Premiere Pro Lumetri 2020: Color Correct & Color Grade like a Pro

Jordy Vandeput frames this class as an art studio, with painter jackets, portraits, and a running gag about "master artist" students. It is an unusual choice for a color grading tutorial, and it will not suit everyone, but underneath the costume the actual teaching is straightforward and sequential: open a real clip, apply a real tool, read a real scope, move on.

What it actually teaches

The course builds from the Basic Correction tab (exposure, contrast, shadows, highlights, whites, blacks) into the measurement tools that make those adjustments meaningful. The waveform monitor lesson is the backbone of the whole class: Vandeput shows how pushing blacks and whites toward the 0 and 100 percent marks maximizes contrast without clipping, and how banding appears when a slider is pushed too far. That same discipline carries into the vectorscope lessons on saturation and vibrance, where the YUV scope's broadcast-safe lines become the practical ceiling for how far to push color before it looks unnatural.

The RGB curves lesson introduces the S-curve, explained as two curve control points, one pulled down in the shadows and one pushed up in the highlights, rather than dragging the absolute black and white points. It is a small technical distinction that changes how much highlight and shadow detail survives the contrast boost, and Vandeput demonstrates it directly against the waveform so the effect is visible, not just described.

Later lessons cover LUTs and Looks, with a clear explanation of why applying a LUT in the Basic Correction tab's Input LUT field locks in that transform before any further correction, while applying the same LUT as a Creative Look leaves room to recover blown-out highlights afterward. HSL Secondary and masking get a dedicated lesson on isolating skin tones or a single subject, including a neat fix for shadows that have gone too blue after a teal-and-orange grade, pulling saturation out of just the darkest values so the blacks stay black.

Where it lands

The closing workflow lesson is the strongest part of the class. Rather than grading clip by clip, Vandeput color corrects a representative master clip, applies the same correction to every instance of it, layers a creative grade on top with an adjustment layer, and then goes back through each individual shot to nudge it into agreement with its neighbors. That is a genuinely useful production habit, not just a Premiere trick, and it is the section most likely to change how a working editor actually grades a timeline.

The course does skip almost all color theory, which is a stated choice and mostly works, but it means terms like hue and saturation are used before they are properly defined, and viewers with zero prior color correction exposure may need to rewatch a few sections. The persona also eats a noticeable amount of runtime that could have gone to more examples. For an editor who already knows Premiere and wants a fast, scope-literate path into color work, it delivers.

What you will learn

• ·Read the waveform and vectorscope to set exposure and saturation without clipping or overexposing
• ·Build S-curves in the RGB curves panel to add contrast while preserving highlight and shadow detail
• ·Understand the difference between Input LUTs (applied before basic correction) and Creative Look LUTs, and why the order changes recoverability
• ·Use HSL Secondary and masking to isolate skin tones, shadows, or a single subject for targeted correction
• ·Match exposure and color across multiple clips using a master clip and an adjustment layer, then fine-tune individual shots
• ·Animate color correction across a single shot when lighting changes mid-take