- What's up everybody, Peter McKinnon here,
and today, we're talking about
color grading, LUTs, and presets.
You've been asking for it,
so here it is.
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A few months ago, I put out a video called
How to Make Your Footage Look Cinematic Fast.
You guys loved it, I loved it, it was a good time to be had.
Since then, I've been asked so many times
"Do you use LUTs? Do you use presets?
"If you do, where can I buy them? Do you sell them?
"What's the deal, what's going on? Hit me back."
Today, I'm answering that question.
And the answer is yes, I do use presets, LUTs.
For those of you who don't know what that means,
it's a short form, LUT for look up table.
Essentially, it's a file that contains code,
and once you put that file on your footage,
it makes your footage look a certain way.
So because you guys asked for it,
today I have made my seven LUTs available for purchase,
using the link below, you can check that out.
You can download those, apply them to your footage,
and get the same kind of look that you see in
my cinematic cut-ins in the vlogs
and the B-roll stuff that I do.
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So before we go any further, I want to show you
what these seven LUTs actually look like in Premier,
on some footage that I've shot in the past,
so we're gonna do that.
And I want to show you a little technique that I use
to get the most out of them, so when you're using them
on your own footage, you'll get the very best result.
So let's go do that right now.
Okay, so let's run through how to apply
these LUTs to your footage.
A little bit about what they look like,
when you can use them, when you should use them,
and the best way to get the most out of them.
So check this out.
When you open up the file, you're gonna see
these seven cube files.
Can't really double click 'em and open them,
they're not really gonna do anything, but
we're gonna use them through Premier Pro
and apply them to our clips,
so check this out, let's just close that.
Firstly, save them to somewhere you're not gonna lose 'em.
Dropbox, maybe have something locally, on an external,
and in the cloud.
Three things are always a good way to back up your files.
So check this out.
We've got a clip here of me shooting
some B-roll in the forest,
we have a clip here of the street from an airplane,
and a dude busting a manual in Venice Beach, what?
Come over here in your media bin.
Right click, New Item, Adjustment Layer, Enter.
That's gonna make an adjustment layer in our media bin.
Now, we're gonna apply this on top of our clips,
like so, you can B blade to cut that at the end,
A to get back to the arrow, and delete.
Now we're gonna apply this to all
of the clips for this reason.
Hold down Alt to drag that over,
hold down Alt to drag that over,
drag that out, and we'll cut off this one.
I think it's better to apply a LUT and an edit
to the adjustment layer on top of the footage.
That way, we can always just delete this adjustment layer,
we can hide it, and we're always gonna have
that fresh file underneath, okay?
Make sure your Lumetri tab is open, hit Window,
down here, under Lumetri,
that's available in the CC version of Premier Pro.
That's gonna give you this tab on the side here.
I always like to just slightly edit this a little bit,
maybe up the color, up the saturation,
depending on what it needs or what it doesn't need.
And we drop those highlights a little,
make it a little brighter, a little more white,
a little less black, boom.
Kind of giving it like a base coat before I apply the LUT.
Now, this is what I do.
I come over to the first frame here of the clip,
making sure that adjustment layer is selected.
In your Lumetri panel over here, it says Input LUT,
you're gonna click on that menu, hit Browse,
and that's gonna open, you're gonna navigate
to where you saved those LUTs,
and now you have access to them.
We got Arctic Circle, Black Eye, Clean and Tidy,
Fade Out, Kodak Killer, Noir, and Teal and Orange.
So let's start with Arctic Circle.
It's gonna make things look colder, that's why I created it,
hit open.
Right away, I can tell you that it's coming on too strong,
like someone that's got some bad cologne, and you're like
(mumbles)
This is why you apply it to an adjustment layer.
Come over here to Effect Control,
so you'll probably be here default,
click on Effect Controls for that adjustment layer,
and we can change the opacity of the LUT
that's applied to this clip.
We start that at zero, and then introduce it,
a little bit until you're happy with it.
It's good around 50%, most of the LUTs are.
Now they come on strong because sometimes they look
great at full stop, and sometimes they look better
when there's only a little bit of it introduced.
So in this case, 50% looks pretty good.
And that's designed to just give off a more of
a cold, cool feel, you're shooting in the mountains,
if you're snowboarding, if it's at nighttime, blue filters,
why I call this Arctic Circle,
are good choices to go with.
If you want to clear that off, you can just
right click on this adjustment layer, hit Enable,
and now you're back to your raw footage.
And you don't have to actually edit
or touch that clip below.
Same thing to get it back, reverse it, you're back.
Now if you don't want this LUT and you want
to try something else, come up here to the Input tab,
hit None, and then just browse, and pick something else.
Let's go Black Eye.
Pretty cool.
Now, we didn't change the opacity of this before
we applied this again, so it applied Black Eye at 50%.
At 100%, way too strong.
But like I said, you can dial that back to zero,
slowly introduce it.
I think it looks good around like 35 even,
not 50 might even be too much.
And then you can tweak from there in your Lumetri panel,
maybe a little more exposure, maybe a little more contrast,
and a little more white, and there,
we have a pretty cool-looking clip.
Now if you don't like that,
you can bring this back up to 100,
click none, and let's try something else out.
Kodak Killer is one of my favorites,
it's kind of like a film emulation, it's kind of vintage,
it's got a warm feel to it.
It's what I use in 80% of my vlogs,
when I do cinematic B-roll sequences,
so that's one you guys will probably really like.
Let's check that out.
Look at that, it's just cool.
There's just something about it that looks good.
That's all that matters, is that you are happy,
you're having fun.
There is no right, there's no wrong.
Sure, there's things that look better or look worse,
but that's all subjective.
If you like it and you're happy, then it's good to go.
Now, in my professional opinion,
and if you're doing a job for somebody,
typically if you cake on a filter, and it's at like 100%,
and it's coming in hot, it tends to be a little more
on the amateur side, but like I said,
sometimes I just like to, I like to do that,
because I'm having fun with it.
So toning them back usually is a little more
of a professional look to it, so check this out.
So that was 100%.
If we make this like ...
45, that looks a lot better in my opinion
watching that clip than it did if it was at 100.
Still looks cool, but it looks a little more
intentional at 45.
The Teal and Orange, one you guys have all been wanting
and asking for, there it is at 100%.
I typically, or that's at 100%,
I typically keep it at around 50 or 45.
I add a little bit of orange to that,
and drop the exposure a little bit, and I up the contrast,
a little more black, and that is typically what I use
when I shoot for the Teal and Orange.
Let's try a different clip,
let's try this one here, the city.
Let's throw Kodak Killer on this city clip.
Boom, at 100%.
That looks pretty good, maybe a little more brightness,
a little more contrast, and I'm happy with that.
That's one that looks good at full stop.
Come over here.
Noir is a really nice black and white,
it's a really clean, crisp, black and white
that just looks fresh.
Super big fan of this one.
It looks good on just about anything you put it on,
at just about any percentage.
Let's go over here, hit none, let's browse,
this is at 48%, let's add Noir to that,
and pump that up to 100.
Still looks pretty cool.
It's just I'm a big fan of that one, so that's cool.
Kodak Killer's a great, and the Teal and Orange, obviously.
Fade Out's like a really popular cinematic trend right now
in footage on YouTube and different videos.
It essentially just desaturates the footage,
plays with the shadows a little bit,
but gives you a really kind of flat feel.
Now if you drop that down to like ...
65 or 75,
it's a really cool cinematic look
that's pretty easily obtainable.
It looks good on drone footage, it looks good with cars.
And you're gonna notice that there's certain LUTs
that look good with certain clips at certain times of day.
And that's when you start to get really good footage,
when you start thinking hand-in-hand to the edit,
while you're out there shooting.
So that's pretty much it, that's the fast way
to apply a LUT to an adjustment layer
on your footage within Premier Pro.
It's pretty easy to do, just make sure you save those,
back 'em up so you don't lose them.
And you guys are off to the races.
Okay guys, thanks so much for watching this video.
I hope you got something out of it,
and if you do buy the LUTs, thank you very much,
I really appreciate it, I appreciate you.
More importantly, I hope that these inspire you
to go out there and shoot footage,
so that you're excited to come back and edit,
and start crushing that cinematic game.
Because it's all about just going out and creating,
and when you have things that inspire you to create,
that's the spark, and it only takes a spark
to start the fire inside.
So if you're feeling that, get out there and start using it.
Hit that Like button if you like this video,
subscribe if you aren't already, and, and,
I'll see you guys in the next video.
Got a big announcement in the next vlog.
Whoo, it's gonna be a good one.
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