There’s much, much more to color work than manipulating a color correction tool.

Notice, as promised, I didn’t mention Lumetri once. That way this could just be an awesome Premiere feature, not just for color work. Premiere could tackle this in a general-purpose way by allowing versions of any effect or set of effects on a clip. But it’s just as useful for solo practitioners. If you don’t think this matters, you’ve never graded with a client in the room. One crucial thing that dedicated color apps like Resolve do is help you manage versions of the color on a shot. Sure, ideally you’d be using additional video hardware and a calibrated broadcast monitor, but color matters to everyone, not just those editing for broadcast. I bet most Premiere editors are using their computer monitor as their primary display for the Program panel.

There are actually quite a few things that Premiere could do to be amazing at color that have nothing to do with Lumetri. Of course I prefer Magic Bullet Colorista, but that’s not what I want to talk about here. The result, the Lumetri color panel, is a perfectly serviceable color corrector.

Part of Premiere’s ascendancy has included folding in the color features of SpeedGrade, exactly as I advised back in 2011. Premiere renders with great quality, and any tools I felt were missing from the pipeline I’ve created myself. Yes, that’s right, my age-old advice to finish in After Effects instead of an NLE is well and truly obsolete. It’s now where I do all my cutting, and even finishing. Adobe Premiere Pro has been aggressively pursuing the creative editorial market at all levels, from feature films to YouTube.

Premiere colorista