Creating Custom LUTS Inside Photoshop for Premiere Pro

This is all such a joy, right?

So many tutorials out there can be so good and useful right up to ... oh, my gosh, just ... Noooooooo!!!!

lol

His first bit is great.

Neil

There is a HUGE problem with this tutorial ... horrible information that will screw up your work ROYALLY.

It's the part where he suggests putting you own LUTs in the package/Program files Adobe Premiere folder.

DO NOT EVER DO THAT!

And yes, I meant to shout!

There are several problems with putting your own in the program/package file folders, heavily covered elsewhere. Here are the locations to put your own LUTs so they're available in either the Basic tab or Creative tab LUT selection drop-downs.

You will need to create the "Technical" and "Creative" folders in any of these locations, and put your LUTs in there. After doing so, when you next launch Premiere, it will automatically see those and use them ... but not only in Premiere, but also in AfterEffects, MediaEncoder, and Prelude.

Ok ... now that that is handled, a few caveats. Especially when creating LUTs using Curves tools, but even with other tools, you do have to be careful with those curves and adjustments. You should check them out with test media/charts that use a full range of data, as ... if anything you do pushes pixels above the 255 point or below the 0 point on the Histogram or RGB Parade scopes, those will be clipped or crushed on ANY media you use that LUT on. And you cannot recover that highlight or shadow data AFTER the LUT.

A very common quote from pro colorists: "LUTs are the dumbest math there is."

This doesn't mean don't use them ... just ... *fear* them! Test them ... never use a LUT on a deliverable to a client if you don't know what that LUT will do to every pixel.

This also means that most folks teaching the use of LUTs teach using them by 1) applying the LUT to the clip, then ... in the processing chain *before* the LUT, trim the exposure/contrast/saturation of the media while watching scopes and monitor of the image with the LUT in place. This way, if there is clipped or crushed media, or it does something odd with certain shades, you can adjust that media *before the LUT!* ... to protect your pixels.

For any LUT used in the Lumetri Basic tab, you would need to either drop an RGB Curves effect on the clip, placed ABOVE the Lumetri effect in the Effects Control Panel, and 'trim' the media with the RGB Curves controls prior to the Lumetri panel ... or ... apply the LUT to the basic tab of a *second* instance of Lumetri, using the first instance to trim the clip.

Or, use the Creative tab LUT/Look slot (as I normally do), and trim using the Basic tab exposure/contrast/saturation controls.

Another fantastic way to create LUTs is using the Adobe Capture app for mobile devices, which has a Looks section. In that app's Looks section, take a picture of a scene that has interesting or useful color to the scene ... even a sunset, or the warm glow off a coppery building. It will give you a bunch of options for ways to coalesce the colors between the hues of the image with some interesting mods to highlights/shadows, and you select one of the options. You can see them applied to an image in the app.

Save that, name it, and it pops it right into your Adobe CC Libraries. Immediately available in Premiere. And is the way I make most of my LUTs.

Neil

Very cool, animation life, I should probably try and make some of my own. Thanks so much for the article!

Regards,
Kevin Monahan