The New Color Workflow in Adobe Premiere Pro 2025

“You gotta come see this!,” Alexis Van Hurkman told me at the spring 2025 NAB Show. “Premiere has a whole new – and much better – color pipeline!”

When it comes to color and video, Alexis is the man. A professional colorist, author of several comprehensive books on color grading, formerly with Blackmagic Design and now working at Adobe, if Alexis was working on it, it had to be good.

This conversation came to mind this week as I was researching my next free webinar on color grading in Premiere Pro. With the 2025 release of Premiere Pro, Adobe has totally overhauled how it handles color. The new pipeline has streamlined settings, added support for wide-gamut camera raw and log-encoded media, provided simpler ways to output a program to multiple formats, and improved performance. There is a lot to like in the new version.

It starts with moving color preference settings into the Lumetri Color > Settings panel. Most of the time, you’ll want to leave both of these check boxes on (lower red arrows).

NOTE: The easiest way to find the Lumetri Color panel is to switch to the Color workspace.

The new color management in Premiere automatically converts the color space of every source clip you edit into a sequence to match that sequence’s working color space, to which you then apply any effects and color adjustments.

NOTE: “Color space” defines the colors that a device, file or software can handle. Popular color spaces are Rec. 709, Rec. 601, Rec. 2100 and sRGB. There are many others. Rec. 709 (HD) is the default output color space for Premiere.

Then, the entire sequence is converted to an output color space for monitoring and export. This means that you don’t need to create multiple sequences just to change color spaces for output.

Here’s the flow: An imported clip is transformed from its source color space into the working color space, which is set for the entire sequence. Then, when the edit is complete, the sequence is transformed again to match the output color space.

Here are four examples:

• If you shoot Rec. 709 (which is the default color space for all HD media), edit Rec. 709 and output Rec. 709, nothing changes. The color space remains constant, you don’t need to do anything different.
• If you shoot HDR (such as with an iPhone), edit Rec. 709, then output Rec. 709, the iPhone media is automatically transformed from HDR HLG (the iPhone’s native media format) into Rec. 709 for both the edit and output. This is automatic and you don’t need to do anything, again.
• If you shoot log media, Premiere may or may not automatically identify and transform the color space for imported clips. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to change some settings manually. Not hard, but can be very confusing.
• If you shoot HDR, edit HDR, then need to output both a Rec. 709 and Rec. 2100 HLG video, the working color space (HDR) remains the same, all you need to change is the Output Color Space and export two versions of the same edit.

Premiere provides a ton of options and the whole process is detailed and, frankly, overwhelming, but here are the highlights:

• Automated color management can be turned on or off – it’s on by default.
• Lumetri Color settings are now color space aware, so they change as your color space changes.
• Color management is configured by the sequence, not the project. The default color management preset enables SDR color processing in the Rec. 709 color space, input tone mapping to fit wide gamut source media into Rec. 709, and Rec. 709 output. This is a good preset for programs that consist mostly of SDR source media when you want to work similarly to how Premiere Pro has in the past.
• When color management is turned on, Premiere Pro automatically color manages camera raw media, including Apple, ARRI, Canon, RED, and Sony raw media formats. If color management is enabled, raw clips will be automatically processed and converted to your output color space of choice.
• Color management is also improved when using Dynamic Link to send projects between Premiere and After Effects.
• All existing Premiere projects are compatible with this new pipeline, without requiring any changes.

There is a LOT of complexity here and it is easy to get confused. Let me give you some examples.

OPTION 1 – SDR MEDIA

If you are working exclusively with SDR media, meaning video shot, edited and output using the Rec. 709 color space, relax! All the defaults are fine.

Don’t touch a thing – just color grade as normal.

OPTION 2 – SHOOTING IPHONE MEDIA FOR AN SDR TIMELINE

Here you need to remember that the color pipeline requires two key settings:

• The working color space you want to use for editing
• The output color space you want to use for export of the final projects

When editing iPhone media shot in HDR mode (which is actually HDR HLG), you need to change the Output Color setting after importing the clip to Rec. 709 (red arrow). If you don’t, Premiere assumes that you want to output an HDR HLG project.

While these settings improve your image, you still need to make individual color adjustments to the clip. For example, this was taken at sunset, but the environment is too bright and the sky lacks the color saturation in the original scene. These settings are easily modified using the color controls in the Lumetri color planel.

OPTION 3 – SHOOTING LOG / HDR MEDIA FOR AN SDR TIMELINE

Here’s another example: Panasonic Vlog media. Here, Premiere accurately identified the correct color space for the clip, then set the working space color space and output color space correctly.

Here’s an example of before and after applying color space transforms.

OPTION 4 – EDITING BLACKMAGIC RAW MEDIA

Premiere supports Blackmagic RAW, but you need to first install a plugin from Blackmagic.

NOTE: Premiere displays a popup with a link to the correct plugin. Installation takes a couple of minutes.

The problem is that, while Premiere supports Blackmagic RAW media, I found I get the best results if I simply disable color management for that clip. To disable color management for a clip, click the checkbox indicated by the lower red arrow.

NOTE: Unchecking Display Color Management at the top of the Lumetri panel disables it for the entire sequence, which is not what we want.

Unchecking this option allows color management for the rest of the sequence, while allowing the BMD plugin to process the clip directly.

Here’s an example of the results.

OPTION 4 – MODIFY COLOR SPACE SETTINGS

Sometimes, Premiere will be unable to properly identify the color space settings for a clip. When that happens, right-click the clip in the Project panel, then choose Modify > Color.

There are dozens of color space profiles to choose from. Pick the one that is appropriate to your clip. Remember, you are matching the camera format, not applying a look. Premiere should then transform it into the correct color space for your sequence.

SUMMARY

NOTE: The one edit I’ve never done is editing HDR media for an HDR sequence. First, I’ve never been asked and, second, I don’t have an HDR monitor to do the job properly. For an HDR project, I recommend referring to the Adobe Help files for proper settings.

Premiere is late to the party with color management, but this new workflow goes a long way toward making up the difference. I especially like how it tries to simplify the color challenges in working with HDR media.

There are dozens of options and the Help files could do a much better job providing specific settings for common workflows. As noted, I was also unable to use color management with Blackmagic RAW clips.

Even after applying color management, you’ll still need to spend time color grading each shot. There’s no free lunch. These settings just help you get closer to what you want more quickly.

My best advice is to allow yourself time to experiment with your footage to figure out what works best. A good general rule is: If it looks good to you, it probably is good. But finding the right combination of settings will take a while.