How to color grade in Premiere Pro

Highlights

Color grading is one of the essential stages of any video and film production.
The color grading process starts in preproduction and involves different departments, such as wardrobe or makeup.
LUTs are an excellent tool for grading, but it’s good to know how to grade without them.
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Whether you’re working on a social media video or a Hollywood blockbuster, color grading is one of the most crucial stages of any film production. Back in the day, directors of photography had to do everything on camera, choosing the film stock and lab to give the image the desired look. Color grading is a must today, and most popular cameras are shooting in LOG and RAW formats. And thanks to Premiere Pro’s intuitive interface, achieving a professional-level color grade is easier than ever. 

What is color grading?


Color grading is a crucial aspect of the post-production process in video editing, where the visual appearance of footage is enhanced, corrected, and stylized to achieve a desired aesthetic. This involves manipulating colors, tones, and hues to evoke emotions, convey a particular atmosphere, or maintain visual consistency throughout a project.


Color grading vs color correction

Color grading and color correction are separate terms that shouldn’t be confused. Color correction focuses on fixing technical issues such as white balance, exposure, and saturation to ensure that footage appears natural and authentic. On the other hand, color grading involves artistic decisions to stylize and enhance the visual narrative by applying creative color effects and adjustments.


A foundational understanding of color theory is essential for effective color grading. This includes concepts such as hue, saturation, brightness, complementary colors, and color harmony. By leveraging these principles, you can manipulate the mood and atmosphere of a scene, guide the viewer’s attention, and create visual cohesion across different shots.


Just as a painter selects pigments to evoke specific emotions or convey particular themes, you can employ color-grading techniques to imbue footage with narrative depth and visual impact. Whether it’s enhancing the warmth of a romantic scene, intensifying the tension of a thriller, or infusing nostalgia into a flashback sequence, color grading plays a pivotal role in shaping the audience’s perception and emotional response.

Start color grading in Premiere Pro


Premiere Pro offers a dedicated Color workspace with comprehensive professional-grade color grading and correction tools. This specialized environment streamlines the color grading process and seamlessly integrates with your editing workflow.


The Lumetri Color panel is the heart of Premiere Pro’s color grading arsenal. It allows you to make adjustments essential for refining your footage’s visual aesthetics, from exposure and contrast to highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks. You can fine-tune these parameters with simple slider adjustments to achieve your project’s desired look and feel.


 How to color grade in Premiere Pro

1. Set up a color workspace:

Navigate to Window > Workspace > Color or select Color from the workspace switcher. This action opens up the Lumetri Color panel alongside the Lumetri Scopes panel, providing real-time visual feedback.

2. Apply basic correction:

With the Lumetri Color panel active, position the playhead on the desired clip within your sequence. Premiere Pro automatically selects the clip for color adjustments. Utilize the Basic Correction section to address technical issues such as exposure and white balance. You can experiment with the Auto Color feature powered for intelligent color correction or manually adjust the Intensity, Color, and Light sliders.

3. Refine with creative tools

In the Creative section, you can apply pre-set Looks or make your own with the adjustment sliders.

4. Fine-tune with curves and color wheels

You can refine RGB and Hue Saturation curves in the Curves section to precisely manipulate shadows, mid-tones, and highlights for more nuanced adjustments.

5. Achieve consistency with color match

Use the Color Match section to match color tones and ensure a seamless scene transition.


Color grading with LUTs

One option for quick and efficient color grading is working with LUTs or lookup tables. These are just numerical roadmaps that transform an image’s contrast and color by adjusting the image’s characteristics based on the predefined values stored within the table. 


There are two types of LUTs: technical and creative. Technical LUTs quickly convert native color spaces from your camera (such as with LOG and RAW formats) to a color space that allows you to see how the footage might look after being graded. In contrast, creative LUTs are meant to offer a specific aesthetic, often emulating popular film looks, vintage techniques, or specific color palettes. 


The cool thing about creative LUTs is their ability to make the grading process much faster by applying predefined aesthetic adjustments. However, you should use them carefully because they suit specific shooting conditions. If your image doesn’t match those conditions, the result can be unpredictable and won’t always work.


Also, avoid overusing the most trendy LUT of the moment so your videos won’t all look the same as other people’s.


How to use a LUT in Premiere Pro

  1. Select a clip in the Timeline panel.
  2. Do one of the following:
    In the Lumetri panel, open the Basic Correction tab.
    In the Effects Control panel, open the Basic Correction tab from the Lumetri section.
  3. In the Basic Correction tab, select the Input LUT dropdown menu.
  4. To add a new LUT, click Browse
  5. Select the LUT of your choice.
  6. Edit the white balance and tone of the clip.


Color grading from scratch


We only recommend color grading from scratch if you have experience grading. For LOG or RAW grading, you should know the characteristics of your camera format to color grade without technical LUTs. Otherwise, getting all the colors out of the image will be tricky, and you can go crazy trying things to make them appear, degrading the final image.


It’s best to start with a basic correction, fixing the brightness, contrast, shadows, and highlights. A good tip is to start by adjusting the brightest and darkest points, trying to stay within the limits of the waveform. 


For example, if you modify a bright scene under the midday sun, bringing the most shining point to almost the top of the waveform makes sense. However, don’t go so far if grading a dark scene. Otherwise, all your scenes will look the same and lack dynamic range. The blacks should always be near zero. 


Next, you can go back and forth, adjusting the parameters mentioned. If you have experience and are more comfortable, use the curves or color wheels tabs to take your image where you want.


Then, we can continue with the saturation. There are different tools to do this. Some will work better than others on different occasions. From this point, you will see if your image needs fixing or if it’s okay. If it’s full of noise, maybe you shot it underexposed, and you have to apply a denoiser. If the skins are green, perhaps you didn’t choose the correct white balance.


After this step, you’re ready to start your creative grade. 


Remember that color grading is a back-and-forth process. Sometimes, you will have to go back to adjust the brightness and then readjust the saturation, for example. 


Try the color wheels, curves, and HSL sliders for creative grades. With some time, all these tools will familiarize you, and you will know where to go even before you start the grading process.

How to color grade skin tones

It is crucial to achieve natural-looking and consistent skin tones when editing videos with people in them. Here are some essential tips for effectively color-grading skin tones in Premiere Pro:

  • Start with proper exposure and white balance: Make sure your footage is correctly exposed and white-balanced before color grading. This provides a solid starting point for achieving accurate and natural-looking skin tones.
  • Adjust the white balance and tint: Fine-tune the white balance and tint settings to achieve neutral tones in your footage. Aim to balance the warmth and coolness of the overall image while preserving the natural hues of skin tones.
    Maintain consistency across footage: Consistency is key when color-grading skin tones across multiple clips within the same sequence or project. Use adjustment layers or create presets to apply uniform color corrections and ensure that skin tones remain consistent throughout.
  • Pay attention to hue, saturation, and luminance (HSL) controls: Premiere Pro’s HSL Secondary controls allow for precise adjustments to specific colors within your footage, which you can use to fine-tune skin tones while preserving the natural characteristics of other elements in the scene.
  • Avoid over-saturation: While it may be tempting to enhance the vibrancy of skin tones, be cautious not to over-saturate them. Subtle adjustments are often more effective in maintaining a natural appearance.
  • Test on different displays: To ensure skin tones appear consistent across various viewing platforms, test your color-graded footage on different monitors and devices. 

Wrapping up

Color grading is the essential final touch of any video production, requiring a blend of technical and creative skills to correct production errors, balance out the appearance of your footage, offer uniformity, and create the intended look and feel. As you develop your color grading skills, feel free to experiment – that’s how you’ll find your unique style and workflow preferences. 


Whether you’re refining your craft or seeking inspiration, consider exploring Artlist’s pre-color grade clips to spark creativity and enhance your projects. 

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Jose Prada is a filmmaker, musician and writer based in the UK and Spain. He has won several awards with short films and commercials and has published filmmaking courses on different platforms. jrvisuals.co.uk, the production company he founded together with Rene Strgar contributes high-end stock footage to Artgrid.

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