The Ultimate Guide to Color Grading in Premiere Pro

In this course, we'll look at absolutely everything you need to know when it comes to color grading your footage using the Lumetri color effect in Adobe Premiere Pro. We'll look at the theory behind correcting and grading, and then jump into Premiere Pro to learn how to correct our footage from scratch, and with LUTs.

What's the difference between color correction and color grading? I'll explain it to you in this quick lesson. You'll get to grips with what LOG footage is and why it can help you get the most out of your video editing.

Unlike correction, grading involves adding a particular look or style to your footage, through coloring. We're looking at similar parameters to correction, but more specifically at manipulating the colors to achieve certain results. These outcomes could be things like:

• Location
• Dynamic of the scene
• Emotion of the characters

Scopes can seem a little intimidating, but don't worry. In this short video I'll explain how they represent your visual data in a consistent way that your monitor can't do as reliably.

In the last lesson we looked at what scopes are and why you need them, and in this lesson I'll go into more depth and show you how to interpret that data so that it becomes meaningful to you when you're making coloring decisions.

Skin tone is often overlooked, but it's really important to get it right. The vectorscope has a skin tone indicator, and you'll want your skin tone to fall within a particular range on this graph. I'll explain where that should be in this quick video lesson.

Tools for Using Scopes in Premiere Pro

1. Vectorscope: Displays saturation levels in footage in a polar coordinate format. You can measure and adjust the color balance and saturation in your footage.
2. Parade: Similar to Waveform, but it separates the red, green, and blue channels and displays them in separate graphs.
3. Histogram: A graphic representation of the tonal range of your image.
4. Waveform: A tool that displays luminance levels of your footage in a graph format to help ensure the image is properly exposed.

This lesson is a good walk around the color tab, so that you'll be really familiar with the windows and tools you'll need to do color correction and color grading. I'll show you my preferred layout too in case you want a good starting point if you don't have your own workspace yet.

I'll give you a roadmap of what you're looking at when it comes to Lumetri Color Effect. By the end of this lesson you'll understand where to find tools for basic corrections, color grading for more creative styles, where your color wheels are, and so on.

Color Correction

This lesson is where we'll get started with practical color correcting, using LUTs. A LUT is a Look Up Table with set values designed to change the color of your footage. Some of these are camera-specific, so you can get a very precise correction for your imagery, to get it looking right.

If you don't want to use LUTs, how do you color correct? I'll go through some essential steps in Premiere Pro with you. 

You've learned how to color correct your footage, so next we'll move on to color grading in Premiere Pro, starting with LUTs again. You need to have corrected your footage before you move on to grading it. I'll show you how to use your scopes to interpret what you're seeing in the preview, when you apply your LUT.

Now we're going to look at how to color grade your footage from scratch. In the previous lesson you learned what the LUTs do and how to customize them, and this knowledge is going to put you in a great position to better understand how to achieve this effect yourself, without the help of a LUT. We'll do a lot of work in the color wheels here, and I'll take you through everything step by step.

Starting with the Eyedropper Tool, I'll show you how to pick out the skin color from your footage and then isolate that in order to correct it and preserve those natural tones.

You'll need consistency across your various clips so that they don't jar when put together. There are a few ways to do this and I'll talk you through some of them, including how to export your grade as a LUT that you can then reuse.

An adjustment layer means you can make changes without directly affecting your footage. You can apply a LUT to an adjustment layer above multiple pieces of footage and it will apply to them all. You can then turn off and on the adjustment layer to see its effect. I'll show you how in this lesson.

You'll have noticed the traditional 'cinematic widescreen' black bars when you've watched films. I'll show you how to add your own here in our last lesson of this course, and if you'd like to learn more about aspect ratios and their fascinating history, I've made a little video for you on that too.

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The Fascinating History of the Aspect Ratio

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