Adobe Premiere Pro Gets Major Color Management Update, Plus Other Features by Scott Simmons

Adobe Premiere Pro is making some big changes “under the hood” with its all-new color management. We’ve talked about “under the hood” changes before. While these types of changes aren’t big, flashy feature updates, they’re just as important to workflow and the long-term growth and stability of the product. This new color management is a cornerstone of the Adobe IBC 2024 release in the Premiere Pro beta. If you’ve been actively participating in the beta program, you’ve seen these new color management features recently, so this may be old news.

New sequence-based color management

Let me say this: color management is difficult. It’s hard to set up, hard to implement properly, and hard to understand. There are so many variables in color management in video editing applications today due to the many different camera formats, viewing environments, and destinations, to name a few, that make color management quite difficult. This new color management is part of a complete rethink of color workflows, and it’s the beginning of a rollout that should see color changes across all versions of Premiere. Is it because Lumetri is showing its age, or because DaVinci Resolve is taking the video post-production scene by storm? The answer is probably a bit of both.

If color management is one of your most important features, watch this video first for a quick overview of the features coming to Premiere after the beta phase ends.

There are a few things to note. First, Premiere will color manage clips as soon as they are “placed on the timeline.” At this point, the new color management in PPro Beta will be a timeline-based system, meaning color management will only be available on the timeline. You won’t see it when you’re viewing source clips in the source monitor or things like thumbnails in the bin.

Second, Premiere will “automatically tone map clips from almost any camera,” which will be a huge improvement over what’s happening now. It’s worth noting, however, that the footage will need to have the proper metadata tags to be recognized as journal footage. I can almost guarantee that there will be times when you bring footage into a color-managed timeline that you expected to be color-managed, but it won’t be because it’s missing the necessary metadata. This happens in all color-managed applications if clips can’t be properly identified as requiring “color management.” See, color management is hard.

But it will be a great update to what we have now, which is often unpredictable behavior in Premiere. These points are the basis of this first beta implementation of the new color management system:

• Automatic tone mapping of log and RAW video from almost any camera – without the need for LUTs.
• Powerful, accessible set-it-and-forget-it design with 6 presets to cover most workflows.
• Higher fidelity and a wide range of image processing deliver greater dynamic range and greater exposure latitude.
• Color gamut-aware effects – including Lumetri color correction.
• Accurate color reproduction in Premiere and After Effects with Dynamic Link.
• ACEScct is a wide working gamut color space.
• Disable color management for custom LUT workflows.
• Seamlessly switch between Rec.709 SDR and PQ or HLG HDR.
• RAW video formats support: RED, ARRI, Sony, Canon, ProRes RAW.
• Supported log formats: RED, ARRI, Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Fujifilm, Nikon, Leica, DJI, GoPro.

I can’t tell you how much of a deal this is for those who do (or want to do) color work in Premiere Pro. Well, now we can do some really great color work. This new color management should make it easier and more consistent, and set the stage for more color workflow updates in the future. At the press conference, Adobe said, “We’re serious about color—this is just the beginning.”

Properties Panel

The new Properties panel will be a huge time-saver, as it consolidates several other panels into one context-sensitive panel where you can adjust several parameters depending on what you have selected on the timeline. If you’ve been using Premiere for a while, you’re probably aware that there are a lot of different panels, and while it’s very efficient, managing them all can be a bit unwieldy. What I like most about this new Properties panel is that you can adjust effect controls like scale and position across multiple clips at once. This means less copying and pasting attributes.

Eagle-eyed viewers watching the video above will have noticed that cropping is part of this new Properties panel. Now you don’t have to apply a crop effect to do something as basic as cropping.

This new Properties panel will take some getting used to, especially if you already have a lot of keyboard shortcuts mapped. Still, I’d go with something that potentially consolidates several panels into one. This new panel isn’t just for video clips; it’s also context-sensitive when it comes to things like audio, graphics, and subtitles, so there’s a lot of functionality built into this new Properties panel.

Interface update

Another thing you might notice if you’re looking at the new Premiere beta is that the interface is getting an update. Adobe’s Spectrum design language is being incorporated into Premiere, so the look will change subtly. This interface update will also include rounded corners on the timeline. The timeline is where editors spend most of their time, so those rounded corners are potentially the thing editors will find the most controversial.

A few other things worth noting

If you never liked big import mode added to Premiere a few years ago, you can skip it when creating a new project.

Skip import mode

Synchronization with linear time code or secondary time code

This one made it into Premiere with a little groan. If you’re recording with audio timecode for your multicam session, you can sync it using that audio timecode without having to use an external audio timecode sync tool. There’s also now the option to sync with a secondary timecode if your workflow requires it.

Bookmark this Adobe Premiere beta page to stay up to date with all beta news.