Now in Beta: Dramatically updated color management in Premiere Pro

[Alexis Van Hurkman]

We’re pleased to bring to public beta some dramatic improvements and expansions to the color management experience, tailored specifically to the needs of the Premiere Pro editor. With the right source clip metadata, color management automatically adjusts the color and contrast of each clip in your sequence so that every source clip from every camera is converted into a shared color space for further adjustment, and then output to the color space of your choice with automated color space conversions, tone mapping, and gamut compression creating high-quality output with the correct color.

In this new version, color management becomes more automated, handles more formats, preserves more image data, and gives you more flexibility to choose just the right workflow for your needs, even turning it off either partially or completely if you would rather work manually using Input LUTs, Creative LUTs, and effects.

After installing the public beta, your default Premiere Pro experience shouldn’t seem that different from before, but there’s a lot under the hood to explore. Here’s a rundown of the new features we’ve made available when using Premiere Pro color management:

• Each sequence’s color management is easily configurable in the Sequence controls of the Settings tab of the Lumetri panel. By default, color management works similarly to the Premiere Pro color workflows you’re already used to when using the default Direct Rec.709 (SDR) preset. Alternately, you can choose to use one of our wide-gamut color processing presets to maximize the image quality of all grading and timeline effects when using wide-gamut or wide-latitude source media. Regardless of how you choose to work, Lumetri and other effects have been made color space aware, so they work well in any preset.
• Users who don’t want to use automated color management can now turn it off from within the same Color Setup menu. This is useful for pass-through workflows when you don’t want the color space of media being processed at all, or when engaging in traditional display-referred grading workflows using LUTs and manual adjustments.
• Premiere Pro now automatically color manages camera raw media, including Apple, ARRI, Canon, RED, and Sony raw media formats. As long as color management is enabled, raw clips will be automatically processed.
• The Override Media Color Space menu has been expanded to support even more color spaces for more cameras and formats, making it easier than ever to color manage media that were either recorded or transcoded to standard file formats such as QuickTime and MXF, without needing to track down the right input LUT.
• For clips you don’t want to be automatically color managed, a new Preserve RGB setting in the Color tab of the Modify Clip dialog prevents input to working color space conversions, allowing you to manually convert clips either using LUTs or manual filter adjustments.
• Program Monitor, Video Scopes, Transmit, and Media Export all output the image as it appears after conversion to a new Output Color Space setting. While the working color space lets you choose how media is processed, the Output color space lets you choose the specific color space you want to monitor (SDR, HDR PQ, or HLG) and deliver your program to. This guarantees that the working color space never needs to be changed, while making it easy to change color spaces at any time to create multiple deliverables using the same grade (e.g., delivering both HDR and SDR versions of the same sequence).
• Improved tone mapping algorithms and new gamut compression settings improve quality when automatically converting wide-gamut source media to standard dynamic range. Additionally, there are now two ways  of using tone mapping, on input or on output.
• Premiere Pro color management has been improved to enable smoother interoperability and color consistency using Dynamic Link for round-tripping color managed sequence clips between Premiere Pro and After Effects whenever you use the Replace with After Effects composition command.
• Last, but certainly not least, if you import projects and sequences created in older versions of Premiere Pro that have grading and effects already applied, these will automatically be configured to appear the same as before, while the color management will function exactly the same as before. If you decide you want to override these legacy settings and use the new color management, you can override the custom settings the sequence was set up with and choose a different color management preset (and you can use Undo if you find this was a mistake).

As you can see, color management in Premiere Pro has become quite a bit more sophisticated. However, the best way to experience this is by upgrading to the public beta, creating a new project, importing some media, and experimenting for yourself:

• By default, new sequences use the “Direct Rec.709 (SDR)” preset with the output set to Rec.709. This preset is best used when most of your source media is SDR but you’re importing some wide gamut camera raw or log-encoded media as well, and will give you the most familiar color handling experience.
• If you want to try working completely manually, you can open up the Sequence Settings and set the Color Setup menu to “Disable Color Management.”
• If you’re more adventurous, you can change the Color Setup menu to “Wide Gamut (Tone Mapped)” to try using the wide gamut workflow we’ve created to maximize the quality of sequences using primarily wide-gamut media.

As you experiment with the new color management options, be sure to share your questions or comments in this forum. We also encourage you to view the new color management documentation on our website: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/color-management-improvements.html. 

Keep in mind that we’ll be continuing to bring improvements throughout the public beta period as we respond to issues reported, so details may change as time goes on.

We look forward to your feedback!

[Fergus H]

@Shebbe you might like to know that as of today's beta, Auto Detect Log Video Color Space is now named Color Manage Auto Detected Log and Raw Media. A mouthful but an accurate mouthful!

Regards,

Fergus

[Shebbe]

That works for me haha, thanks for the update.

[R Neil Haugen]

Thanks, Fergus.

[jakew39230329]

Can we get colour space tagging on export too? So we can use 1-2-1 tag when using rec709 2.4 gamma. 

[R Neil Haugen]

@Alexis Van Hurkmanor any color staffers  ... in general I do like the algo's used in Premiere's auto log detect/ auto tonemapping process.

One question  ... just on account of being used to doing this elsewhere  ... is there any way to apply the tonemapping algo, and tweak exposure/contrast before it?

As we can with say a LUT applied in the Creative tab, using Basic tab to trim the clip into the LUT. Or by node based CSTs in Resolve?

[Shebbe]

That can only work if you are working in a scene-refered color space like ACEScct. Then Lumetri exposure is linear gain, or you can use Brightness & Contrast effect to use log offset rather than linear gain which is preferred if exposing up. It's contrast slider is linear contrast.

If you don't want to work in log you only have the exposure 'compensation' slider that is in the color management panel itself where the per clip tone mapping settings are.

[R Neil Haugen]

Yea, that's a given this would be scene-referred.

But how do we apply their tonemapping after we do the trim? What's the steps there ... if it's possible.

[Shebbe]

Not sure if I understand what you mean by "how do we apply".

There are 3 main scenarios.

1. Manual management. You decide when you convert and tonemap (with your own LUTs or other means of managing color). And thus when / where in the order of operations exposure/contrast is applied.

2. Direct Rec.709 tonemapped management which means everything is already tone mapped to display and then any effect applied on clips happens afterwards. This does not allow for photometric exposure and contrast adjustments.

3. ACEScct tonemapped. Any effect applied on the clip is in ACEScct space so can do either Lumetri exposure (linear gain if Color Space Aware is enabled) or Brightness & Contrast (offset) to change exposure photometrically. Tonemapping happens after all effects are applied on a clip.

[Shebbe]

@Alexis Van Hurkman Hey, I've done little more testing.

fnord's OpenColorIO & BorisFX' S_OCIOTransform plugins are broken:

With ACEScct and Direct when, I add the OpenColorIO plugin (without even loading a config) the image breaks. Why is that? They work fine in non managed context, even with conversions to linear and back.

Mixing sequences -> squish...

When I put that ARRI sample clip in a non managed Rec.709 sequence and place that sequence in ACEScct, the squish from around 42 IRE and up happens. We also do not have any control over manually overriding the unmanaged sequence's color space. Maybe that partially makes sense, but if we need/want to preserve appearance for Rec.709 we need at least an inverse of the DRTs when using ACEScct working space. I would hope that it's planned otherwise there's little point in using ACEScct.

[edit] I screenshotted the wrong scopes on the left (higher exposure) but the squish still happens.

Lumetri Color exposure in ACEScct:

According to my testing exposure has become linear gain. It would be nice to have an alternative log offset option which tends to be a preferred response when exposing up, taking along the black and negative values. Brightness & Contrast effect also do offset but the slider is too sensitive for log, requiring holding down CTRL/CMD. Plus having it included in Lumetri would make the tool more feature rich.

[R Neil Haugen]

Exposure has been linear gain with an intriguing roll-off in SDR as it hits around 98IRE. But straight gain always going down.

The Shadows wheel is Lift ... so Lumetri hasn't had any Offset, actually, and that has always been a gripe of mine. I prefer OGG to LGG any time day or night, but then, I'm not necessarily the average bear.

Getting an Offset option to me would be a huge improvement.

[Shebbe]

That rolloff  when increasing is only in the 'non color space aware' mode. When you use ACEScct color management it is matching multiplication in linear image state. So I'm assuming there is an internal  conversion from ACEScct to AP1/Linear (ACEScg) and back to achieve this. But we haven't been given any real technical information unforetunately...

[R Neil Haugen]

That would be nice to know ... I never like guessing. Never.

[Shebbe]

Try for yourself, I converted logC3 to linear and added 8.0 gain meaning 3 stops.

Put the original in ACEScct timeline and add Lumetri with Exposure to 3 and it should match, or at least be very very close. Premiere's still exporter does pngs in 8bit only but shouldn't matter for this case.

 

[R Neil Haugen]

Shebbe, I don't doubt you for a second. You're well above my paygrade in most of this stuff.

It's just I also want that detailed explanation of the pipeline process used. I like to know the underlying hard data stuff as much as possible.

[Alexis Van Hurkman]

@Shebbe There's some work to do to make third party plugins compatible with the new wide gamut option, and now that we're largely finished with this first version of the new system, we're looking at what needs to be done to enable third party plugins to take advantage. Everything should work correctly in Direct Rec.709, though.

The color space of nested sequences is based on the working color space of the sequence. An "unmanaged" sequence is by definition Rec.709 in Premiere, so you're seeing the same "squish" that all SDR clips in a wide gamut tone mapped sequence experience. As I've mentioned, we're in active development of a fix to this behavior, but it'll be some time. 

Regarding Exposure, making Lumetri work correctly in Wide Gamut has been a huge, huge challenge that's taken us probably the longest of any single feature in this release. Everything in Lumetri was created to function for Rec.709, and making it function sensibly has taken a lot of time. We've made a few more tweaks that should make some Lumetri controls in Wide Gamut work better (be less twitchy) so long as the color space aware toggle is on. Additionally, we've actually just released another modification to Lumetri to make the Shadow control and the color wheels controls work better in ACEScct (I'm overdue to write an introduction to this). Give it a spin and let us know what you think. 

We're getting to the point where we need to lock down changes to Lumetri; once we deliver to GA I don't want us tinkering with the color controls any more (barring anything catastrophic coming up) until the next major release, so as not to version people to death or enforce constant re-learning of a parade of differing behaviors. But rest assured we're hard at work on long-term improvements.

[Shebbe]

Thanks for the response @Alexis Van Hurkman !

I'll give the updated Lumetri tweaks a spin once I have a moment for it. Curious to see how it feels now. I totally get it on the changes planned and the effort that went in to making Lumetri 'Color Space Aware'. I also hope that this won't need any changes later down the line. But that also means things need to be as solid as they can be on release! I hope 25.1 is at least behing held back until ACEScct's workflow issues have ben resolved, especially the lack of an inverse DRT for Rec.709 or other display referred data.

Perhaps in the future a secondary small tool could be designed specifically for exposure similar to After Effects' Exposure tool. But then color managed being 'gain'/multiplication in linear when using ACEScct but with an extra option to do 'offset'addition/subtraction. When used in Direct.709 it would become Gamma/power similar to how Lumetri behaved when exposing up but exposing down should remain gamma imo where Lumetri became gain but that doesn't really look right on Rec.709 images.

Do you have any thoughts about the ideas I and another user posted somewhere in this thread about moving management to global settings rather than sequence based? I think it will help clear up a lot of workflow confusion for beginners and also streamline it in general for professionals.

That's all for now, keep you posted!

[R Neil Haugen]

Thanks for the information, Alexis. Given the years of experience with Lumetri, I think I understand a bit about the challenges you faced with modding that UI/tool-set. And your team has done surprisingly well overall.

In testing and working with this, mostly with BRAW and some Red and Sony formats, it's kinda sorta uniform in feel, when working with a wide gamut sequence. So far, it seems that minimal to no tonemapping works best. It's improved, over 24/previous, so thanks so far.

And we'll not get many color changes will come the rest of this cycle ... well, there's enough already to  get used to, I suppose. And I suppose adding formats would be a good improvement even if nothing else changed.

[Shebbe]

Hey @Alexis Van Hurkman ,

I'm having a look at the changes to Lumetri's Color Space Aware behavior. It's looking quite good with the Basic section! Quite predictable and smooth behavior. My only feedback there is that I have my doubts on their min/max ranges. Some sliders feel too limited which in some scenarios would require stacking of Lumetri to go further. Maybe there can be a better sensitivity middleground between ease of use and the need to hold down CTRL/CMD to finetune the value.

Where it looks off is the Curves. Clipping black by sliding the bottom anchor to the right starts off making negative values first, then raises the black clipping level up the more you go to the right. The same happens with white dragging to the left. Further more the 0-1.0 clamp is still present so data is not recoverable with subsequent operations. I get that you'd probably never do such drastic operations but I'm trying to battle test the tools here :).

Adding points in between making curves does feel very nice with better distribution across the tonal range compared to unmanged context working on log data. But what I'm also struggling with is highly compressing highlights/specular for 'filmic' curves. Even when smashed down to half point, the DRT still plots them quite high. Maybe this is due to the range the curves are covering in managed state? Do you think that can be improved?

[R Neil Haugen]

Thanks for asking about the limited ranges ....  that's been an annoying thing since Lumetri was created.  Glad to see your testing has worked well on other things, though, confirming what I've noted. Still need to grayscale test the action of the Basic Tab blacks slider. I keep forgetting to do that. 

It's been an odd duck.

[Dominique30138412td6v]

Hello,

I am a bit lost whe it comes to using Apple video (from an Iphone). In the latest version uodate, I do not see anywhere how todisable "log color management". So my Iphone clips look super blowed out. The only solution I found is to go the sequence setting and change the working color space to Rec.709 (which I always do) and then go in the Lumetri color setting panel an overrid the medio color space to Rec.709 too. The problem is that I cannot copy paste this color attribute to all the other clips. So I end up having to manually do it for each clip..

Do you have a solution for me?

Thanks

[R Neil Haugen]

You're only doing parts of the color management ... and then they don't align.

All color management tools are in the Lumetri panel, SETTINGS tab.

Set auto detect log on, set auto tonemapping on, and you can work with that media in either Rec.709 or HLG sequences without any individual clip management needed.

For most users, unless running a "clean feed" output via Decklink card, you should have Display Color Management on also. Mac users might want to use Viewing Gamma 1.96/Quicktime if you only care how it looks outside Premiere on your Mac without reference modes. (The rest of us will then get a much darker image of your video, but thank you Apple ...)

Past that, I can give you a much longer, more detailed go at the settings if needed.

[MyerPj]

Hey Neil, I'll take you up on that 'more detailed' 🙂

Are these what you are referring to:

[R Neil Haugen]

Yup, although typically those things are sticky sort of? I never assume so, that's for sure.

[MyerPj]

Thanks, so why does the Display Color Management, make my output darker on both the monitor and transmit also to a regular monitor, but the scopes don't change?

[Shebbe]

Because the encoded values do not have a 1-1 relationship with the intended display values. When there is a mismatch, the OS can compensate this via it's profiling. This causes a 'gamma shift' because Rec.709 gamma 2.4 video needs to be gamma corrected for sRGB displays. The same is true for gamut but this does not change in that scenario because they both share the same. It would be true if say a Display P3 monitor was used. Without the checkbox you are always displaying the encoded values directly as is regardless of the kind of monitor in use.