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January 2, 2024
Question

colourlab.ai and premiere - experience?

  • January 2, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 3494 views

I one tried colourlab.ai for automatic color correction in FCPx, and while it could save me some time, I had to abandon it because the roundtripping didnt really work and destroyed all my audio work when reimporting the timeline..

 

Now version 3 came out and I was wondering if someone uses colourlab.ai with premiere and could share some experience. Auto-matching cameras worked quite well then and it has scene detection for auto color, so it does keep colors consistens over multiple shots while adobe premieres auto color doesnt.

 

I tried to install it on premiere and could send the timeline to colourlab but couldnt send it back, so I am waiting for a fix but wanted to know if its woth the hassle.

3 replies

Kevin-Monahan
Community Manager
Community Manager
February 22, 2025

Hi Folks,

See if this tutorial helps.

 

Let me know if this workflow works.

 

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio
Participating Frequently
June 25, 2025

No, this tutorial is not useful. Because the actual process of pushing the grade back to Premiere is not working.

 

I tried it out before buying it, and I got different results on different PCs. The one pushes the grade, and the other does not. If you work on different computers (home & office), then it clearly does not work very well. I also couldn't open the Colour Lab project I saved, as it said missing media and then just opened a blank timeline. 

The grade I got before all of these issues was nice. I just wish it worked to send it back to PP. But so far, the hassle has been the dealbreaker to a hard NO from me.

cameraclay
Participant
February 22, 2025

I just installed it tonight and haven't had any success fetching from Premiere. It analyzes 2/3 of the clips and then crashes ColourLab. Reading that it disrupts audio is a dealbreaker for me. Canceling.

Participant
February 22, 2025

Yeah It's sad cause it actually has some features that I really really like, both from quality and batch processing perspectives. I think an update of Pr recently removed an api function(s) that ColourLab needed to push color effects back to premiere. I tried to solve the issue with my own Pr jsx code and arrived at the same limitation. The console log in ColourLab shows an api error when trying to connect to the metadata of a Pr Pro effect on a clip (where the lut and color changes would be pushed back to inside your Pr project). 

I was dissapointed in ColourLab for this, but when I failed to fix it on my own, I felt their pain, and we can thank adobe for their lack of care in helping use the "api" functionality that they've made "accessible" for Pr at least. 

Let me know if you or anyone finds different conclusions here. 

One other thought on ColourLab: it's pretty dissapointing I can't even get a succesful export of a sequence I have loaded into it. I have to export a lut for every raw file and apply it to Lumetri in Pr. 

In any case, still thankful for the core functionality of ColourLab, it just can't be used in a professional workflow inside Pr. I think people have had better success going between Resolve and ColourLab, which they probably care more about since it's an overall better editor that Pr in almost every way. 

R Neil Haugen
Legend
January 2, 2024

As noted elsewhere, I've talked with Dado about that at NAB, and it's pretty interesting. But I've not used it, so I'll be fascinated for any replies or discussions here on this thread!

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
January 2, 2024

Its not doing much magic, but it certanly helps speed up things a little. Unfortunately it often wasnt worth the hassle of the roundrtip workflow - and there were numerous issues by roundtripping.

January 9, 2024

Ja couldn't get it to work with premiere. I can send the timeline to colorant but cannot bring the corrected timeline back. Even a simple ProRes timeline does not work.