Premiere Pro CC 2018 Lumetri Color bug

[drewc29185859]

I've recently updated Premiere Pro to the newest version, and all of the color correction to my files from a previous version appears incredibly washed out. How can I solve for this?

Thanks!

[Skeleton_Edit]

I have just been Googling this too as I have the same bug in CC 2017. I have found the bug appears when you have a LUT applied in the Creative panel and then adjust either the vignette or the faded film effect - changing the setting to anything other than 0 washes out the entire image. It seems really on and off though as it doesn't happen in all projects with all LUTs - it just crops its head up every now and then.

A workaround I have found is to only have the Creative LUT applied on one adjustment layer and then have a second adjustment layer for your other 'creative' corrections such as Vignette etc.

[Images on Film]

I have the same issue. I used cc2015 and my FS7 footage was fine, but washed out in cc2018. I also verified this on two separate computers. Right now I have no solution.

[R Neil Haugen]

The adjustments and LUTs brought forward from 2015 may not "take". Try removing and re-applying your Lumetri effects.

Neil

[Images on Film]

Thanks, but I have a slightly different issue. I started with a new project in both CC2018 and CC2015. Then I added FS7 footage and applied Lumetri Color and the Sony slog3 LUT (without any adjustments). The resulting preview image and output from Premiere CC2018 was washed out as compared to CC2015. I have been using the same slog3 LUT provided by Sony for Premiere CC2015 through cc2018. The LUT works in cc2018, but it is slightly washed out as compared to previous versions of Premiere and Sony Catalyst Browse. I have confirmed this on two computers.

[R Neil Haugen]

Ahh. Define "slightly washed out" ... is it gamma being too 'light', saturation low, what? And where are you applying this, Basic Tab or Creative tab's LUT slot?

And it's pretty easy & fast to take a 'clean' clip, apply the LUT, modify the look using Lumetri controls to what you want, then export your own .cube from Lumetri to use. Made specifically to taste.

Neil

[Images on Film]

Thank you for your help. The LUT is added to basic correction in both CC2015 and CC2018 and no other changes are made in Lumetri Color or anywhere else in Premiere. The result is that the image in CC2018 is slightly washed out as compared to CC2015. Slightly washed out being a little hard to explain, but it looks like I am shooting through a slight fog. The issue still exists in CC2018 if I change both or either the gamma or saturation as compared to CC2015. I set gamma to 9 in an attempt to make the backgrounds identical brightness and went to go to 130 on the saturation, but  that really wreaked havoc with the overall color. So, no, changing the gamma it does not correct the problem. All it does is make it lighter or darker. Saturation helps, but it also affects the overall color in a bad way.

[Images on Film]

Also, the LUT was added to basic corrections.

Thanks,

Brian

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

Go to the Creative tab, use the drop-down there, and using the "custom" option, navigate to and apply that LUT from there. Two reasons ...

• First, this is the ​proper​ place to apply a media corrective tech-LUT anyway, and then neutralize with the controls of the Basic tab. Those LUTs are always 'built' in a controlled studio shoot, with nailed WB and exposure settings. Therefore, they are designed to be used to shape ​corrected​ media for WB/exposure. As in Resolve and other apps, you load the corrective LUT, then apply corrections to that clip for WB, exposure, contrast, & stuff ... such that they are applied to the clip ​before​ the LUT while you and the scopes see the result ​after​ the LUT. Apply a tech LUT to the first node in Resolve, then neutralize the clip. Resolve always processes LUTs ​after​ all other effects applied to that node.
• Second, you have better controls to affect things ... including something that could be of great use to you, the ​intensity​ slider right below the preview window of the Creative tab. Also, the things you do to neutralize the image in the Basic tab will be applied ​before the LUT ​which will keep the proper corrective settings of that LUT in place.

Note, the "White Balance" settings of Lumetri Basic Tab are exactly like changing the White Points in a curves or Color Wheel control. Values down the scale are affected less as they go towards shadows. So ... the Blue/Amber control plays the Red and Blue channels against each other ... one goes up as the other goes down, there's no effect to Green channel. The Green/Magenta slider controls the combined Red & Blue channels against the Green channel. If R & B go up, G goes down.

This does not have that much effect in the mids. It's a way of correcting the White Points and upper values primarily.

The "Exposure" control of  Lumetri Basic is weird ... going down, it's a straight "Gain" or White Point control, dropping the White point and everything else relative to that, like dropping the White Point in the curves operation. Raising the gain control is similar to grabbing the curve at about 65%, then dragging straight up ... this quickly moves more values to clipping and yet with a slight roll-off, and pulls the shadows up so fast the shadow side can become near vertical in a curves viewing. It doesn't actually move the full black point, but will move most shadows.

"Blacks"  makes the values from about 20 down wag like a dog's tail, but doesn't affect anything above that really. Drop blacks, you get a steep curve from 20 to 0. Raise blacks, you get a horizontal line at the bottom of your curve from 20 to ... left-edge 20.

Shadows and Highlights work sorta close to the Color Wheels shadow/highlights, with slightly less movement to the end points.

Hope this is of some help.

Neil

[drewc29185859]

Thank you for the clear and detailed explanation—Extremely helpful info!

[R Neil Haugen]

Happy to help. I've argued with the engineers at NAB the last four years I think it is since Lumetri came out that they've got their Basic input LUT slot bass-ackwards in application. And from testing, the Tech LUT slot clearly is processed before any other control in the Basic tab. If that was just dropped to the end of the Basic tab for application, it would work so much better. And ... if they included a LUT slot in the Vignette tab, for an output "print stock" type LUT, rather than having that be the first thing in the Creative tab, where everything you do afterwards screws up your nifty soft-70's print-film emulation.

So naturally, you need to apply that perhaps either in an additional Lumetri on the clip below the other one, or ... Adjustment layers are processed after the clips of video below them, so you can use an A-L above multiple clips just to apply the film-stock LUT.

Neil

[thxapproved2]

If they could place it at the END, that would be even better, as even the second slot for LUTs is above the curves. So, if the LUT overexposes your video, you cannot use the curves to correct the highlights.
Lately I have just been putting two (2) Lumetri CC's on each clip. One has the LUT and then I add one above that do do the color correction.

[R Neil Haugen]

And if the "Blacks" tool in the Basic tab was actually usable and not so completely bonkers, you could do all trimming for tonal stuff in the Basic tab. But if you need to adjust Black point ... the Black slider will not actually work well.

You can do things like drag/drop an RGB Cuves effect on a clip, then put the tech LUT in the Basic tab of Lumetri ... go to the ECP, make sure the RGB Curves is above the Lumetri in stack order ... select both, create Preset. Name ift for the media that LUT corrects.

Then when you have media of that format, you simply apply that preset ... and before doing anything, go to the RGB Curves in the ECP, adjust your white/black points and maybe the middle a titch ... then go into Lumetri and start working away.

Neil

[Images on Film]

I REALLY appreciate you taking the time to explain this in such a usable way - particularly about applying the LUT to the Creative first, adjusting the intensity and then doing the WB in Basic Correction. Really great information, and yes, this is bass ackwards. However, this did not solve the Issue that I am having, but it may have helped slightly.

When applying the LUT to CC2018 in Creative, the image is still slightly washed out or muddy if you prefer. I really have no clue what is going on. All I know is that I like to apply a LUT and make it look better from there, not try to get it as good as the LUT looks in another program without any adjustment.

So, with sharpening of 10 and contrast of 14 added in Creative to the LUT in CC2018 and no white balance adjustment, the two versions look pretty much the same. But I reiterate, what the heck has changed in image processing in Lumntri Color between CC2015 and CC2018? I know the standard wisdom is to keep every version of Premier that I ever used on my computer and stay with the same version through the life of a project (which for me is often years). So with the LUTs' effect changing between versions, will I need to regrade all my work if I upgrade Premiere? Considering that a feature film my have as many as 3,000 images, this could be a lot of extra work. rant off...and thank you.

Again, I really appreciate your guidance.

Brian

[R Neil Haugen]

There are some changes in every version, many of which are useful ... and some are not a particular joy.

Such as when the Lumetri workspace first came about, one could put LUTs/Looks in the program files/creative folder for PrPro, and they would nicely appear in the drop-down in the Creative tab, and show in the preview window. A couple versions later, they changed the way that items in that folder are referenced by the program, to more of a spreadsheet-style "relative reference" as compared to an "absolute reference" is perhaps the best explanation.

Essentially, location in the folder, not the name of the file ... or something like unto that in operation.

So putting your own LUTs/Looks into that folder could really screw up the operation of the Creative tab. I had three subfolders such that they displayed nicely in the drop-down list. Had to pull them all out, and use the Custom option to go to the upper folder for them, then navigate through the folders ... rather than just getting a list to scroll. You wanna see my comments about that decision, they're back 'there' somewhere in Jive's archives. I wasn't thrilled, in short. Ahem.

So one rants, files bug/feature reports (which they do see, and do have some effect) ... and figures out how to get the work out.

Neil

[codykussoy]

I'm having the same issue you are, Images on film. I cut a feature in cc15 and then had to update to cc18. I was never color grading in either version of premiere but now my raw footage is washed out making a big problem for our colorist. I've spent two weeks on the phone with adobe. They say they're escalating this issue to their senior design team and will call back in a matter of hours but never do.

In cc15 I exported some clips for rotto and then re-imported them. When I scrub my sequence now in cc18 I can see this color has changed to the shots that were not rotto'ed, leaving my sequence extremely uneven.

Somebody please help - We need to export this film and get it into our colorist for last tweaks asap!

Thanks in advance.

[R Neil Haugen]

It sounds like you have a couple options ... one is to go through shot-by-shot, cleaning things up ... the other is trying to group shots that are off by X amount, and fixing one with a new layer of Lumetri, then save that a preset. Select other images that need that correction, and drop that preset of Lumetri on them.

You could of course do that in an Adjustment Layer, but a lot of people with projects as big as your's sounds aren't particularly thrilled this late in the game to grab everything above the video tracks they've got, and move it up to allow putting A-L's above every clip on maybe four or more tracks of footage.

Neil

[codykussoy]

These are very unhelpful options. I know I could try and fix it manually, but as stated above by somebody else, this washed out interpretation of my footage corrupts the color space making it pointless because I'll never get that raw slog3 footage the way it was. 

Maybe there is a way to revert my cc18 project file back to a cc15 project file? Or export an xml and then reimport that as well as the footage into cc15?

[R Neil Haugen]

" ... this washed out interpretation of my footage corrupts the color space making it pointless because I'll never get that raw slog3 footage the way it was.

I'm not quite understanding this ... as I understand things, a color space is a defined hardware item for say monitors/subsystems and the way it's handled through the computer. PrPro as an app uses just basic Bt. (Rec.) 709 ... which hasn't changed between versions. So I can't see how it could be a color space problem, but one of PrPro changing the way it views the 'potency' or range of correction the controls used have modified the image within PrPro.

But the main thing that comes to mind ... your colorist is going to be getting the original media with an XML, EDL, or whatever, right? When he loads that into Resolve and gets past his conforming stage, what he'll be starting with is the original media ... and that includes handling the slog/RAW whatever corrections needed on the clips.

Unless you're planning on exporting an as-is version of the media for him to tweak of course.

Neil

[codykussoy]

Color space might be the wrong word, however, without using any plugins or doing any color correction, my footage looks different in PrPro 18 than it does viewing in finder or vlc.

Another problem is the roto'ed footage from '15 looks the same in '18 which is interesting because again, the raw footage looks different.

unfortunately our colorist will not be ingesting raw footage and will be working off an uncompressed export.

What info do you have about the way it views 'potency'?

[R Neil Haugen]

As to "potency" ... I guess that's about as good a way to express the difference in the way 2018 seems to present some previous PrPro color corrections as any. And yes, at times 2018 can bring in previous version's color corrections or settings and be notably different.

I think it would be useful at this point to know how you're applying the base correction to the slog3 media ... Input LUT in the Basic tab, direct manipulation of the Lumetri controls rather than a LUT ... what?

One thing that's been done has been to remove then re-apply the previous settings. You can test this with a clip ... right/click and "copy" a clip's attributes, then delete the Lumetri from the clip.

Right-click the clip again, "Paste" and choose only the Lumetri attributes.

Neil

[codykussoy]

I'm not applying any base correction to the slog3 media. I'm not applying any settings to any clips.

I 'round-tripped' raw, un-color corrected slog 3 footage from Pr '15 to Ae '15 and then back to Pr '15 for roto and vfx clean up work. The roto'ed clips and the raw, un-color corrected slog 3 footage looked identical in color.

I updated to Pr '18 and my raw, un-color corrected slog3 footage now looks washed out compared to the roto clips which are how they're supposed to look.  

[R Neil Haugen]

What work had you done in 2015 to linearize/correct the slog3?

[R Neil Haugen]

If you're using LUTs, I've a question ... are you using the included LUTs, or ones you've acquired and included in the project?

If one's you've created or acquired, where do you have them on disc ... specifically, did you add them into the Adobe package/program files folders or have them in a different folder on disc?

Neil

[codykussoy]

I'm not using luts