Adobe introduces major color management updates in Adobe Premiere Pro (beta)

In our regular conversations with the video editing community, a common theme has emerged over the last few years: the need to work faster and more efficiently as they handle increasing demands for short and long form content. This makes performance, reliability, and access to seamless workflows more critical than it has ever been. With tight budgets, editors need an effective tool to perform comprehensive post-production workflows — from organizing media, editing picture and audio, adding effects and motion graphics, color grading, and delivering final assets.

Directly influenced by top community requests, the latest version of Premiere Pro (beta) brings major color management and performance updates to help editors deliver video projects faster than ever before.

First, let’s talk about color. More specifically, let’s talk about color management. We are beyond thrilled to deliver an entirely new color management system in Premiere Pro that transforms raw and log formats from nearly every camera into stunning, consistent footage instantly upon import — without requiring LUTs. We’re serious about color, and this new color management system is just the beginning of making professional color workflows more powerful and accessible for video editors right inside Premiere Pro.

Next up: let’s talk about speed and performance — a new context-sensitive properties panel puts the tools editors need right at their fingertips and enables modifying multiple clips at the same time to reduce mouse mileage. Paired with additional hardware acceleration for faster playback of codecs like AVC and HEVC and ProRes exports at triple the speed, this is the fastest version of Premiere Pro yet.

We’re excited to continue working hand in hand with the video community to improve our solutions in ways that accelerate workflows and help push their creative visions further.

Color management

Today’s cameras — from an 8K RED V-Raptor to the iPhone 15 Pro in your pocket — capture raw or log media that contains more color and dynamic range data than any monitor can display. That means, the vast color information captured by these cameras needs to be moved into a color space that our computers can work with and that today’s monitors can actually display. Rather than simply map source files into a reduced color space that causes data loss and image clipping, unique algorithms that intelligently tone map the data into a working color space that preserves the highest possible amount of data and quality is critical to achieving the kind of professional results customers want.

There are dozens of raw and log formats, each with their own unique characteristics. While managing complex color science is second nature for professional colorists, editors need a foolproof system that gives them great results with minimum input, while also providing deep pros the level of control they need to create custom workflows.

The all new Premiere color management combines all of this technology in a way that makes it easier to work with raw and log formats natively in Premiere Pro so you always get a great starting point — you’ll see great-looking footage as soon as clips are dropped into the timeline — without having to spend time adding LUTs. This automatic system normalizes raw and log media while taking advantage of all that data in the color pipeline for better control and beautiful images.

Color management should be nearly invisible: Editors shouldn’t need a lab coat to manage it, so we made this system simple enough for any video editor to use, regardless of their experience with advanced color science. Premiere color management provides:

• An entirely new color management system that automatically transforms RAW and log footage from nearly every camera into great-looking SDR and HDR, so users can spend less time managing LUTs and start editing right away.
• A new wide gamut working color space that’s vastly larger than Premiere’s HD Rec.709 working space in which all image processing operations are performed. This new wide gamut color space leverages Hollywood’s industry standard ACEScct with high-fidelity tone mapping that provides the kind of color and fidelity results that were previously impossible with Premiere Pro.
• Six simple “set-it-and-forget-it” presets in Sequence Settings and Lumetri color settings let users work in traditional Rec.709 for legacy projects or the new wide gamut color ACEScct with ease.
• Most-used effects, like Lumetri, are now color space aware with smoother and more flexible control for refining skin tones, balance, and creative looks when working in a wide-gamut preset.
• Consistent color and brightness when using Dynamic Link to send clips to and from Adobe After Effects for motion design and compositing.

Check out complete documentation for more information.

New Properties panel

We’re also introducing a new Properties panel that makes Premiere Pro easier to learn for beginners and makes video editing even faster for experienced professionals.

It takes the most popular effects, adjustments, and tools in an all-in-one, easily surfaced, and context-sensitive panel that shows editors everything they want to adjust and hides anything else based on the media type selected in the timeline — whether it’s video, audio, graphics, or captions. This reduces mouse travel, provides fast access to relevant panels for advanced work, and eliminates the need to search and navigate multiple panels to get to the needed tool.

With the Properties panel, editors can do things they’ve never been able to do before in Premiere Pro, like crop video directly from the Program monitor, or highlight and adjust the properties of multiple clips or graphics at the same time. Consolidating the most frequently used tools in a single panel, along with the ability to directly manipulate (crop and reposition) images using on-screen controls, and the ability to batch process multiple clips at a time make this a game changer for anyone editing in Premiere Pro. It makes it easier for new users to learn the app, and more efficient for existing power users to work quickly.

Faster performance and a fresh, modern design

We’ve been working hard at making Premiere Pro faster and more reliable for every job. With even more hardware acceleration, you’ll have faster playback for codecs like AVC and HEVC. ProRes exports are now up to 3x faster so editors can deliver cuts to clients faster and get home earlier. We’ve also added format support for even more Canon, Sony, and RED cameras so users can import native files and start editing immediately. Read here for more details.

Lastly, we’re proud to deliver a fresh, new design that’s modern and more consistent. With two dark modes, a light mode, and high-contrast accessibility mode, editors can customize the look and feel of Premiere Pro. Users also get cleaner fonts and typography for better legibility and consistency with other Adobe Creative Cloud apps. That means less time spent re-learning how to use tools in different apps and more time creating.

Availability

All these features are available now in beta and are planned to be generally available this fall. We’re serious about color, and Premiere color management is just the beginning of our commitment to improving professional color for video editors. Let us know what you want to see next, we’re just getting started.

For more information on how to access the beta apps, please visit the Premiere Pro (beta) page today. Also, read more about the latest new features in After Effects and Substance here.