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Overview: Color grading workflows in Premiere Pro

Last updated on Oct 29, 2024

Adobe Premiere Pro User Guide
Beta releases
1. Beta Program Overview
2. Premiere Pro Beta Home
3. Beta features
Getting started
1. Get started with Adobe Premiere Pro
2. What's new in Premiere Pro
3. Best practices for updating Premiere Pro
4. Keyboard shortcuts in Premiere Pro
5. Accessibility in Premiere Pro
6. Frequently asked questions
7. Release notes
Hardware and operating system requirements
1. Hardware recommendations
2. System requirements
3. GPU and GPU Driver requirements
4. GPU Accelerated Rendering & Hardware Encoding/Decoding
Creating projects
1. Start a new project
2. Open projects
3. Move and delete projects
4. Work with multiple open projects
5. Work with Project Shortcuts
6. Backward compatibility of Premiere Pro projects
7. Open and edit Premiere Rush projects in Premiere Pro
8. Best Practices: Create your own project templates
Workspaces and workflows
1. Workspaces
2. Import and export FAQs
3. Working with Panels
4. Windows touch and gesture controls
5. Use Premiere Pro in a dual-monitor setup
Frame.io
1. Install and activate Frame.io
2. Use Frame.io with Premiere Pro and After Effects
3. Integrate Adobe Workfront and Frame.io
4. Invite collaborators to co-edit a project
5. Frequently asked questions
Import media
1. Importing
2. Importing from Avid or Final Cut
  1. Importing AAF project files from Avid Media Composer
  2. Importing XML project files from Final Cut Pro 7 and Final Cut Pro X
3. File formats
  1. Supported file formats
  2. Support for Blackmagic RAW
4. Working with timecode
Editing
1. Edit video
2. Sequences
3. Cut and trim clips
4. Video
5. Audio
6. Text-Based Editing
  1. Text-Based Editing
  2. Text-Based Editing FAQs
7. Advanced editing
  1. Multi-camera editing workflow
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8. Best Practices
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1. Overview of video effects and transitions
2. Effects
3. Transitions
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2. Essential Graphics panel (24.x and earlier)
3. Motion Graphics Templates
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5. Retiring the Legacy Titler FAQs
6. Upgrade Legacy titles to Source Graphics
Fonts and emojis
1. Color fonts
2. Emojis
Animation and Keyframing
1. Adding, navigating, and setting keyframes
2. Animating effects
3. Use Motion effect to edit and animate clips
4. Optimize keyframe automation
5. Moving and copying keyframes
6. Viewing and adjusting effects and keyframes
Compositing
1. Compositing, alpha channels, and adjusting clip opacity
2. Masking and tracking
3. Blending modes
Color Correction and Grading
1. Overview: Color workflows in Premiere Pro
2. Color Settings
3. Auto Color
4. Get creative with color using Lumetri looks
5. Adjust color using RGB and Hue Saturation Curves
6. Correct and match colors between shots
7. Using HSL Secondary controls in the Lumetri Color panel
8. Create vignettes
9. Looks and LUTs
10. Lumetri scopes
11. Display Color Management
12. Timeline tone mapping
13. HDR for broadcasters
14. Enable DirectX HDR support
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1. Export video
2. Export Preset Manager
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11. Best Practices: Export faster
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2. Get started with collaborative video editing
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8. Manage Team Projects
9. Linked Team Projects
10. Frequently asked questions
Long form and Episodic workflows
1. Long Form and Episodic Workflow Guide
2. Using Productions
3. How clips work across projects in a Production
4. Best Practices: Working with Productions
Working with other Adobe applications
1. After Effects and Photoshop
2. Dynamic Link
3. Audition
4. Prelude
Organizing and Managing Assets
1. Working in the Project panel
2. Organize assets in the Project panel
3. Playing assets
4. Search assets
5. Creative Cloud Libraries
6. Sync Settings in Premiere Pro
7. Consolidate, transcode, and archive projects
8. Managing metadata
9. Best Practices
  1. Best Practices: Learning from broadcast production
  2. Best Practices: Working with native formats
Improving Performance and Troubleshooting
1. Set preferences
2. Reset and restore preferences
3. Recovery Mode
4. Working with Proxies
  1. Proxy overview
  2. Ingest and Proxy Workflow
5. Check if your system is compatible with Premiere Pro
6. Premiere Pro for Apple silicon
7. Eliminate flicker
8. Interlacing and field order
9. Smart rendering
10. Control surface support
11. Best Practices: Working with native formats
12. Knowledge Base
Extensions and plugins
1. Installing plugins and extensions in Premiere Pro
2. Latest plugins from third-party developers
Video and audio streaming
1. Secure Reliable Transport (SRT)
Monitoring Assets and Offline Media
1. Monitoring assets
  1. Using the Source Monitor and Program Monitor
  2. Using the Reference Monitor
2. Offline media

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.

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!

Try it now

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

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.

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. You can use the eye-dropper to click an area in the footage that is white or neutral in color. The white balanace automatically gets adjusted. Alternatively, you can 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 green tint to the video, move the slider to the left (negative values), and to add magenta, move it to the right (positive values).

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 expands highlights. Move the slider to the left to decrease tonal values and expands 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

Adjusts bright areas. Drag the slider to the left to darken highlights. Drag to the right to brighten highlights while minimizing clipping.

Shadows

Adjusts dark areas. Drag the slider to the left to darken shadows while minimizing clipping. Drag 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, click Auto. When you select Auto, Premiere Pro sets the sliders to maximize the tonal scale and minimize highlight and shadow clipping.

Saturation

Adjusts the saturation of all colors in the video equally. Drag the slider to the left to decrease the overall saturation. Drag to the right to increase the overall saturation.

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.

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.

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.
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:

Install Premiere Pro and the Tangent Hub software (See the Tangent Devices Support website for details).
In Premiere Pro, click Open Preferences - Control Surface.
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.

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