Look Up Tables, or 'LUTs', are a quick and easy way to apply pre-made picture styles to your video footage. Let's take a look at what they are and how best to use them in Premiere Pro. 

What Are LUTs?

LUTs are useful sets of values and equations that describe the colours in an image, and we can use them to quickly adjust saturation, contrast, and the colours themselves. Most stylized LUTs are named after the look they’re supposed to emulate, and you’ll likely make your choices of which styles to use based on that.

Look up tables can be used to adjust your footage for specific outcomes, like if you’re showing your video on a particular type of display (you can load them into external monitors, for example), or they can be creative, designed to colour grade your footage and help add a look.

Fast Video Colour Grading

LUTs are universal in that they should work across different non-linear editing software programmes—like Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Lightroom, and Photoshop—and even onto video cameras like the BMPCC and others, if they support them. You could, for example, make corrections in DaVinci Resolve and export those to use in Premiere Pro. However, be aware that when you export a LUT it’ll only export the colour values—it won’t take anything like blur, masks, or grain.

Most people who use LUTs choose to record in Log colour mode, which gives an un-interpolated, very flat image. The idea of this is that you can get better results in post-production when you colour grade with this raw-like image.

LUTs are a fun way to explore colour grading. If you’d like to learn more about what exactly LUTs are and how they work, check out our tutorial, A Quick Introduction to LUTs: Colour Look Up Tables for Video.

How to Load New LUTs Into Premiere Pro

1. Browse for Your LUT

In the Color panel, under Lumetri Color, in Creative (under Basic Correction), click Browse. 

2. Select the Folder Where Your LUTs Are Saved

It makes sense to save your LUTs in the same folder so that you always know where they are. Ideally, save them into the provided one in Premiere Pro and they'll automatically appear in the list to use, but you can, if you prefer, save them anywhere.

3. Load in Your LUT

If you're using a pre-installed LUT or one of the Premiere Pro standard ones, you'll find them in the Color panel, so rather than hitting 'browse' as before, just scroll the list until you see the one you want.

4. Adjust and Style

Here I've selected one of the Premiere Pro standard LUTs, which aims to emulate the colour style of a Fujifilm look.

LUTs will appear on your image at 100% strength (or opacity), and you'll likely need to make adjustments, either as a whole or selectively, to get the look you want. You can do this by dropping down the Adjustments panel under Creative and moving the sliders to increase or decrease the effect of various elements.

Using the same example as above, the Fujifilm style, here's how the footage looked before (left) and after (right) the LUT was applied and adjusted. You can see that with very little effort, there's a marked difference in the look.

Try a New LUT for Premiere Pro

If you'd like to move on from the standard LUTs included with Premiere Pro, here are a few more resources to try:

• 

  5 Perfect Picture Style and Colour Grading Presets for Premiere Pro (LUTs)

  Try these top picture style and color grading presets out to style your Premiere Pro footage!
• 

  How to Make Look-Up Tables in After Effects and Premiere Pro (DIY Color Preset LUTs)

  In this lesson you will learn how to easily create your own custom Look Up Tables (LUTs) in Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro.
• 

  How to Use LUTs to Color Grade Video in Premiere Pro (Picture Style Presets)

  Learn to color grade your Premiere Pro footage with just a single click thanks to the Look-up Table presets in this tutorial.
• 

  After Effects vs Premiere Pro: for Motion Graphics and Video Editing

  If you’re looking to use an Adobe suite to edit your films, then you’ve probably taken a look at Premiere Pro and After Effects and wondered which you should...
• 

  10 Top Matte and Faded Colour LUTs and Presets for Photos in Lightroom

  Do you love an atmospheric matte or faded look in your photos? Take the hassle out of editing with g some of our favourite professionally made LUTs and...
• 

  How to Install LUTs to the BMPCC

  Most people use LUTs in their non-linear editing suites, but did you know you can often use them in your camera, too? Here, we take a look at how you can...
• 

  10 Top Film-Style Look Presets for Lightroom

  If you love the look of traditional film photography or you just want to add a vintage or retro twist to your images, then why not try professionally...
• 

  10 Anime Inspired LUTs and Presets for Colourful Photos in Lightroom

  Get a bright, colourful look to your photographs with some of our best, professionally made LUTs and presets inspired by anime, Tokyo cityscapes and more.