How To: Using Lumetri Color’s HSL Secondary controls in Premiere Pro CC

In Premiere Pro CC 2016.3, we added a new HSL Secondary section to the Lumetri Color panel. This provides additional precision color tools to isolate a color/luma key and apply a secondary color correction to it.

HSL Secondary is commonly used after the primary color correction, when you need to isolate and adjust a specific color more precisely, especially when the overall Hue Saturation Curves are hitting their limits. Typical scenarios are enhancing a specific color by making it stand out from the background or keying a specific luminance range, like a sky.

The organization of controls within the HSL section guides you through the workflow. First, set a key, then refine your key and apply a color correction at the end.

Let’s walk through the workflow step by step.

Access HSL Secondary tools

First, switch to the Color workspace by selecting it from the workspace bar at the top of application window. Note that when you do this, the clip currently under the playhead is automatically selected so you can apply a color correction effect to it.

Open the HSL Secondary section within the Lumetri Color panel by clicking once on its header to expose the individual controls.

Pick the target color

In this particular shot, we want to isolate the pink jacket and add a little more punch to it, without affecting the rest of the image.

To pick a target color, use the “Set Color” eyedropper to isolate the pink jacket. Click on the eyedropper tool, then click again on a color in the monitor’s video image. Alternatively, instead of picking a color from the image, you can click on one of the color swatches (round colored dots) to select a preset color as a starting point.

Once you’ve isolated the color of the jacket, you’ll see that the Hue, Saturation and Lightness ranges (located just below the color swatches) have updated to reflect your color choice.

Tip: while picking a color with the eyedropper, you can hold down the Ctrl/Cmd modifier key to switch to a larger sample size.

Now you should have a good starting point.

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Show, tweak and refine mask

Next, let’s tweak and refine the key. Adjust the key until your liking by manipulating the H/S/L sliders. While manipulating the ranges, the key will be toggled on automatically for you to better see the affected range. If you want the key to be persistent, click on the check box next to the key preview popup menu. By default, the key preview is set to “Color/Gray”, giving you a better view of your key, since you can still recognize the image. You can also switch to a common “Black/White” mode via the dropdown menu.

To move the entire range, click in the central area of the desired H/S/L slider and move it left/right while holding down the mouse. Use the triangles at the top of the slider to expand/restrict the range and the triangles at the bottom to feather the selected range.

You can also deselect Hue, Saturation, Lightness ranges entirely. When deselected, the entire range is included in the key. For example, deselecting the H and S ranges allows you to quickly adjust the luma range to apply a lightness key.

To reset the ranges, click the reset button below the sliders or double-click on the range slider.

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Continue to tweak the ranges until the mask covers the entire desired region, like the jacket in this example. Then add some Denoise and Blur to smooth out the mask.

Apply Color Correction

Once you have a well-defined key, use the grading tools in the Correction section to apply an isolated color correction to your key.

By default, a mid-tone color wheel is displayed, but you can switch to a traditional 3-way color wheel by clicking on the icon just above the wheel.

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Sliders for Temperature, Tint, Contrast, Sharpen and Saturation are also available below the color wheel to precisely control the applied correction.

For this example, we’ll use the Saturation slider to give the jacket more punch and use the Sharpen slider to make it stand out more.

The HSL section of the Lumetri panel combines with the existing tools to give you even finer control of your shots, allowing you to achieve the perfect look in just a few clicks.