Fram

SUBSCR
INSIDER (https://blog.frame.io/) Email Address

Color Correction (Https://Blog.frame.io/Category/Color-Correction/) 54 MIN READ May 21, 2018

The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction

Jarle Leirpoll (Https://Blog.frame.io/Author/Jarleleirpoll/)

Update: this was first published in May 2018. It’s now been updated June 2019
for Adobe CC 2019.

The mark of every great editor is a full understanding of the tools at their disposal—and the
ability to use those tools to their full potential. And few tools are as important and nuanced

as those that affect color grading. If you’re a Premiere Pro editor, today I’m going to give
you a decidedly comprehensive deep dive into Premiere’s Lumetri Color Panel.

Prepare to take a few more steps toward greatness!

The Lumetri Color Panel is found in After Effects and Premiere Pro. To use its tools to the

max, we’ll dive into the hidden secrets and lesser-known corners of the panel. We’ll work
on a wide range of problematic footage, using advanced techniques. I’m assuming you

have at least a basic understanding of color correction concepts and terminology, and
know your way around scopes. If you don’t, you might want to read up on color

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 1 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

correction basics (https://blog.frame.io/2017/09/20/beginners-guide-to-

curves/)
curves/), as well as how to read scopes

(https://blog.frame.io/2017/09/27/introduction-to-video-scopes/)
(https://blog.frame.io/2017/09/27/introduction-to-video-scopes/). The knowledge
you get in this article will make you a color grading ninja without ever leaving Premiere/AE.

RELATED: The Frame.io Adobe Extension has been updated to v. 2.2.o.

Download it now!

(https://www.adobeexchange.com/creativecloud.details.20175.frameio-video-
review-and-collaboration.html)

These are the main topics we’ll discuss

discuss::

How Lumetri Works, walking through each section of the Lumetri Color Panel

The Color Correction Workflow

Tips and Tricks For Lumetri

The Big 2018 Updates:

Comparison View and Shot Matching

Working with LUTs

Lumetri’s Color Processing Pipeline

Note that everything I write here applies to the Adobe CC 2019 version of
Premiere Pro (13.0). There are newer releases from late spring 2019, but there are no

new features other than some bug fixes and improved speed for certain tools. If you do
color grading in Premiere Pro, you might enjoy the improved stability and speed of version
13.1.0-13.1.2, but this guide still has everything you need.

Here we go:

How Lumetri Works

Let’s start with an overview of the Lumetri Color Panel itself. If you’ve been using the panel

for a while and know how the controls work, you might want to skip directly to some of the
other sections, linked above.

The Lumetri Color Panel Is A Remote Control

Think of the Lumetri Color panel as a remote control for the Lumetri Color effect
effect.

Whatever you adjust in the panel affects the corresponding settings in the Lumetri Color
effect. You could do the exact same adjustments in the Effect Controls panel, but the
controls in the Lumetri Color panel are much easier to adjust, and they’re always available

in the same place.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 2 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The Color Works

Premiere Pro is a
starting point for
grading in Premi
reveals the Lume
Panel to the righ
show the Lumetr
panel to the left
Program Monito
footage courtesy
Granberg.

The Lumetri Color panel (and the effect itself in the Effect Controls panel) is divided into

six main sections with somewhat overlapping functionality. So, whatever image processing
or video editing software you’re coming from, you should be comfortable working in at
least one of them. We’ll take a closer look at each one.

The six main sec

the Lumetri Colo

It used to be that Lumetri was a huge resource hog, and calculated all the sections even if

you hadn’t adjusted anything in them. In my book “The

The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro
(https://premierepro.net/coolstuff/)
(https://premierepro.net/coolstuff/)” I recommended that you turn unused segments
off to save computer resources. I even did this in all my presets.

This has changed, so now the sections you haven’t adjusted are just bypassed
bypassed. This
is great news!

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 3 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The Basic Correction Section

This first section of the panel is based on the well-known (at least for still photographers)
panels in Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW, so it’s easy to get started. This is where

most people work when they do color grading.

Most of the sliders are pretty much self-explanatory, but a couple are worth specifically
addressing.

The Basic Correc

Section

Input LUT
LUT: This is where you add your technical LUT to get your footage into the Rec. 709
color space (more on technical LUTs below
below). If your footage is shot in Log or with some

custom camera settings, you can add an Input LUT before you start adjusting the controls.
This will make the image look “normal”, and the sliders will work as expected.

Note that the Input LUTs that you apply here are applied before all the sliders
and other controls.

The HDR White slider is not active until you choose High Dynamic Range in the panel
menu.

The White Balance Selector (the eyedropper) can help fix the white balance in a clip.
Click it and then pick an area in the picture that’s supposed to be white. Ctrl/Cmd-click to
sample the average of 5×5 pixels, instead of just clicking, which will sample just one pixel.
This will give you a much better representation of the color, as there will always be small
variations in the pixel values due to noise and compression artifacts. The eyedropper will
get a little fatter when you press Ctrl (Cmd) to indicate that it will sample a larger area.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 4 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The White Balan

the Basic Correc
section.

I often have trouble finding a perfectly neutral area in my footage, and I find that I get
better results when I tweak the sliders manually. On some clips, mainly when you have
some obviously white areas, it will work just fine.

This light house

warm cast.

After clicking on
house with the W
Balance eyedrop
light house got a
white color.

Other times, the White Balance Selector will mess with the black levels, introducing a
color cast in the shadows. As you’ve probably guessed by now, I don’t use the Auto White

Balance Selector too often.

When manually tweaking the sliders for a white balance, adjust the Temperature
slider first until you get the red and blue levels the same
same. Then, adjust the Tint
slider until the green matches the two others. There’s a reason for the order they have in

the UI.

Under the White Balance controls, you’ll find the Tone sliders
sliders. They should be very easy
to understand. They control exactly what their names indicate. The HDR Specular slider is
grayed out until you choose High Dynamic Range in the panel menu.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 5 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The Tone sliders

Basic section.

Please note that adjustments to the Whites and Blacks sliders are applied before
the other sliders
sliders, even though they’re placed at the bottom of the stack in the UI. More

on that in the Color Science section.

The Creative Section

The Look drop-down menu is where you can apply the LUTs that you put in your Creative
folder (see below). You can choose a LUT from the drop-down menu, or browse them

using the arrows pointing left and right, and then click the preview thumbnail to apply the
LUT. If your favorite look is not in the list, click Browse and point to the folder where you
keep it.

The preview you see in the thumbnail shows the LUT applied to the original footage,

ignoring other adjustments you’ve done to it. So, what you see in the thumbnail isn’t
necessarily what you get. This is confusing, and I don’t like the way it works.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 6 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The Creative sec

The Faded Film raises the blacks and lowers the whites for a duller look. The Vibrance
slider adjusts saturation, but avoiding the already saturated pixels and skin tones, to avoid

over-saturated colors. I like to use the Vibrance slider to create a desaturated look. I think it

does a better job for this than the standard Saturation slider.

Overall, I don’t use this section much. I mostly use it when I need to adjust the Vibrance or
when I apply a look/LUT to an adjustment layer. This section is disabled when you set the

panel to HDR.

The Curves Section

This is my favorite section! When I don’t have a control surface, I do most of my

adjustments here. Combined with the RGB Parade scopes, the RGB Curves is a very

intuitive way to do color grading (https://blog.frame.io/2017/11/06/advanced-

curves-techniques/)
curves-techniques/).

In addition, the Hue Saturation Curves gives you independent control over the saturation
of every color, making it very fast to adjust the greens in foliage or to add saturation to the

sky to make it “pop.”

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 7 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The Curves secti

As with other controls in Lumetri, just double-click to reset the individual curves.
Surprisingly you can’t reset all of them with one click since there’s no Reset button. There

are Reset Parameter buttons for RGB Curves, Hue Saturation Curves and the whole Curves

section in the Effect Controls panel, though.

See my article on (https://blog.frame.io/2017/11/06/advanced-curves-

techniques/)
techniques/)Advanced
Advanced Curves Techniques

(https://blog.frame.io/2017/11/06/advanced-curves-techniques/) for lots of cool

techniques you can use when grading with Curves.

The Color Wheels & Match Section

This section will probably be the most familiar one if you’ve done color grading in other

NLEs. With the three-way color correction, you can adjust the brightness, hue, and

saturation for shadows, midtones, and highlights independently.

This is also where you find the new Color Match feature and a button to toggle
Comparison View on and off. All the adjustments from the Color Match feature are done in

this section.

To adjust the shadows, drag the cross in the center towards the color tint you want—or

away from the color you want to remove. To make the shadows darker, drag the slider
down, and drag it up to make the shadows lighter. The controls for midtones and

highlights work the same way.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 8 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The Color Whee

section.

The color wheels give you great feedback to show you what has been adjusted (by you or
by the Color Match feature). The wheels get filled when they’ve been adjusted, and the

sliders get blue. So, in the figure here, we can see that I’ve adjusted both the slider and the

color wheel for shadows, only the color wheel for the midtones, and only the slider for
highlights.

There’s a “gear” function at work in these wheels and sliders, so you must drag the

crosshead a lot longer towards the desired color tint than the distance you want the slider
or point to move. This makes accurate adjustments a breeze, even though the wheels are

small on the screen. Press Shift while you’re dragging to make them move faster. You can

also just click where you want the crosshair to be, and then drag it to tweak it further.

If you’re using a control surface, the wheels and knobs there will adjust the wheels and
sliders in this section. A great thing about using a control surface is that you don’t need

to activate the Lumetri Color panel

panel. Just place the playhead over the clip and start

adjusting.

A workflow that video

teams love - finally

EXPLORE FRAME.IO

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 9 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Like in the Basic Correction section, the HDR White slider is inactive until you choose High
Dynamic Range in the panel menu.

The HSL Secondaries Section

This section lets you create interesting looks, make your viewers focus on the right parts of
the image, and so on. You can select pixels within a selected range of hue, saturation, and

lightness and adjust only those pixels. You’re actually making a mask that is defined by a
color key, if that helps you understand what is going on—if not, don’t worry. I’ll explain

further.

This where you can fix a skin tone after adding a teal tint, make a dress or a logo stand out
from the rest of the image, and so on. You can also hit the Invert Mask button to invert the

selection and adjust all other pixels instead, preserving the selected ones as they are.

Let’s make the yellow color of the house in this shot pop a bit more.

Before any secon

correction.

To do the initial section you can click one of the colored buttons or use the left eye

dropper. Then you can use the plus and minus eye droppers to add and remove pixels

from the section.

(https://frame.io) Explore Fram

SUBSCR
INSIDER (https://blog.frame.io/) Email Address

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 10 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

This is the result

clicked with the
eyedropper on t
21 house and set th
Shares to color and blac

Like with the White Balance eyedropper, you can press Ctrl (Cmd) to get a bigger eye

dropper that samples the average of 5×5 pixels.

To see what pixels are selected you can choose to see white/black, color/black or
color/gray. What mask view that best shows your selected pixels will depend on the

footage. In my case, the yellow color showed up best against black.

Dragging the slid

Key section, I wa
make a better se
Then I adjusted t
for shadows and
towards orange
lowered the mid
levels.

After you’ve picked the colors you want to change with the eyedroppers, you can adjust

the sliders (Hue, Saturation and Levels) to select a wider or narrower range of pixel values.

You drag the triangle on top of each slider to adjust the range, and the bottom triangle to
make the transition between selected and non-selected pixels smoother.
HOW COLOR TIPS AND TRICKS FOR COMPARISON VIEW WORKING LUMETRI’S COLOR CONGRATULATIONS!
LUMETRI CORRECTION WORKING WITH LUMETRI AND SHOT MATCHING WITH LUTS PROCESSING PIPELINE
WORKS WORKFLOW
Use the Denoise slider to get rid of any small specks in the key mask. You can also drag
the Blur slider a tiny bit to soften the mask if the edges get a bit harsh. Watch the mask

view closely while dragging the sliders.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 11 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The settings I en
using for this sho
final result.

Before and after

the yellows to be
orange and mor
saturated.

HSL Secondaries Issue

Instead of doing the key on the original footage, the HSL Secondaries key in Lumetri is
looking at the pixels after the sections above it. So, if you tweak the color in the sections

above the HSL Secondaries in the same Lumetri effect, or on the Master Clip, the HSL keys
are affected.

If you decide to increase the exposure or cool down the clip after you’ve adjusted the key,
all the HSL keying must be done again.

In my opinion, HSL keying should be done pre-effects—at the very latest immediately after

the Input LUT. Changing the color, sharpness, and so on should not affect the key and
should always work based on the original pixels.

The Vignette Section

In the Vignette section you’ll find sliders for the amount of darkness or lightness the
vignette should have, the midpoint, the roundness and the feathering.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 12 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Add vignettes w
Vignette section

Although I do sometimes use vignettes, I don’t use the Vignette section in Lumetri much.
There are no choices for blending modes, and the vignette is always centered. So, I roll my
own vignettes using adjustment layers with masks and blending modes instead.

Visual Feedback in the Lumetri Color Panel

The wheels get filled when they’re adjusted, and their sliders get a blue color
color. This

way, you always know what’s been adjusted and not.

The Lumetri Colo

give you visual fe
Shadows wheel
are untouched. F
Midtones, only th
has been touche
Highlights, both
and the wheel ha
adjusted.

Other sliders often have their default value at the center position, or at the far left. Again,

this makes it easy to see what’s been adjusted.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 13 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

It’s pretty obviou

the Exposure an
sliders have bee
here.

Easily reset Sliders, Color Wheels and Curves

You can reset each slider, wheel, and curve in the Lumetri Color panel by double-clicking

on them. This method doesn’t work in the Effect Controls panel, but in that panel, every
parameter has its own Reset button.

There’s no lack o
buttons in the Ef
Controls panel. T
one resets the w
Lumetri Color ef
lower one resets
parameters in th
section only. All
ones reset indivi
parameters.

Color Correction Workflow

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 14 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Now that we’ve gotten to know the tools a bit, let’s take look at how you should attack a

color-grading session. This common workflow makes grading faster, simply by minimizing
the number of times you need to re-adjust any parameters.

1. Grading RAW? Adjust the Source Settings First

Source Settings for all RAW formats are found in the Effect Controls panel under the

Master tab. The settings available for the different formats vary a lot, from the incredibly
detailed settings for RED RAW to the very limited settings for Sony RAW.

If your footage is not RAW, you can jump straight to the next section and find your hero
shot.

Source Settings
CinemaDNG.

The idea of Source Settings is to get the levels within a workable range and somewhat
normal-looking before you start the actual grading. Adjustments you do in the Source
Settings are not adding to the CPU or GPU load, and you’re using the full bit depth of the

file.

You can also apply source settings to multiple selected clips in the Project panel. Select the
clips and right-click and choose Source Settings or click Clip > Source Settings
Settings.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 15 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Add same sourc

to multiple files i

If Source Settings is grayed out, you must select Disable Masterclip Effects in the right-click
menu to make the Source Settings option available.

2. Find a hero shot, and correct it

The hero shot is the shot that you will match the other ones to. It isn’t necessarily the best

shot. You will never be able to make a very bad shot look like the best shot, but you may
be able to match both to a shot that’s somewhere in between, so choose a hero shot that’s
similar to as many other shots in your scene as possible. Then:

1. Set the black levels while watching your RGB Parade scope. If necessary, adjust the RGB
balance to make them neutral. My favorite tool for this is the RGB Curves.

2. Set the white levels the same way.

3. Set the gamma, meaning you’ll adjust shadows, highlights and midtones. This is mostly
done by eye, although you may want to get skin tones in the right range etc.

4. Tweak memory colors like skin tone, foliage and grass, sky, etc. with secondaries.

5. Use secondaries and masks to adjust important colors on logos, props, costumes etc.

3. Match Shots

When the hero shot is done, you can start matching the other shots to it in Comparison

View. You can do this manually or use the Match feature in Lumetri Color panel. Both are
explained in detail below
below.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 16 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

4. Add A Creative Look

When the shots are all looking good, it’s time for adding that creative look. I prefer to use

an Adjustment layer for this, placing it on a track above all the clips. It may be necessary to
do individual tweaks to some clips after adding the adjustment layer.

5. Keep levels legal with the Video Limiter

If you’re delivering to broadcast, streaming services or cinema, you’ll have to keep your
video levels within legal range. But even if you’re outputting to YouTube or other places on

the internet, or a file to be played locally on a computer, you should keep your levels
within certain limits. Levels above 100 IRE will generally not show on a computer monitor
and will just show as white.

To make sure your levels are within range, add an adjustment layer above everything else
and apply the Video Limiter effect to it. The new Video Limiter effect we got in version 12.1

is much better than the old one and also has a gamut warning feature. It includes a small
range of meaningful presets, combined with good image processing under the hood.

The Video Limite

By default, the Video Limiter will just clip the whites and cut the saturation at the levels
dictated by the Clip Level settings. Use this as a safety net after grading. Do not rely on this
effect to take care of your levels. You’ll get much better results if you grade your clips

properly, getting them within range, and then add the Video Limiter to take care of any
small mistakes you’ve made. Just so you don’t get the project kicked back from the
broadcaster.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 17 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The Video Limite

I chose the EBU preset, since I’m based in Europe. If you turn on the Gamut Warning, you
can see what pixels the Video Limiter has affected. Now that you know that the levels are
out of gamut, you can grade the clip to make it adhere to the standards.

The Gamut Warn

shows what part
image are out of
this case, I just ne
lower the whites

After lowering th
with a Curves ad
very few pixels a
by the Video Lim
fine with those p
getting clipped.

If the clipping is a bit harsh, you can tell the Video Limiter effect to compress the highlights

before clipping. I generally don’t use this option, as I like to get my shots legal by manual
tweaking.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 18 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Compression se
the Video Limite

The higher you set the compression, the more of the image will be compressed.

With compressio
more pixels are a

When you use Compression before clipping, the color overlay shows what parts of the
image has been compressed and clipped to get them into legal range. Not all of the
colored sections are too bright, but the limiter is reaching back into the almost-too-bright
range in order make the transition smooth.

I use the Video Limiter set to clip at 100 IRE and turn on the Gamut Warning when I grade
video that will be watched on a computer or on YouTube or other social media. Since
levels above 100 IRE will be clipped on most computer monitors, I like to know what pixels
they will not see and make manual adjustments, so they get within visual range.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 19 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Setting Clip Leve

IRE shows me wh
will be clipped o
computer monit
manual adjustme
this.

As you’ve seen, the Video Limiter is a great tool for colorists. Do remember to switch the
Gamut Warning off before you export, though—it will show on your exported video!

Tips and Tricks For Working With

Lumetri

Use Masks with Lumetri

While Resolve uses the fancy term “Power Window”, in Premiere Pro it’s just a Mask—a
method for targeting your effects to an isolated part of the image. The way they’re used is

the same. There’s no Masks section inside the Lumetri panel, but that doesn’t mean we
can’t use masks. In the Effect Controls panel, you can create an ellipse, rectangle, and free-
draw Bezier masks as on any other effect.

In my shot, I didn’t want the yellow objects to the right to be affected by the adjustment I

did to change the yellow color of the house. So, I clicked the Pen icon under the name of
the effect in the Effect Controls panel and drew a mask around the house.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 20 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Make a mask on
Lumetri Color ef
the adjustment t
areas of the imag

Now only the pixels inside the mask are affected. I could also have made a mask around
the other yellow objects and inverted the mask by checking the Inverted box.

If it’s a moving shot or a moving object, you can also use the mask tracking buttons to

make the mask track the object.

Combined with the HSL Secondaries and other sections of Lumetri, the masks are very
useful for color grading. Heavily feathered masks are used a lot to lighten and darken
certain areas to focus the viewer’s attention where we want it.

Working with multiple instances of the Lumetri Color

In the Adobe CC 2019 update of Premiere Pro, the Lumetri Color panel got a very

welcome new feature: We can now work with multiple instances of the Lumetri Color
directly from the panel. In older versions, Lumetri Color panel was always working on the
last instance of Lumetri Color on a clip.

At the top of the panel, where we have the fx button that turns the effect on and off, we

now have a drop-down menu. By default, it just says Lumetri Color, but when you click it,
you can add more instances, and rename or delete existing ones.

You can add, ren

delete instances
Lumetri Color ef
the panel.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 21 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Each new instance you add will be named just Lumetri Color. Make sure you rename them.
Multiple instances identically named Lumetri Color is a recipe for disaster, as you will lose
track of what instance you’re working on.

Having multiple
with the same na
bad idea.

The names will be reflected in the Effect Controls panel, and the order in the Lumetri Color

panel is the same as the order in the Effect Controls panel. The upper one is the first
instance, so make sure you avoid clipping here—you will not be able to recover the clipped
levels with adjustments on further instances.

The changes you

Lumetri Color pa
reflected in the E
Controls panel.

To operate two instances of Lumetri in a smoother way, you can use the Effects Controls
panel and operate the controls for one instance there. I like to keep my Effect Controls

panel docked with the Lumetri Color panel to make it tall. This docking also makes
switching between the panels really quick and easy.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 22 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Docking the Lum

panel and the Ef
Controls panel to
lets you easily sw
between them.

For faster switching, use keyboard shortcuts to switch between the panels. The default
keyboard shortcut is Shift+5 for the Effect Controls panel, but the Lumetri Color panel
doesn’t have a keyboard shortcut in the standard keyboard layout. I’ve set mine to F5 for
the Effect Controls panel and F6 for the Lumetri Color panel. Typically, these are set
to Capture and Batch Capture, but when was the last time you captured from tape? I’ve
also set the keyboard shortcut for the Lumetri Scopes panel to F7
F7.

I use my F5-F7 k
switch between
Controls, Lumetr
and Lumetri Sco

You can also dock the panels side by side, which gives you even quicker access to all the

adjustments, but this is only practical if you have a big monitor—or multiple screens.

Bypass Lumetri Color Effects

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 23 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

I highly recommend that you assign a one-button shortcut to Bypass Lumetri Color Effects,
for easy toggling between your grade and the original footage. I’ve assigned
the Asterisk (*) button on my Numeric keyboard for this, so I can quickly compare the
look before and after the tweaks.

Pressing the key will switch off all instances of Lumetri Color on the selected clip for as
long as you keep the key pressed. When you release the key, all the Lumetri Color effects
on the clip are switched on again. Nice!

Note that this keyboard shortcut only works when the Lumetri Color panel is active.

There is an fx button at the very top of the Lumetri Color panel, to the left of the Reset
button. This button toggles the selected Lumetri Color effect on and off.

The keyboard shortcut for Bypass Lumetri Color Effects, will turn off all instances
of the Lumetri Color effect. It’s nice to have both options.

The fx button in
Lumetri Color pa
turns on or off th
instance of the e

Use the fx buttons in the Effect Controls panel to toggle the Lumetri Color effect on/off if
you work with the Lumetri Color panel closed.

Global FX Mute

You can also assign a keyboard shortcut to the Global FX Mute feature. This disables all the
effects on all clips (excluding fixed effects like Motion, Opacity, etc.) Toggling the effects
off does not affect the export, just your previews.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 24 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

This is nice when you want to see the clip before and after all effects and color grading. It’s
also great when your system struggles to play back the timeline. Just hit the
shortcut, do your edit changes with no effects, and hit the shortcut again to see the final
piece. It only works when the program monitor is active, which can cause some confusion.

You can also add the fx button to the Transport Controls area under the monitor. I always

hide the Transport Controls to get more space on my screen, so I use the keyboard
shortcut. You can turn the Transport Controls on and off in the Program Monitor’s Settings
menu – the wrench icon.

You can add the

Mute button to t
Transport Contro
Program Monito
button to add it
already have it th

Push The Sliders Farther

Sliders may not show the full range of values available. Some sliders stop at 100, but you
can manually enter numbers, or drag the blue digits, to a higher number. So if the sliders
won’t let you go far enough, start dragging the blue numbers.

Sometimes, drag
numbers will let
values higher tha
sliders will go. Th
slider goes to 10
can manually set
way up to 300.

Hide the Lumetri Scopes Panel to get a Snappier System

Be aware that showing the Lumetri Scopes panel will cause Premiere to use more
computer resources (GPU and CPU) since the signal needs to be processed twice—once
for the Program Monitor and once for the Lumetri Scopes panel.

I did a test where I added Lumetri Color to an adjustment layer and played the timeline for
one minute. During the first half, I only had the Program Monitor open, and kept the
Lumetri Scopes panel hidden. For the second half, I brought the Lumetri Scopes panel to

the front to activate it. Throughout, I measured the GPU Load and the CPU Usage. The
results can be seen in the figures below.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 25 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The GPU Load w

around 40% to ro
50% when I activ
Lumetri Scopes p
Usage also doub
from below 20%
when the Lumetr
panel is open.

So to keep your system running smoothly, close or hide the Lumetri Scopes panel
when you don’t need it
it.

Use Presets in Lumetri

As I mentioned earlier, you can save presets in Lumetri Color. I love Lumetri Color presets!

If you want to explore my presets, you can (https://premierepro.net/jarles-premiere-

pro-presets-version-4/)
pro-presets-version-4/)download
download them for free (https://premierepro.net/jarles-
premiere-pro-presets-version-4/)
premiere-pro-presets-version-4/). There are more than 100 presets in version 4.0 of
Jarle’s Presets, and they include the Handheld Camera presets used by the editors of the
Deadpool movie!

Using a Control Surface

Unfortunately, the Lumetri Color panel is hugely mouse-driven. There are very few
keyboard shortcuts available, and they mostly reflect the panel menu settings.

Not much to see

unfortunately. Le
we get more key
shortcuts for Lum
(and scopes) in t
These are my set
the default ones

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 26 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

If you use a control surface to drive Lumetri, it will of course be much less mouse-driven. I

highly recommend that you buy a control surface if you do a lot of grading in Premiere.

Tangent Ripple C
Surface.

The Lumetri Color panel doesn’t even have to be open or active to use the control panel,
which is fantastic! The clip you want to adjust to has to be selected, of course. It can’t read
your mind (yet).

This feature enables a great workflow. During editing, when you want to tweak a clip, you
simply start rolling the wheels and turning the knobs. Then you go back to editing. Pretty
neat!

So what control panels will work? Any Tangent panel supported by the Tangent Hub
software (http://www.tangentwave.co.uk/) will work, including Tangent Elements,
Wave, and Ripple. Besides Tangent hardware, you can also use the Palette controller for
Lumetri (https://palettegear.com/)
(https://palettegear.com/).

Comparison View and Shot

Matching

In the spring 2018 version of Premiere, Adobe introduced Comparison View in the
Program Monitor, featuring both shot and frame comparison. This is a nice addition, so we

don’t have to load the sequence into the Reference Monitor and the Source Monitor to
compare shots. Even though After Effects has both Lumetri Scopes and the Lumetri Color
effect, this feature is available only in Premiere Pro.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 27 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The Comparison
offers three diffe
to compare shot
frames. Vertical,
side and horizon

You can get into and out of Comparison View in a few different ways. The most obvious

one is to click the new Comparison View button in the Transport controls, located in the
lower right-hand portion of the Program Monitor. If it’s not there, click the big + sign to
add it.

The Comparison
button in the Pro
Monitor.

You’ll also find a Comparison View button in the Color Wheels & Match section of the
Lumetri Color panel.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 28 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The Comparison
button in the Lum
panel.

If, like me, you’re hiding the Transport Controls in the Program Monitor because you use
keyboard shortcuts for all its features, you can assign a keyboard shortcut for toggling

Comparison View, although only to activate it, not to change between the view options.

I’ve assigned Co
View to my F8 ke

I’ve used F8 for toggling Comparison View on and off. Unfortunately, this keyboard
shortcut only works when the Program Monitor is the active panel, which seems like an
oversight, since you’ll probably be working in the timeline, the Effect Controls panel or the

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 29 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Lumetri Color panel when you want to compare shots. Let’s hope this changes in future
versions.

Finally, you can enter Comparison View from the wrench menu in the Program Monitor, but
I can’t see why anyone would want that.

Shot Comparison

The most common use of the Comparison View is to match different shots, and it’s also the
most intuitive way to use it.

Shot Compariso
before any adjus

Figure 36. Shot Comparison View made the manual shot matching easy.

I use the side-by-side comparison a lot, and only switch to vertical and horizontal split view
when I’m in doubt. But especially for matching skin tones, the two split views are very
handy.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 30 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Drag the division

vertical split view
compare skin ton
other important

The horizontal sp
may work best o
images.

The Lumetri Scopes reflects the view in comparison mode, so you can see the two shots
side by side. This is especially useful with waveform scopes in vertical split view.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 31 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Vertical split view

shows that the im
the right has a lo
blue and a bit m
than the one on

The shots are nic

matched, using C

The slider on the reference side is of course a playhead, so you can use any reference
frame you want. You can also click the forward or backward arrows to go through your
clips and find the perfect reference frame.

Use the arrows to

previous or next
Use the slider to
frame.

This is quite intuitive and works fine for short timelines. In longer timelines with lots of cuts,
it’s not accurate enough for my taste. Oh, well—it’s version 1.0 of the Comparison View, so
it may improve in later versions. A different colored playhead in the main timeline would
be great.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 32 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

There are two buttons in the Comparison View that are easy to miss—the Shot or Frame
Comparison button on the left, and the Swap Sides button on the right.

Most people see

buttons in the m
the two on the si
often overlooked
the Shot Compa
Swap Sides butto
respectively.

The Swap Sides button does exactly what you’d expect: It swaps sides, so you can have the
reference frame on the right, and the current frame on the left.

My brain is wired so that the result should be on the right, so I tend to keep it at the default
setting. But swapping sides can be useful in split view, so you can see the opposite side of
the two frames.

Click the Swap S

button to swap t
and the referenc
slider.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 33 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Frame Comparison

When you switch to Frame Comparison mode by clicking the Shot or Frame Comparison
button, you get the same image on both sides.

In Frame Compa
mode, you see th
before and after
adjustments.

This way, you can see what changes you’re making to color before you commit to the
changes. So, in most cases, working in this mode is pretty straight forward. But there’s one
thing you need to understand:

The “before” shot will stay in the buffer until you click out of Frame Comparison
mode. When you enter this mode again, Premiere loads a new “before” image
into the buffer.

So, if you click in the timeline, or switch to Shot Comparison mode, and then go back to
Frame Comparison, you will see the same image on both sides.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 34 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

The tweaks we d
are now shown a
“before” image.

So any changes you do now will be compared to how the image looked immediately
before you entered the Frame Comparison mode the last time—not to the original image.
The Current state in Comparison view is not the original state.

Any adjustments
compared to the
adjustments we’

To trick Premiere into showing you the original image, toggle the Lumetri effect off by

clicking the fx button in the upper left corner of the Lumetri Color panel and then exit
Frame Comparison mode. Then enable Frame Comparison mode again to load the
untouched image into the “before” buffer. Now you can re-enable the Lumetri Color effect
and compare your adjustments to the original, untouched image.

By temporarily d
the Lumetri Colo
before entering
Comparison mo
compare our col
to the original im

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 35 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Auto Color Match

Comparison View is great when you’re matching shots manually, but the spring 2018
version of Premiere also introduced Color Match, which can give you a head start. Color

Match is powered by Adobe Sensei, which is an example of Adobe’s machine learning

technology (it’s also the power behind other features like Content Aware Fill in Photoshop,
automatic music ducking in Premiere, or Facial Recognition in Lightroom). It can use Face
Detection to prioritize the skin tones over the other parts of the image. If there is more
than one face, the face detection will focus on the one closest to the camera.

Machine learning can easily read black and white levels, but the midtones are a challenge.
So, often you’ll only need to adjust the midtones after matching. Saturation is not adjusted

by Color Match, so it will not work well with oversaturated images. Make sure you get the
saturation of oversaturated images into legal levels before you do the match.

These three shots, shot on an iPhone, need some serious shot matching. The colors vary all
over the place. Let’s see what Adobe Sensei can do with them.

These three shot

be matched.

In Comparison View, park the playhead over the hero shot, and move the playhead in the

timeline to show the shot you want to match to the hero shot.

I’ve decided that

shot should be m
reference, my he

I clicked the App

button, and this
result.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 36 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

That helped a lot. What’s great is that even though the process is done by Adobe Sensei
magic in the background, it’s still transparent. You can see what changes the machine
learning did in the Color Wheels & Match section of the Lumetri Color panel, where all its
adjustments are done. In this case the match is not bad, but it’s not perfect either. But we
can tweak it further manually.

Some additional
the Curves sectio
the match perfec

Now let’s see what Color Match can do with the other shot.

The other shot, b

adjustments.

The shot after cli

Apply Match but

That’s not good at all! So, what’s going on here? The highlights areas in the hero image are

the clouds and the sky. The highlights in the other shot are some sticks and stones on the
ground. Let’s try to help the Color Match by temporarily taking away the sky in the hero
shot. I do this by adjusting Scale and Position for that clip it in the Effect Controls panel.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 37 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Now we’re comp

apples to apples
Adobe Sensei sh
a better chance.

That’s a lot bette

want to tweak th
bit more manual

With a few extra

tweaks, the matc

Yes, I swapped the shots in the image above. It eases the manual comparison when the
levels on the left and right of the frame are different. If you want to see shots both before
and after the hero shot, you can open the Reference Monitor (Window
Window > Reference
Monitor
Monitor) and scrub its timeline until you see the desired shot.

All the shots now

similar colors an

You could also load the sequence into the Source Monitor to get four monitors, all with
different shots.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 38 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Looking at these shots, I found that there was a bit too much saturation, and the scopes
confirmed that. Rather than adjusting each clip again, I used an Adjustment Layer on top
of all the clips, with just two small tweaks: I lowered the whites and reduced saturation.

All three shots, a

applying a corre
the adjustment l

As you can see, the Color Match feature isn’t perfect, but it gets you very close to a

finished result. And sometimes it’s spot-on. If you get the exposure into the ballpark before
matching, this can increase accuracy.

Be aware that Color Match may reset your settings in the HSL Secondary section.

Scopes in Comparison View

The scopes behave as you’d expect in Comparison mode. In essence, they reflect what
you see in the Program Monitor.

In Side by side v
scopes show the
of both images,
side.

In Vertical Split v
scopes show the
exactly the same
see in the viewer

The scopes aren

quite as meaning
Horizontal Split v

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 39 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

In Horizontal Split mode, the scopes show the full image, but there’s no visual split in the
scopes. But when you start adjusting sliders and color wheels, you will see if the before

and after levels are aligned or not.

Use Comparison View for Motion Graphics and Effects

Comparison view is also very useful for other things than color grading. If you’re adjusting
things in the Effect Controls panel or editing Motion Graphics Templates in the Essential
Graphics panel, you can load the frame, including the state of all applied effects, into
Comparison View before you start tweaking.

Figure 64. Comparison View lets you see changes to other things than color correction.

Working with LUTs

Before I explain how Premiere uses LUTs, here’s a quick primer on what they do.

You can think of a LUT (look-up table) as a locked color grading preset. The

difference between using a LUT and using a Lumetri Color effect preset is that the LUT
can’t be adjusted apart from the intensity, and you can’t see what parameters it has
changed.

There are two main types of LUTs: technical LUTs and creative LUTs.

A technical LUT is often used to bring Log footage from a certain camera into a proper
video color space (Rec. 709) with correct levels and contrast. In Premiere Pro, these are
called Input LUTs, and you add them to your footage using the Input LUT drop-down menu
in the Basic Section of the Lumetri Color panel.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 40 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Figure 65. Log footage from an Arri Alexa camera before adding a technical LUT. Footage
courtesy of Arri.

Figure 66. After adding the Arri LogC to Rec. 709 LUT, the image looks normal.

Note that I added the Input LUT to the Master clip. This means it will already have the LUT
applied when I put it in the timeline.

You can download technical LUTs from the web sites of the camera makers, like Sony, Arri,

Panasonic, Canon, etc.

While a technical LUT is designed to make the image look “normal,” a creative LUT can do
all sorts of things to achieve a desired look. Lots of secondary color correction is the norm
in such creative LUTs. In Premiere, these are called Looks, and you add them in the Look
drop-down menu in the Creative section of the Lumetri Color panel.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 41 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Figure 67. Here I’ve added the look named SL Blue Ice. It has added contrast and made
neutral shadows, midtones and highlights bluer while keeping the whites neutral and at
the same time.

You can find creative LUTs all over the internet. Websites that deal with color grading are
full of them, both free and paid ones.

Some colorists recommend that you apply the input LUT on an adjustment layer and do
your other adjustments on the clips below. I do not recommend this. The controls in

Lumetri are expecting standard gamma, not Log, and adjustments will be very difficult
because the controls will not work in the range they’re made for.

And remember that creative LUTs will not magically make your footage look
good. LUTs are calibrated for correctly white balanced images
images. They expect an
image with standard levels, contrast and saturation. Throwing a LUT on a badly exposed

shot or a shot with a color cast will not give you a good result. You must balance your shots
before you apply creative LUTs.

New common LUTs folders in the spring 2018 version

In older versions, some clever editors found a way to make their custom LUTs appear in
the drop-down menus for convenience. This involved tampering with the LUTs within the
application package, and it resulted in all kinds of problems when editors worked on
several systems, when several editors collaborated, and when they exported via Adobe
Media Encoder.

This is why we got the Lumetri Color custom LUT directory in the spring 2018 version. You

can now install custom LUT files which will appear in the Basic Correction > Input LUT and
Creative > Look drop-down menus.

To install a custom LUT file, first create one or more of the directories listed below as
follows: Create a folder named LUTs, then create two more folders inside the LUTs folder:
Technical and Creative.

Custom LUT directories

MacOS: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/LUTs/

Windows: C:Program FilesAdobeCommonLUTs

Now copy your custom technical LUTs into the Technical folder, and your creative LUTs into
the Creative folder. After Effects, Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder will scan these
folders at launch and load LUT files from these directories. So, to see the changes, you’ll
need to restart Premiere Pro.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 42 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Your LUTs now show up in the drop-down menus. This will persist through updates unless
you delete or change these directories.

If you want the LUTs to be available only to the local user, use the following folders instead.

MacOS: /Users/<user_name>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/LUTs/

Windows: C:Users<user_name>AppDataRoamingAdobeCommonLUTs

On a shared storage facility, you may want to talk to the IT people and make them auto-
sync the folders between edit bays regularly.

Time-saving Pro tip for LUT users

When you need to add a technical LUT (Input LUT) to a lot of clips, you don’t want to use
the Input LUT drop-down menu, because the Lumetri Color panel only works on one clip
at the time. Instead, add make a Lumetri Color preset, where you’ve only applied the LUT.

Figure 68. Add the LUT and export a Lumetri Color preset via the panel menu.

Then select all the clips in your bin and drag the preset to one of them. Now all your clips
have the Input LUT applied as a Master Clip Effect.

Figure 69. Select all the clips in the bin and drag your LUT preset to them.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 43 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Figure 70. The red lines under the fx badges on the clips in the timeline show that a Master
clip effect has been added.

If you want to temporarily disable the Master Clip effects, select the clips in a bin, right-
click, and choose Disable Masterclip Effects. Be warned, though—you will have to re-
enable them manually on each clip one by one; there is no way to re-enable
them all in one go.

Figure 71. You can disable Masterclip Effects on multiple clips.

There’s also no indication in the timeline that the Master Clip effects have been disabled—
the red lines are still there. You’ll have to re-enable them by checking the little fx icon in the
Master tab in the Effect Controls panel or at the top of Master tab in the Lumetri Color
panel.

Remove Arri Amira LUTs to Avoid Project Bloat

Arri Amira cameras can be set to add LUTs to the source footage, and these are
automatically applied as a Master Clip effect in Premiere. These Amira LUTs are huge, and
are known to cause project bloat, which can slow down the project and even cause
instability and crashes.

To fix this, you can remove the automatically added Lumetri effect, or you can replace it
with one that has your own preset. Paul Murphy has a good video tutorial on this:
(https://vimeo.com/137902501)

https://vimeo.com/137902501 (https://vimeo.com/137902501)

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 44 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Exporting a LUT from Lumetri

Since a LUT is just a preset, you can create your own LUT by making adjustments to your
footage in the Lumetri Color panel and then exporting them as a .cube or .look file from

the panel menu. The LUTs will contain all the adjustments from all the sections in the
Lumetri Color effect and can be used in any color-grading software. (It should be noted
that settings in the Vignette section are not supported by the .cube LUT format, though,
only by the .look format.)

The .cube format seems to be the most widely supported one, so I recommend that you
export all your LUTs in that format.

Figure 72. Export LUTs for use in any NLE or color grading software.

If you want to see the settings used in your looks, save your adjustments as Lumetri presets
instead, using the Save Preset choice in the panel menu. The sliders and wheels will then

reflect how the Look was achieved, but the preset will only work in Premiere, unlike a LUT
which can work in most software.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 45 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Figure 73. The Lumetri Color panel menu

Auto-Refresh LUTs

The Auto-Refresh LUT/Look feature in the Lumetri Color panel menu will force the looks
and LUTs to be updated every time you open a project. This means you (or your colorist)

can modify the LUT on your disk, and the changes will automatically apply the next time
you open the project.

Figure 74. Auto-refresh LUT / Look

Lumetri’s Color Processing

Pipeline
co

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 46 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

In our last section, I will cover some technical details you need to know about the panel in
order to avoid some common mistakes. This knowledge enables you to take full

advantage of the panel and be sure that you understand exactly how your images will be

processed by Lumetri.

Lumetri works in Rec. 709 Color Space

Adobe says something like this about what color space the Lumetri effect works in:

Premiere Pro uses gamma-encoded 709 throughout, which Lumetri converts to linear for
internal processing, without touching the primaries, and then back to 709 Gamma before
spitting it back out.

It’s OK if you don’t understand what this means, since you can’t change it anyway. I just

included it for the nerds.

This means that your monitoring will always be in Rec. 709—the standard color space for
HD TV. You can’t monitor true HDR out of Premiere. It also means that the Composite in

Linear Color option in Sequence settings has no effect on Lumetri

Lumetri, because Lumetri is
always working in linear color internally.

Whites and Blacks Sliders Work First On The Signal

Even though they’re placed at the bottom of the UI in the Basic Correction section of the
Lumetri Panel, the Whites and Blacks sliders are applied before the other sliders
sliders!

Why is this important? Because it affects how the image is processed and, consequently,

how it will look. Since the Lumetri Color effect works in 32-bit floating point linear color,
you may think you can adjust Exposure first, and then raise the Whites, and it will all look

good. It won’t, because Lumetri handles overbrights (levels above 100 on the scope) in
strange ways internally. Let me illustrate this with a linear gradient.

Figure 03. A linear gradient before any adjustments

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 47 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Figure 04. The gradient after adjusting the Whites

Figure 05. The result after increasing the Exposure

Figure 06. Final result, after lowering the whites in the RGB Curves section

As you can see from this image sequence, this creates a very strange curve, and introduces

artifacts in the highlights of the image. I don’t know any other Color Grading effect that
works this way, so be aware!

Note that this is only a problem when you don’t get your levels right with the

Whites and Blacks sliders first

first.

So, the render order is almost like the order you see in the Lumetri Color panel, except
that the Whites and Blacks sliders in the Basic Correction section work before the other

controls. Here’s the full render pipeline internally in Lumetri:

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 48 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

1. Input LUT

2. Basic Correction (Whites and Blacks before other sliders)

3. Creative LUT

4. Creative Adjustments

5. Curves

6. Color Wheels & Match

7. HSL Secondary

8. Vignette

Figure 07. Whites and Blacks sliders work before the other sliders

So, my advice to avoid unexpected processing problems is:

Adjust the Whites and Blacks sliders to get the signal in the 0-100 range before

you even think of adjusting anything else.

Some Sliders introduce Compression

The Lumetri effect is designed to help you avoid clipping in Luma and Chroma signals by

introducing compression
compression, which results in soft “knees” at the extreme highs and lows.
See the figures below.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 49 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Figure 08. Soft compression introduced by the Exposure slider. Signal does not go above
100.

Figure 09. Soft compression introduced by the Contrast slider. Signal stays within the 0-
100 range.

Most of the time, this is a good thing! No matter how much you increase Exposure or
Contrast, you will never create illegal levels
levels, plus your images will look good.

But it’s not the standard behavior for exposure controls in color tools from other software,

so you might be surprised.

Note that this soft compression also means that if you push Saturation too far, it will skew
the color a bit away from the original. This may sound like a big problem, but in real life,

you very seldom increase Saturation that aggressively. Your show would be rejected by

Quality Control at broadcasters and streaming services if you did.

As we saw in the linear gradient above, dragging the Whites above 100 and increasing the
Exposure before dragging the top of the RGB Curves down, results in a distorted version
of your pixel values. This is because sliders like Exposure and Contrast only work on pixel
values between 0 and 100 and compress the levels when you bring them close to 0 and

100.

Your overbrights are not affected by these two sliders! But since RGB Curves can
handle overbrights, and comes after the Basic Correction section, you can still get those

overbrights into legal range, and maybe get some surprises.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 50 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

As long as you know about this, it’s not a problem, but people new to Lumetri and

Premiere Pro will inevitably destroy their images. Sometimes without even knowing they
did.

Blacks and Whites Sliders do not introduce Compression

The Basic Correction section has two sliders that will affect levels above 100 and below 0—

the Whites and Blacks sliders. As we’ve seen, these will let you introduce, and bring back,
overbrights and super-blacks.

Before version 2017.1, even these did not affect out-of-range levels, but
(https://premierepro.net/limitations-in-the-lumetri-color-panel/)
(https://premierepro.net/limitations-in-the-lumetri-color-panel/)after
after my

complaints (https://premierepro.net/limitations-in-the-lumetri-color-panel/) we

can adjust overbrights from YUV formats correctly, and bring them down to 100. Just
remember to do this before any other adjustments to avoid trouble.

Now that you know this, you can easily avoid problems. Just start by adjusting

the Whites and Blacks sliders until the signal in the Waveform scope lies safely
between 0 and 100.

Fix some of these Issues with HDR Settings

By default, the Lumetri Color effect will cap any Exposure and Contrast adjustments at 100
percent. So, when you stack Lumetri Color effects, you will not be able to keep

your overbrights intact

intact.

A partial solution is to set the Lumetri Color effect to High Dynamic Range, HDR.

Some of the challenges that people have when using Lumetri is that they don’t expect the
effect to use compression. There is a way to avoid some of the compression, and that’s to

set the Lumetri Color effect to HDR

HDR, even though your material is not HDR. You can set
this in the Effect Controls panel or in the panel menu in the Lumetri Color panel.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 51 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Figure 13. Set the Lumetri Color effect to HDR to keep overbrights and avoid some
compression.

It’s a hassle to do this on every clip, so I recommend that you save an effect preset with this

already in place. To do this, add the Lumetri Color effect to a clip and change the setting to
HDR. Then, without making any other changes, go to the panel menu and click Save

Preset. Throw this preset on all your clips in one go before you start grading, and your
overbrights will be preserved.

Figure 14. Raising the Exposure to 0.6 caused some compression.

Figure 15. After setting the Lumetri Color effect to HDR, the same Exposure adjustment no
longer introduces compression. Instead, the levels go above 100.

It’s a good idea to always set Lumetri to HDR mode because you may be stacking Lumetri

Effects without knowing it. Say you have added an Input LUT to all your clips, and then you
add an Adjustment Layer above them where you control the overall look. Now every clip is

affected by at least two instances of the Lumetri Color effect.

OK, enough of this testing with boring grayscale gradients. How does this work when we

have clips that already have overbrights? Let’s have a look.

Preserve the Overbrights from your Footage

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 52 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Many cameras record in a format that has some overbrights. You may wonder why you’d
ever want your camera to shoot illegal levels? But this is a good thing, since you can get

back some detail in slightly overexposed footage. Many formats, especially those
used in Broadcast, record overbrights
overbrights.

Figure 16. This clip has overbrights coming straight from the camera.

Let’s stack two instances of Lumetri Color with an Exposure adjustment to illustrate the

problems you can run into.

Figure 17. Two instances of Lumetri Color. Exposure set to 1.2 on the first, and -0.4 on the
second, to get the levels below 100.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 53 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Figure 18. The result of the adjustments I made in the previous imager. Note the
compressed highlights in the scopes, resulting in very flat highlights, and very little detail
in the white walls of the lighthouse.

Now let’s set the Lumetri Color effect to HDR and try the same approach.

Figure 19. Again, two instances of Lumetri Color. Exposure set to 1.2 on the first, but since I
turned HDR on this time, I had to drag the Exposure down to -1.5 on the second, to get the
levels below 100.

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 54 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Figure 20. Turning on the HDR setting in the Lumetri Color effect made a huge difference!
No compression in the highlights, and we also have lots of midtones and a lot more detail
in the white walls.

Figure 21. With all our highlights preserved, we can tweak the image further, brightening
the highlights and going for deeper shadows, without losing too much detail.

If you want to keep levels far beyond 100, set the HDR White level to 1000. Beware

though, that you are creating levels that are far from Broadcast Safe, so make sure you
have a strategy for getting them back to legal range. Normally, you’d only use this setting

when you’re stacking Lumetri Color effects, to avoid compression in the intermediate
image.

Also, when you change the White point to 1000, of course the Shadows slider will work on

HDR shadows, which is just about the whole visible range in Standard Dynamic Range
(SDR). So with this setting, your sliders will not always do what you’d expect.

A more normal approach would be to set only the first instance of the Lumetri Color effect

to HDR, to preserve the highlights. Then set the second instance to operate in SDR (HDR

switch off), so the sliders work as expected.

Congratulations!

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 55 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

If you’ve made it this far, thanks, and I commend you. As you can see, there’s a lot to the
Lumetri Color Panel. Adobe has done a great job adding some much-needed features and

changes. There are still a few things here and there I’d like to see adjusted, but overall, this

suite of color grading tools makes Premiere a powerful all-in-one tool. Share in the
comments how you use it. What are your favorite features? What would you like to see

added or changed?

Enjoy the article? You'll love Frame.io (https://frame.io?utm_source=blog_ps_cta&utm_medium=web)

(https://frame.io?utm_source=blog_ps_cta&utm_medium=web),, the leading collaboration and feedba
platform for professional video creators. Try it out free (https://frame.io?utm_source=blog_ps_cta&utm_medium=web) for your next project!

Thank you to Jarle Leirpoll for

Jarle Leirpoll
(https://blog.frame.io/author/jarleleirpoll/)
contributing this article.

Jarle Leirpoll is a film maker based out of

Norway, and author of "The Cool Stuff in
Premiere Pro". He runs PremierePro.net, where he
shares free templates, presets and projects. Jarle
has trained people at top broadcasters and
media production companies like Disney, BBC,
NRK, DR, Swedish TV4, Warner Bros, Discovery
Channel and countless others.

SEE MORE POSTS FROM JARLE

(HTTPS://BLOG.FRAME.IO/AUTHOR/JARLELEIRPOLL/)

Interested In This blog relies on people like you to step in and add
Contributing? your voice. Send us an email: blog at frame.io if you
have an idea for a post or want to write one yourself.

Our Most Popular Articles

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 56 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Editing Top Workflow Made In Frame

(https://blog.frame.io/2017/10/30/cutting-a-film- (https://blog.frame.io/2018/03/05/oscar-2018- (https://blog.frame.io/2018/02/26/made-in-fra
(Https://Blog.frame.io/Category/Post- (Https://Blog.frame.io/Category/The- (Https://Blog.frame.io/Category/Beh
davinci-resolve/) workflows/) get-out/)
Production/Editing/) , Top DaVincie Tops/Top-Workflow/) , Workflow The-Scenes/Made-In-Frame/) 14
Resolve (Https://Blog.frame.io/Category/Workflow/) 23 MIN READ
(Https://Blog.frame.io/Category/The- MIN READ
Tops/Top-Resolve/) 20 MIN READ Made in Frame: The
Workflow Breakdown
The Pros and Cons of Oscar-Winning “Get
of Every Best Picture
Cutting a Film in Out”
and Best Editing
(https://blog.frame.io/20
DaVinci Resolve Oscar Nominee
in-frame-get-out/)
(https://blog.frame.io/2017/10/30/cutting-
(https://blog.frame.io/2018/03/05/oscar-
a-film-davinci- February 26, 2018
2018-workflows/)
resolve/)
March 5, 2018
October 30, 2017

12 Comments Frame.io !
1 Login

% Recommend 5 t Tweet f Share Sort by Best

Join the discussion…

LOG IN WITH OR SIGN UP WITH DISQUS ?

Name

FocusPulling ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ • 3 months ago

This is a stellar resource, and by a huge margin, the best web resource on Lumetri. One thing worth updating here, is that in a subsequent
update to Premiere, Adobe added the ability to manage multiple "stacked" Lumetri effects on a single clip, from within the Lumetri Control
Panel that is aptly called a "remote control" here. You can selectively mute each one, re-order them, and most importantly, separately adjust
their parameters, all in the same Lumetri Control Panel. Finally!
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Ron Dawson Mod > FocusPulling ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ • 3 months ago

Thanks for the heads up. I'll notify the author.

△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Oscar Ramirez Champa • a year ago

Hi! I has a question... Should HDR be active when I apply a technical LUT or do I have to add a new Lumetri installation to activate the HDR?
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Jarle Leirpoll > Oscar Ramirez Champa • 10 months ago

Hi Oscar, I would think that keeping everything in HDR from the start would give you the best result.
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Zak Adams • a year ago

Hey Jarle, great article! So much good stuff in there. Can you point me to more technical info on how the basic correction section of Lumetri
is working? Like what the IRE ranges for the different sliders are? I'd really like to learn some more "under the hood" about the Lumetri panel.
Thanks!
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 57 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

Jarle Leirpoll > Zak Adams • 10 months ago

Hi Zak. There is no good info available for this. But you could of course do some testing yourself. If you use a grayscale gradient and
some grayscale bars with known levels, and measure the levels before and after dragging sliders (one at a time), you should get a
good indication.
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Fran Alday • a year ago

It is absolutely helpful!
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

James Irwin • a year ago

Congrats on a terrific walk-through. An article that truly delivers on the promise of its headline.
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Ben Kupfer • a year ago

Thank you for the great tutorial. The black and white slider information is going to help my color grading in Premiere. A much deeper dive
than many tutorials on lumetri.
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Thomas Smith • a year ago

Can you do the same with DaVinci Resolve?
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Al Moore • a year ago • edited

Excellent content! Very helpful.

I work in an environment where we always send our shows out to Resolve for color grading. I would love to skip this step; Resolve is
fabulous, but exporting footage out and back in does add time to the delivery.

I would love to hear feedback / comments from other editors. Is it possible to stay entirely in PP and get a near-Resolve quality result? Has
anybody else been down this road?

Thanks.
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Jarle Leirpoll > Al Moore • a year ago

The quality will be very close to the same in Premiere and Resolve, as both work in 32-bpc color. But Resolve has some tools that will
probably get you faster to a good result. On short projects, you'll spend more time going between Premiere and Resolve, though.
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

✉ Subscribe d Add Disqus to your siteAdd DisqusAdd * Disqus' Privacy PolicyPrivacy PolicyPrivacy

INSIDER (https://blog.frame.io/) C AT E G O R I E S

Our mission is to create tactical, actionable articles that teach valuable skills. We want to highlight EDITING
the amazing work that’s being done every day in our industry, but instead of conducting armchair
COLOR CORRECTION
interviews, we dive into the messy details and
show you how it actually works. BUSINESS

WORKFLOW

BEHIND THE
WANT TO JOIN US?
EXPLORE (https://frame.io)
(https://blog.frame.io/2017/02/09/manifesto/) SCENES
FRAME.IO
ALL

(HTTPS://BLOG

THE-SCENES/)

MADE IN

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 58 de 59
The Complete Guide to Premiere Pro Color Correction 11/08/19 16(19

FRAME

(HTTPS://BLOG

THE-

SCENES/MADE

IN-FRAME/)

CRIBS

(HTTPS://BLOG

THE-

SCENES/CRIBS

PRODUCTION

ALL

(HTTPS://BLOG

TECHNOLOGY

(HTTPS://BLOG

SOUND

(HTTPS://BLOG

DESIGN

(HTTPS://BLOG

COMPANY NEWS

© COPYRIGHT 2019 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

MADE WITH IN NEW YORK CITY.

(https://twitt
(https:/
(https://frame.io/

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/ Página 59 de 59