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NEVER ever ever add LUTs to the program package files area! Within each app, Premiere, AfterEffects and MediaEncoder, the app expects ONLY the included files to be there and accesses LUTs in those folders by relative location in sorting ... not by name.
And if you add them in Premiere, then queue to Me for export, Me will see that Pr is using the 5th one down, and will within its own program files, go to the fifth one down.
They have a place for users to add LUTs ... stick to that area! I include their chart below. Note, you'll need to add the Technical (Basic tab) and Creative (Creative tab) folders on the end of the location. Then park your LUTs there by whether you want to use them in the Basic tab or Creative tab. Premiere will for each tab, look in the included LUTs and in your location scan the LUTs, and list them in the drop-down options by computer alpha-numeric sorting.
I have a shortcut on my desktop to get to those folders quickly for when I add/remove LUTs from use.
I also add a prefix system to all LUTs I use so my LUTs come up both organized and prior to any of the included ones, as I think I've twice used an included LUT over seven years or so. A two-digit number, space, and a letter. This gives 99 separate options for the first part, and within each, 25 more for sorting. I haven't hit 09 yet, btw ... something like below:
01 A low-sat neutralization
01 B no-sat neutralization
02 A mid-high rolled off chroma
You get the idea.
Now ... I teach color in Premiere over on a pro colorist's teaching website, MixingLight.com. Most of the members there are pros working in Resolve, Baselight, or Scratch. LUTs are of course a constant item of discussion. And I don't know that any of the guys & gals there has 5,000 LUTs loaded in anything. Or would even want them.
It would far faster for me to correct & apply a look from scratch than search & test a massive set like that. Either in Resolve or Premiere. And I don't think adding 5,000 items to the database Premiere has to work will do anything but slow things down dramatically. Do NOT load all of them! Load a few, test them keep some remove others from the folder to storage.
As to using them ... LUTs are notoriously called "the dumbest math out there". They are necessary for some things, useful for others, but ... they can and will break your media with alacrity and malice. Well, not malice really ... simply they don't give a crud about your pixels.
They can and will clip highlights hard, crush blacks, plus they may induce artifacts and noise and mangle color relationships. You have to be able to test them and control them. The first thing to know, to prevent clipping/crushing, is you must trim the clip into/through the LUT, using tonal/chroma controls applied before the LUT, but with the LUT applied and results visible in the program monitor and scopes. Therefore, the Basic tab's implementation of LUT as an input is wrong.
If you apply a LUT in the basic tab, you have to have a tonal/color correction effect applied in the ECP layer stack before that instance of Lumetri. Like a first instance of Lumetri, a second with the LUT in the Basic tab, then go back to the first instance and adjust tonal and chroma data controls to get the image 'clean', no clipping, no crushing, no mangled colors.
I do almost all LUT work in the Creative tab, as I can both use the Basic tab to trim the clip into/through the LUT and also use the 'amount' control to set how strong the LUT affects the image pixels.
Neil
 
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