New Lumetri Color in Premiere Pro CC2, changed my entire workflow overnight

[Michael Ma]

Have you guys been working with the Lumetri Color in Premiere Pro CC2?  I haven't heard much talk about it but I think it deserves some attention for people who may have missed the release notes.  Just found it myself, but it literally has changed my entire workflow overnight.

My old workflow used to be Levels, RGB Curves, and maybe either Filmconvert, Colorista II, or a LUT.  But....I find none of that necessary anymore with Lumetri Color.  

Everything corrects and grades so easily like you're editing a frame in Adobe Camera Raw.  Temperature, Tint, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Saturation....all the sliders are there.  And surprisingly, it seems to work very well with 8 bit frames.  It knows of S Log2, S Log 3, etc.  The rgb curves are incorporated into the filter.  It also has tools with Color Wheels, LUTs, Vignettes.

And it renders fast.  One more thing.  Not sure when it appeared but the Lumetri Scopes Window has a live histogram that I've always been wanting and needing.

[Axel]

I wrote about it before, but only recently I had the chance to play with it at a friend's PC who uses Adobe CC. And I agree, for most of us this tool will be completely sufficient. Great advantages: ease of use, good integration because Lumetri has it's own workspace. You can and need to stack instances of the 'effect' (like nodes in Resolve). May I remark that I see this development as an 'answer' to FCP X's much-derided rudimentary CC-tools, which nonetheless let you do 90% of what needs to be done. Or, to put it differently, 95% of all people never use more.

What's missing most? A reference frame, a spltscreen view (unless I missed this on my two-hour-tour). I propose a workaround. Since usually you only need one reference frame per sequence, you can duplicate this completely graded clip, shove it on a track above the rest and crop it.

[jcs]

Hey Michael- I've been using the Lumetri panel for a while and indeed it is very cool. In terms of UI and editing speed, it is much faster. In terms of runtime performance, it feels a little slower than using a combination of Mercury-accelerated effects, e.g. Fast Color Corrector + Curves (1 or more) + ProcAmp +  3-Way Color Corrector + Sharpen [when needed] (12 3GHz cores, GTX 980ti on dual 4K displays, Windows 10). Perhaps turning off unused panel elements will speed things up. A sampler/dropper tool for white balance would be a helpful addition.

[Mozim]

Thanks for starting this topic. I just checked out Premiere for the first time and the Lumetri panel does look very good! Very easy and intuitive to use. I played around with Davinci Resolve as well, which while usable won't necessarily speed up or simplify my workflow. Lumetri reminds me of FCPX (in a good way), just a bit more advanced. I also like the fact that you apply LUTs very easily. 

One question though: When I set up a new project Premiere allows me to adjust the render settings (either with or without GPU acceleration). When I chose either one of the GPU acceleration modes, the preview image in the program will look like it's a corrupted file. It plays back fine but as soon as I pause the clip, the colours will look funky and I can't correct or grade the clips anymore. I'm on a mid-2013 15" Retina MacBoook Pro with NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB graphics and my graphic card has been acting really weird lately. Should I stay away from GPU-accelerated rendering with that setup?

[Jimbo]

Dam, I just watched a preview video on Lumetri and wish FCP X had this kind of panel. These tools are perfect for about of 95% of what I do and I find FCP X's colour board clunky. I can't move fast as I want to. However, I'm a big fan of FCP X and the magnetic timeline, I can work very quickly and not sure a switch to Premiere just for Lumetri makes sense.

Anybody switched? How do you find Premiere?

[wolf33d]

I used first FCPX, then switched to Premiere (for some reasons but the main one being the easy workflow with After Effects dynamic links) and now I switched back to FCPX a few days ago because I decided I would give it a new try. 

Things I like about FCPX:
ergonomics and timeline, clip organization with easy keywords and so on

Things I like about Premiere:
After Effect dynamic link
Lumetri and overall color grading

But I just found out the plugin Color Finale on FCPX is exactly like lumetri in better:

basic color correction, lut utility, curves, ... AND opacity selection for each setting + a master opacity which is great. I am sold. bye bye premiere

 

https://vimeo.com/119422039

[Mozim]

Similiar conclusions here after having used Premiere for a couple of days. 

I tried to cut an entire project (that I cut before in FCPX) in Premiere to get familiar with the program. Some things seem a lot less intuitive because I'm not used to the program, other things are a lot less intuitive because that's the way the program works. I think the overall color grading in Premiere is great but editing, clip organization etc. in FCPX suits my workflow much better. I'll stick with FCPX if I need to edit something quickly. Knowing the basics in Premiere will definitely be helpful in the future though!

Color Finale is a plugin that I regularly use, mainly to apply LUTs to my footage. That's one of the things I hate about FCPX; you can't use your own LUTs. So I usually do my basic color corrections with the built in correction tools, apply a one of the IWLTBAP LUTs that suits the footage and set the LUT opacity somewhere between 30% and 70%. 

Another really cool plugin for FCPX is Oliver Color. It allows you to adjust exposure, contrast, saturation, highs mids and lows, hue and a couple other things... and it's free. https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2015/06/07/building-a-free-fcp-x-color-correction-filter/

[Jimbo]

wolf33d, Mozim, thank you both for sharing your experience. I find FCPX very intuitive too so that would be my biggest fear of switching so thanks for answering that question. Will check out Color Finale and Oliver Color!

P.S. Just installed Oliver Color. It's awesome, thank you! Controls that make me feel like I'm in control =) (and all in one panel without tabs!) A very happy man right now.

[Axel]

 I'll stick with FCPX if I need to edit something quickly. Knowing the basics in Premiere will definitely be helpful in the future though!

If FCP X would be available for Windows

or

if Premiere allowed to switch between tracks and connected clips  ...

... then tracks would be gone within a matter of one or two years. Seems obvious to me. 

[The Chris]

Similiar conclusions here after having used Premiere for a couple of days. 

I tried to cut an entire project (that I cut before in FCPX) in Premiere to get familiar with the program. Some things seem a lot less intuitive because I'm not used to the program, other things are a lot less intuitive because that's the way the program works. I think the overall color grading in Premiere is great but editing, clip organization etc. in FCPX suits my workflow much better. I'll stick with FCPX if I need to edit something quickly. Knowing the basics in Premiere will definitely be helpful in the future though!

Color Finale is a plugin that I regularly use, mainly to apply LUTs to my footage. That's one of the things I hate about FCPX; you can't use your own LUTs. So I usually do my basic color corrections with the built in correction tools, apply a one of the IWLTBAP LUTs that suits the footage and set the LUT opacity somewhere between 30% and 70%. 

Another really cool plugin for FCPX is Oliver Color. It allows you to adjust exposure, contrast, saturation, highs mids and lows, hue and a couple other things... and it's free. https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2015/06/07/building-a-free-fcp-x-color-correction-filter/

That Oliver Color looks pretty cool, how does it handle skin tones?

[jgharding]

I'm a PC Premiere user and yes it's fast and better and I'm glad it's here!

I can still admit FCP X is much better and quicker for colour though. It's actually real-time all the time.

Premiere can be really clunky still unless you have spectacular specs. Sometime you have to wait 10 seconds for the image to update when you move a still overlay or change some colour.

thats just not what happens in FCP X