- Hey, guys. My name is Matt Johnson,
and today I'm going to be showing you how to fix an issue
that many of you have been emailing me about over the years,
where your colors look great in
Adobe Premiere Pro's Preview Window,
but are washed out when you export your video file.
First, I'm gonna show you how to fix it on a Mac.
Then, I'm gonna show you how to fix it on a PC.
So, if you are on a PC, I would skip to this time here
that I'm gonna put on the video to see how to fix it.
Moving on, let's talk about how to fix this on a Mac.
And I'm sure there's some of you thinking,
"Wait, Matt, you edit videos on a PC.
How do you know if this fix is actually going to work?"
Because this fix does not actually come from me;
this comes directly from Adobe.
This page on Adobe's support site that
I will link to down in the description details
why your colors are washed out in your video exports.
To sum up the reason this issue exists,
Adobe Premiere uses colors meant for broadcast television,
while many applications on your Mac
use colors that match a different video standard,
they don't quite have as much contrast.
This article on Adobe's site goes into further detail,
but the purpose of this video is to show you how to fix it,
not necessarily tell you why it happens.
You can definitely read the article, though,
if you want to know more.
The good news is that the fix for this issue is simple.
Adobe has created a free video LUT that you can download,
and it will make your exported videos look
the exact same as your previews.
I've included a link down in the description
where you can download the video LUT directly from Adobe,
and I've also mirrored it on my site as well
in the event that it gets deleted or something like that.
Once you've downloaded this LUT,
save it to a place on your computer
where you know where it is because
you're going to need it in a minute.
Now, open your video project in Adobe Premiere,
and edit it normally, and color grade it normally
so it looks great in Premiere's preview window.
We're going to pretend that this is
a full video that I've edited and not just one clip that
I've added some color grading to and prepared for export.
Once you've finished editing and color grading your film,
it's time to put that free video LUT to use.
Make sure that you only apply this free video LUT
after you've color graded your film, not before.
I'm gonna show you how to apply the LUT now.
With your timeline selected outlined here in blue,
you can either press Ctrl + M if you're on a PC or
Command + M if you're on a Mac
to open up the export settings dialog box.
The first thing that you'll see are a lot of settings,
such as where to save your video, resolution,
bit rate, et cetera.
If this is overwhelming to you,
I have multiple videos here on my channel
detailing exactly how I export videos in 1080p and in 4K.
I will link to them up in the corner and
down in the description if you want to watch them.
For the sake of quickness here, I'm going to select
one of my presets that I've already created
that I cover in one of those videos.
With these export settings selected,
it is now time to apply the correction LUT.
We're going to go over here to the Effects tab,
and you'll see here it says "Lumetri Look/LUT."
Check this box, and then for Applied,
click the dropdown and ignore all of these,
you're gonna wanna click Select.
That's gonna open up a file dialog box,
and as you can see, I've navigated to
where I've saved the downloaded correction LUT.
With the LUT selected, I'm going to click Open.
And then you'll see immediately that
the footage gets darker here,
and it also says that None was applied.
Ignore that, even though it says none,
it has applied the LUT, you saw it get darker,
it's just a bug in Adobe, it is working.
At this point, you're ready to export your video.
You can either select Export down here at the bottom,
or you can select Queue,
which will send it to Adobe Media Encoder.
Both of these options will export the exact same video.
Do not worry.
Because you chose to add this LUT to your exported video,
your exported file should look just as colorful
and contrasty as your video preview in Adobe Premiere.
And that's how you fix washed-out colors
in your exported videos in Premiere on a Mac.
Now, let's talk about how to fix washed-out colors
from Premiere on a PC,
and I do have one big caveat here for you.
I only know how to fix this issue on PCs
with an NVIDIA graphics card because
my computer has an NVIDIA graphics card, I had this issue,
and I figured out how to fix it.
So, if you have an AMD graphics card,
I'm not even sure if you may even be dealing
with washed-out colors, and if you are,
unfortunately, I do not know how to fix it.
But, if you are a Premiere Pro user
that also has an NVIDIA graphics card,
please continue watching if you wanna see
how to fix washed-out colors.
The first thing you'll need to do
to fix your washed-out colors on PC
is to open the NVIDIA Control Panel.
If your computer doesn't have the
NVIDIA Control Panel installed,
you can install it by going to NVIDIA's website and
downloading the latest NVIDIA drivers.
If you don't know what graphics card you have,
you can download the NVIDIA GeForce Experience app,
and the software will automatically detect
your graphics card and install the proper drivers
and the NVIDIA Control Panel.
To open the NVIDIA Control Panel,
you can go down here to the bottom right of your task bar,
right-click on the NVIDIA settings icon,
and select NVIDIA Control Panel.
After opening the NVIDIA Control Panel,
go down here to Adjust Video Color Settings
under the Video heading,
and you're gonna wanna make sure first of all
that under "How do you make color adjustments?",
"With the NVIDIA settings" is selected.
Then, you're gonna click on the Advanced tab,
and here you're gonna see it says, "Dynamic range,"
and mine currently says, "Full 0-255," which is accurate.
If yours says, "Limited 16-235,"
then you're gonna wanna make sure that you select Full,
the reason being is that Adobe Premiere uses Full.
It is showing the full range of colors in contrast.
But, if your computer is set to Limited,
whenever you export your videos,
of course they're going to look washed out because
they're not showing that full range of colors
that you're seeing in Adobe Premiere.
So, click Full and then click Apply
over here in the bottom right,
and that should apply the full range of colors
to your exported videos.
And that is how you fix washed-out colors on Mac and on PC.
I hope this video has been helpful to you.
If you have a friend that is struggling with
washed-out colors, either on Mac or on PC,
please consider sharing this video with them.
It is also a massive help to me if you would consider
liking this video and subscribing
if you wanna see more videos like this in the future.
Thanks so much for watching, and have a great day!
(chill music)