[Now Released]: 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!

[Shebbe]

Hey dev team,

It's been a while since we've seen any updates around this feature set. Wondering if anything is to be expected soon.

A lot of the issues I've once mentioned seem to be still in place. Here's another quick summary of the things I observed.

- The kink in the tone mapping of ACEScct to display.

- Lumetri Curves in ACEScct have undesireable effects when messing with start and end point of the curve. (Lift/Gain) Probably because the curves tool uses clamping internally and the range is not aligned to ACEScct black and 'white'.

- Film Dissolve used to become yellow in the highlights. Looks like this is fixed!

 Another more general issue with Film Dissolve I spotted is that the transition curve seems weird. As if the first/last frame in the transition has a value of 10% already compared to a smoother fade start/end seen in Cross Dissolve. You can really see the B image jump into view instead of fade.

- Dip to Black does not map to the working space black point in ACEScct causing negative values at the bottom end.

Should be aligned when using 'Color Space Aware'. Even better would be internal conversion to linear for exposure style fade to black!

- Several combinations of Direct/ACEScct per channel or other DRT settings map to higher than display brightness. Not sure if this is intentional. (Seen in Lumetri Scopes but verified with EXR export to AE.)(Maybe time for a color info panel in PR?;))

- No inverse DRT for 'roundtripping' display referred image data for ACEScct workflows making use of sRGB/Rec.709 images in such a workflow impossible.

- S_OCIO_Transform and fnord OpenColorIO plugins still break the image when used in Direct SDR and are redicolously slow in Direct SDR and ACEScct. Image seemed to not break anymore in ACEScct though.

- EXR color management support is missing. We can disable the auto linear conversion in source settings but cannot convert ACES2065-1 or ACEScg to the working or display space.

I really hope many if not all of the above are adressed before we see a release.

[Shebbe]

Hey Adobe,

So after radio silence followed up by the release of 25.2  almost none of the issues I repeatedly mentioned have been adressed...

Is this your solution to the obvious problem?

If you need to add a client logo it needs to be spot on accurate not "close enough".

The only workaround is to nest the scene referred data but with more complex edits this is impossible and just not desirable overall to always deal with nested edits as it f*cks your timeline versioning if the actual edits aren't existing in the output timeline.

DRT inverses are not something new, this could've been on the radar before even starting the implementation of this. If the existing DRTs aren't written well enough that an inverse is possible an alternative DRT should've been made. If that's not the goal then why still add this?

Nobody is going to benefit from this until it's properly addressed.

[Alexis Van Hurkman]

Hi Shebbe,

Your feedback has been received, and while we've moved forward with releasing what's been in public beta based on the broader positive feedback we've received, this is only the beginning. We're acutely aware of the tone mapping of SDR media in wide gamut and are in the process of providing a solution for this in a future release. For now, Wide Gamut is being made available for projects for which the current behavior is not a problem. Ideosyncracies such as this are why we're taking such pains to document this behavior for users, and it's why Direct Rec. 709 remains the default, available for people who need SDR to pass through the system as expected.

Regarding your prior observations, EXR color management is a larger issue for which there are no near term solutions, although again we're aware of this and it's on our long term road map. The other issues you'd brought up earlier are being explored internally. As always, we appreciate your detailed feedback, and ongoing improvements to color management are planned in a future release.

[Shebbe]

Hey Alexis,

I appreciate you explaining the move behind it and the plans of continuing development around this topic.

But I can't help but be concerned about it. Many times features are released and then left as is. Even if improvements are made, depending on the differences between the 'fixed mechanism' and the legacy 'broken state' present high chances of forcing backwards compatiblity to such states for sake of peoples projects not breaking.

It would've been more efficient to keep things that aren't fully finished out of the way until then. I wouldn't have minded at all if the improved colormanagement features would've been released without 'wide gamut tone mapped' ACEScct working space yet.

[Fergus H]

Hi Shebbe, 

Jumping in as Alexis is at NAB and might be slow to respond. 

"But I can't help but be concerned about it. Many times features are released and then left as is. "

I 100% hear you on that. It's easy to move onto the next shiny thing. I can asure you that this isn't going to happen with color management. We are deeply commited to improving both color management and color grading in Premiere Pro and you'll be hearing - and seeing - more about this soon. 

Regards,

Fergus

[Shebbe]

Hey Fergus,

Thanks for chiming in. I have to say, normally all our projects are graded outside of Premiere for plenty reasons but coincidentally, last Friday we actually had a mega quick turnaround project to deal with where the typical roundtrip session would take up way too much time. (perhaps not if Premiere ever gets robust conform tools? :)) But anyway, the decision was made to do basic grading in Premiere. It was a mix of DJI / Sony log and 709 phone footage. I used the Direct 709 workflow already present in 25.1 which worked well enough for the most part since exposure sliders are available as a pre DRT trim. Then used lumetri for basic contrast leveling and a bit of a lut on top.

It's exactly projects like this that would be sweet if you can work in ACEScct because that allows you to do all your effects still before display conversion. Especially addressing white balance issues is near impossible to fix accurately on display referred image states. We had a lot of unbalanced shots for the project as it was reality/quick shooting.

Will look forward to continued efforts in improving managment and grading tools. I would love to be able to confidently say that some projects can be mastered within Premiere because if the math is right, there is no difference in quality really. Being able to stay in Premiere for some projects can save much time.

[R Neil Haugen]

Great explanation there, Shebbe.

Those of us who have great experience at getting to things most don't know they can do in Lumetri ... still ... need the ability to not have to do time-consuming things that can get us around the limitations of the tools and color management.

Because it would be so nice not to have to blow a few minutes extra time here in Lumetri, to get what you have to get for WB/match & etc ...  and to get there quickly when you don't have the time to go to Resolve.

As ... for many things, it's almost close enough to skip the conform out/in process. It would be much nicer to be able to skip that for many more things.

For example ... I have done ... and demonstrated/taught ... how to use say multiple track-matte stacks to do clothing color changes on one person, in one clip, in Premiere that kinda shocked some of my colorist buds.

Not something you always need, but that ability to select mulitple bits of a clip and apply separate major color/hue/tonal shifts is such a common thing. Difficult to do in Lumetri without doing time-consuming track-matte stacks, an additional two layers for each bit you need to work.

I've had up to six separate changes on a single clip, which does an amazing job for color work done in Premiere ... but ... no regular colorist is gonna mess with that process except as an emergency situation.

So the more user control, and especially the ability to target things more precisely, multiple times on a single clip ... yea, some further development would be so appreciated.

Which is one reason it was heartening to run into a certain person at NAB last year who'd shifted from Frame to running something in Premiere ... 😉

[jakew39230329]

Can we get a log exposure and white balance slider before the first input lut for anyone still using a rec709 workflow?

[R Neil Haugen]

I've asked for that for years.

As currently, I do not recommend using transform or log->lin normalization LUTs in the Input process or the Basic tab's Input LUT slot. Because you cannot properly trim the clip into and through the LUT with corrections applie before the LUT. 

This is the process used by pro colorists ... as LUTs can easily clip or crush file image data.

[jakew39230329]

I agree. It would be helpful, i currently use them in the creative tab, or apply 2 sets of lumetri, as the basic controls are designed to work on normalized footage, but luts clip data. 

[R Neil Haugen]

Truth!

[Shebbe]

If you're talking about exposure in using Direc Rec.709 color management there already is in the Sequence Clip section at the bottom of Lumetri color settings. It's not 'log style' offset but gain in linear light so shadows will be more 'sticky' if exposing up but exposing down typically is better that way.

If you meant through Lumetri, you cannot use the exposure slider in Lumetri in non-managed or Direct Rec.709 management and get the same quality/result. The best approach in manual management is to use Brightness & Contrast effect before your conversion LUT because brightness slider there is also offest ('log exposure').

There is no simple operator to do the same for white balance in log unfortunately.

For colormanaged context they could easily add Lumetri's existing balance and tint sliders to the Sequence Clip section as well with the same math also to be applied in linear. This would greatly assist in accurately balancing out log footage in a color workflow that outside of those aspects is somewhat more simplified.

[jakew39230329]

Interesting to know about the brightness & contrast being offset, that will help for now.
Just checked the sequence clip section. It only works with color manage log footage switched on. Seems an awkward place to put it considering it affects the start of the chain, yet its placed at the very end, and in the settings section rather than edit. Simplest solution would just be to add an offset/white balance slider before the first input lut. And set it so if colour management is switched on, it happens before the transfrom too. 

[Shebbe]

I agree that there could be more clever ways to set it up. But from the Lumetri color managed perspective the order actually makes sense it's just that the overal layout is really long and perhaps too complicated in the way it's designed imo. But the sections are in order of 'large to small' or 'most global to most local' if you will.

Preferences -> entire Premiere Pro (mercury settings etc)

Project -> affects project only (using colorspace aware fx and LUT interpolation settings)

Source Clip -> manages the media interpretation for the entire project (tagging with proper input space for sake of conversions etc)
Sequence -> Determines the kind of color managed workflow you want to use and only applies to that sequence.

Sequence Clip -> Uniquely applies settings to only that instance of the source clip in only that sequence.

In my earlier feedback I advocated for an option to make Sequence project management global for the project unless deviated on purpose on a single sequence. This could heavily reduce the complexity in the way project color management is set up. Most people will not have multiple deliverables for different target displays inside a single project anyway. The same is the case for what kind of tone mapping is used per clip when non-wide gamut color management is chosen. Right now it needs to be defined per sequence clip which is not effective by any strech. But this is said to be worked on.

[jakew39230329]

I meant just the exposure slider under the input tone mapping section. That would have made sense at the beginning of Lumetri-Edit page

Rather than the end of Lumetri-Settings page. 
But would be better yet if it was just an offset slider there instead that also worked for a Lut workflow 

[MisterAdvent]

I just started playing with this in 25.3.0 build 61.

I notice that if I change sequence settings in the Lumetri Color panel, the color on the program monitor window (and clips on the timeline) change, but the Mercury Transmit external monitor does not change.  Is that by design?

[Agrarvolution]

Since this keeps coming up for me:
Will this issue realted to tone mapping ever be addressed?

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-beta-bugs/dramatically-updated-color-management-relinkin...

It s major pain point when you open projects which moved around and relink all the files. All the work has to be redone. 

IS there any workaround to avoid the reset of the tonemapping settings?