- Hey, guys.
My name is Matt Johnson with WhoisMatt.com,
and today, I want to show you how to easily color grade
in Premiere Pro using lookup tables,
or, as they're commonly called, LUTs.
If you want to save a lot of time color grading
and go straight from a flat and low-contrast LOG image
to a beautiful color graded image,
using a LUT is the way to go.
Now, before we get into things,
I would highly recommend watching my last video,
all about color grading in Premiere,
because I'm going to be building on top of that video
and using many of the same tools in this one.
I will link to that video in the corner
and down in the video description.
With that, welcome to Premiere Pro,
and if you've watched my previous video,
this setup is gonna look very familiar.
Here we are in the Color Workspace.
If yours does not look like this,
you can just go up
to Window, Workspaces, Reset to Saved Layout
to get it back to looking like this.
And you are now ready to color grade using LUTs.
But what is a LUT?
As I said at the start of this video,
LUT stands for "lookup table."
But what the heck is that?
In short, a LUT is a color preset
that will automatically apply a set of colors
to your video clip
and give it a certain look.
And this look could really be anything.
There are LUTs that make your footage look super colorful.
There are LUTs that desaturate your footage
so it looks like a vintage film.
You've got black-and-white LUTs.
You've got infrared LUTs.
You've got Michael Bay neon teal-and-blue LUTs
that make your film look like a summer blockbuster!
You name it, there's probably a LUT for it.
And the way these LUTs work
is they use a bunch of math and numbers
that are stored in a file called a .cube file.
This .cube file can be read
by most major video editing software programs today,
like Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and Final Cut,
meaning that applying a LUT to your footage
and changing its colors
can be as simple as a few clicks.
It's pretty cool.
So I'm sure you're wondering at this point,
"Where do you get LUTs?"
Well, I'm glad you asked.
I've actually created a set of LUTs called WhoisMatt LUTs
that are aimed at helping you improve
the colors in your films, and today,
I'm gonna be showing you how to use these LUTs
to color grade your footage in Premiere Pro.
I'll be color grading footage that I filmed
in S-Log3 with my Sony a7S III,
which is my favorite picture profile for this camera.
But I want you to know that these LUTs are made to work
with both LOG and standard footage,
so if you're shooting with a different picture profile
or a different camera,
these LUTs should still look great.
I'll link to them down below, if you want to check them out.
Making sure you're in the Color Workspace,
let's go over here to the Lumetri Color Panel
and the Creative tab now.
Make sure that your video clip is selected
so you can access this panel,
and over here, next to Look, which says None,
click this dropdown menu,
and you can either browse and select a .cube file
or, if you want to install your LUTs
to this dropdown menu here,
you can save your .cube file to a folder
that's buried in your Windows or Mac operating system.
I will list exactly where you need to put the file
down in the video description.
I'm gonna go down here
and select the "whoismatt 01 - LOG" LUT,
and check this out.
Ooh, there we go!
Immediately we have more contrast. We have more saturation.
Hey, nice golden sunset vibes.
This is looking pretty good. Okay.
Over here, under where you selected LUT,
you'll see you have an Intensity slider,
and this is where you can change the intensity of the LUT.
If I drag it to the left,
it's like there's no LUT applied at all.
If I drag it to the right...
Oh, my gosh, it looks like nuclear fallout.
Okay, we'll go back to the middle.
This Intensity slider is super useful,
and whenever I've used LUTs that I've purchased in the past,
I've always found that I needed
to tweak the intensity a little bit
to really dial in the LUT to my liking.
Now, when you see this LUT applied,
it looks like it might be a little warm here
in the skin tones,
and here's where we need to debunk a lie
that you may see people throwing around
whenever they're trying to sell your their LUTs.
Never believe anyone who says
you can just put their LUT on your footage
and it will immediately look perfect.
All LUTs are going to require tweaking of some sort,
and some are gonna require a lot of tweaking.
I made these LUTs to require minimal tweaks,
but as you can see with this shot,
they will still require a bit of modifications
due to how I film these clips.
Go over here to Curves,
and I'm gonna go over here to the midtones.
Click and create a point.
I'm gonna bring the brightness in the midtones up,
just a bit.
But now my shadows are looking a little bit too bright,
so I'm gonna click here
and bring down the shadows just a little bit more.
Just a smidge,
because this shot was so dark
and the couple was in the shadow backlit by the sun.
I find that that little tweak is making this look pop.
Next, let's go over here to the Color Wheels,
and I feel like this shot...
I like how warm it is,
but I want the skin tones to be slightly less warm.
So I'm gonna drag these midtones oh, so slightly down,
make them slightly cooler.
And then for the highlights,
I'm gonna shift and make these slightly warmer,
because I do want that golden sun effect,
but I don't want it to be overpowering on the skin tones.
All right.
And as you can see, a few minor tweaks,
this LUT is looking awesome.
Let's go on to the second clip now.
If you watched my last video,
you'll know this is the groom getting ready for the day.
And let's click on the first clip now.
Go up to Effect Controls.
We're gonna copy this Lumetri Color effect
by pressing Control + C, or Command + C if you're on a Mac.
Let's click on this second clip,
and I'm gonna press Control + V,
or Command + V if you're on a Mac,
and uh-oh!
We're going super-golden skin tones here.
Little too intense, so
let's dial this all back.
I'm going to double-click on these two color wheels here
to bring those colors back.
Now, let's see about cooling this off.
So our midtones are these skin tones here.
So let's drag that down to the blue,
gonna cool it off, cool it off.
Let's cool off the highlights just a little bit, too,
to make sure his shirt's looking real white.
There we go.
So we still have a nice, real warm, healthy-looking skin,
but not too warm, not too tan.
You gotta be careful you don't make people look too tan.
Some people may like to look more tan,
but you gotta be careful with that.
Looking at these two shots here now,
I think they're really matching up well
between the two of them.
That leaves us with the last shot here.
We've got the couple dancing. All right.
I'm gonna go over here to the second shot,
because this is the shot that I cooled down.
Control + C to select this effect.
Control + V. There we go.
Okay, not nearly as warm.
A few minor tweaks need to happen, though.
Drag down the highlights here, cool those off a bit.
I know this shot is still looking a little warm,
so let's go up here to the Basic Correction tab,
and I'm gonna go over here to Temperature,
which is gonna effect the temperature of the entire clip.
And I'm gonna drag it just a few points to the left.
So there we go. We're adding some more blue in.
Dress is looking white. His pants are looking white.
Skin tones looking good.
Still a warm image, but that's gonna go well
with these other two shots.
Now, looking at their dress and skin,
they still look a little red,
so let's make one last tweak here on the Tint.
We're gonna take the tint, and we're gonna take it from...
If you go to the right, we're gonna go pink,
but if we go left, we're gonna go green,
and we're just gonna go a little green.
We're gonna add just a bit of green back in,
and so suddenly, dress is looking whiter.
Pants are looking whiter,
and skin tones are looking really, really great.
This couple's popping off the screen.
And so you see how simple this is.
Just a few minor tweaks.
I love being able to go back up here to the Basic Correction
and then I can make little modifications at this point,
but you really don't have to make
a ton of changes with LUTs.
As long as they're good LUTs,
they're pretty easy to work with.
Let's play all these clips back now and see how they look.
We got those warm, sunset skin tones looking really great.
With the donkeys. Love them.
Then we've got the groom getting ready,
and he's looking great.
Last, we have the couple dancing,
and even under this warmer tungsten lighting,
I think they look awesome.
With that,
you now know how to color grade your footage
in Premiere Pro using LUTs, and my WhoisMatt LUTs
are linked down in the video description
if you want to check them out.
With that, thank you so much for watching.
Lastly, if you happen to be a wedding filmmaker
- as you've seen from these clips, I am -
you probably want to book more couples
and film more weddings.
To help you out with that, I've created a free guide
that's gonna walk you through some practical steps
that you can take right now in your business
to book more couples and film more weddings.
It's a completely free gift to you.
You can download it at the link
down in the video description.
Thanks so much for watching, and have a great day.