How to Install and Use LUTs in Premiere Pro
LUTs, Premiere Pro, Tutorials, Video, Video Editing
Using LUTs can be helpful when color
grading footage in Premiere Pro.
With lookup tables, you are able to get a good color base
and can build from that point to grade your entire project. I usually like to
edit clip by clip to account for light/color inconsistencies.
In this tutorial, I will be covering the basics of
how to install and use LUTs in Premiere Pro. There are two main methods for
doing so. The first, which involves inputting LUTs individually, makes it easy
to add a LUT to your video quickly. The second method, which involves copying
the LUT files to another folder, takes a little longer, but has some key
benefits. Your LUTs will be added to Premiere Pro permanently following this
method allowing you to quickly load any LUT that you have already copied into
Premiere.
More on that below, first learn how to use LUTs in
Premiere Pro quickly through the Lumetri Color Panel.
1.
Import Footage
Start by importing your videos or
open a recent project. Once you have your clips ready to go, navigate to
the Color Tab and look for Basic Correction.
2.
Input Custom LUTs
In the Basic Correction section, you’ll see a button
titled ‘Input LUT’ with the clickable word ‘None’ next to it. Click this button
and then click Browse.
Clicking ‘Browse’ will open up your
folders. Navigate to the desired LUT you downloaded to apply it to your clip. I
will be using these free cinematic LUTs for this project.
Once applied, you can see the effects of the LUT on your footage. You’ll also
see the color waveforms change in your Lumetri Scopes tab to give you an idea
of how the LUT affects your clip.
From here you can adjust the White Balance, Tone,
Highlights/Shadows, and more to get your clip just right.
Copying
LUTs into Premiere Pro
If you want to add LUTs to Premiere Pro permanently
so you can just select them rather than look them up within your folders, you
can do that too. Here are the steps to do so on a Mac. I’ve included the files
paths for both Mac and PC below.
2019
Update from Adobe
Special thanks to Wes Howell from
Adobe for the insightful comment. Below are the updated and recommended instructions for adding multiple LUTs
in Adobe Premiere Pro 12.1:
“Basically, you create new shared folders for the
LUTs and then you can simply add your LUTs to them.”
Custom LUT directories
Available only to the local user
Create LUTs folder and then 2 folders within that
folder at the following location:
Per user directory:
Mac
Users
/Users//Library/Application
Support/Adobe/Common/LUTs/Creative
/Users//Library/Application
Support/Adobe/Common/LUTs/Technical
Windows
Users
C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Common\LUTs\Creative
C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Common\LUTs\Technical
Or use these directories if you’d like to make LUTs
available to all users
Mac
Users
/Library/Application
Support/Adobe/Common/LUTs/Creative
/Library/Application
Support/Adobe/Common/LUTs/Technical
Windows
Users
C:\Program
Files\Adobe\Common\LUTs\Creative
C:\Program
Files\Adobe\Common\LUTs\Technical
5.
Apply pre-loaded LUTs from the Lumetri Color Tab in Premiere.
If your LUTs are not showing up when
you try to load one from the dropdown, make sure you are under ‘Creative’. The
pre-loaded LUTs show up in the Creative section
of Lumetri Color, not the Basic Correction section.
This gives you the added benefit of being able to
adjust the intensity of your LUT making it less or more intense from the
current state.
File
Paths for Premiere Pro LUTs
Mac: /Library/Application
Support/Adobe/Common/LUTs/Creative
PC: C:\Program
Files\Adobe\Common\LUTs\Creative
Hope this article was able to help you use LUTs in
Premiere Pro! If you have a question about any of the steps or run into
errors/issues, feel free to leave a comment below and we’ll do our best to help
you out.
