With exposure and white balance handled, grading is where an edit gets its visual identity — the teal-and-orange blockbuster look, a desaturated moody grade, warm nostalgic tones. This lesson covers the tools used to build a look, and how to apply it consistently across a whole video.
What Is a LUT
A LUT (Look-Up Table) is a preset mathematical transformation that remaps color and tone in a predictable way — think of it as a filter with real technical grounding rather than a simple overlay. Two categories matter:
- Technical LUTs — convert a camera's log or RAW color profile into a standard viewable image (e.g., converting Log footage to Rec.709). Apply these first, as a baseline, not as a creative choice.
- Creative LUTs — stylize an already-corrected image (film emulation, a specific color palette). Apply these on top of your correction, in a separate Lumetri instance.
Apply a LUT in the Lumetri Color panel's Creative tab, or as a second Lumetri Color effect stacked on the clip. LUTs are a starting point, not a finished grade — nearly every LUT needs its intensity adjusted (the "Intensity" slider in the Creative tab) and further tweaking to fit specific footage.
Secondary Color Correction
Primary correction (the Basic Correction tab) affects the entire frame uniformly. Secondary correction targets a specific color range or region — turning just the sky more blue, warming only skin tones, without affecting the rest of the image.
The Curves tab's Hue vs. Saturation, Hue vs. Hue, and Hue vs. Luma curves let you isolate a color and shift it. For example, dragging a point on the Hue vs. Hue curve at the blue range lets you shift skies toward teal without touching skin tones or foliage.
HSL Secondary and Qualifiers
The HSL Secondary tab isolates a specific color range using an eyedropper — click a color in your image (say, a red jacket), and Premiere selects everything matching that hue, saturation, and luminance range. Refine the selection with the H, S, and L range sliders, and check the "Color/Gray" mask view to see exactly what's selected before adjusting.
Once isolated, adjustments made in that tab's color wheels affect only the selected region. Common uses: making a specific product color pop without affecting the surrounding shot, or correcting one problematic color (a green tint on foliage bleeding into skin) in isolation.
Color Wheels: Shadows, Midtones, Highlights
The Creative tab's three color wheels let you push color independently into shadows, midtones, and highlights — the technique behind the "teal and orange" look (pushing shadows toward teal/blue, highlights toward orange/warm) and most other stylized grades. A subtler, more common technique: push shadows very slightly toward blue/teal and highlights very slightly toward warm/orange, even at low intensity — it adds depth without being an obviously "graded" look.
Building a Look Once, Applying It Everywhere
Once you've built a grade you like on a representative shot:
- Right-click the clip > Copy
- Select other clips needing the same look, right-click > Paste Attributes, and choose only the Lumetri Color effect
- Fine-tune each clip individually afterward — different lighting conditions within a scene still need individual adjustment even under one consistent look
For a look you'll reuse across future projects, save it as a preset: in Effect Controls, right-click the Lumetri Color effect and "Save Preset." It appears in the Effects panel under Presets for one-click application later.
Adjustment Layers for Grade Consistency
Rather than grading every clip individually, create an Adjustment Layer (Project panel > New Item > Adjustment Layer), place it on a track above your entire sequence, and apply Lumetri Color to that single layer instead. Every clip beneath it inherits the grade. This is faster to build and adjust than clip-by-clip grading, though it works best when lighting is already reasonably consistent across the clips underneath — heavily mismatched shots still need individual correction first.