Adobe Premiere Pro is getting some big “under the hood” changes in brand-new color management. We’ve talked about “under the hood” changes before. While these types of changes aren’t the big, flashy feature updates, they are equally important for workflow and long-term growth and stability in the product. This new color management is a cornerstone of Adobe’s IBC 2024 release in the Premiere Pro beta. If you have been actively involved in the beta program, you have recently seen these new color management features roll out so this might be old news.

New sequence-based color management

Let me go ahead and say this: color management is hard. 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 these days due to numerous different camera formats, viewing environments, and delivery destinations, just to name a few of the things that make color management quite difficult. This new color management is part of a total rethink of color workflows in and this is the start of a rollout that should see color changes, across-the-board in future versions of Premiere. Is this because Lumetri is showing its age or because DaVinci Resolve is barnstorming the video post-production scene? The answer is probably a little of both.

If color management is at the top of your feature list, then first watch this video to get a quick overview of what will be coming to Premiere after it’s time in beta wraps up.

There are a couple of things worth noting. First, Premiere will color-manage clips as soon as they are “placed in the timeline.”  At this point, PPro Beta’s new color management will be a timeline-based system, meaning that you will only get the color management in the timeline. You won’t see it when you view source clips in the Source monitor or things like thumbnails in a bin.

Second, Premiere will “automatically tone map clips from nearly every camera” which is going to be a huge upgrade from what happens now. But, it should be noted that the footage will need to have proper metadata tags to be recognized as log footage. I can almost guarantee you there will be times when you bring footage into a color-managed timeline that you were going to expect to be color-managed, but they will not be because they are missing needed metadata. This happens across the board in all apps with color management if the clips can’t be identified correctly as needing to be “color managed.” See color management is hard.

But this will be a great upgrade from what we have now, which is often unpredictable behavior within Premiere. These bullet points are the basis for this first beta implementation of the new color management system:

• Automatic tone-mapping of log and RAW video from nearly any camera – without requiring LUTs.
• Powerful, approachable “set-it-and-forget” design with 6 presets covering most workflows.
• Higher fidelity, wide gamut image processing for more dynamic range and latitude.
• Color space aware effects – including Lumetri color correction.
• Accurate color between Premiere and After Effects with Dynamic Link.
• ACEScct wide gamut working color space.
• Disable color management for custom LUT workflows.
• Seamless switching between Rec.709 SDR and PQ or HLG HDR.
• RAW video support: RED, ARRI, Sony, Canon, ProRes RAW.
• Log format support: RED, ARRI, Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Fujifilm, Nikon, Leica, DJI, GoPro.

I cannot express how big of a deal this is for those doing (or wanting to do) color work in Premiere Pro. Well, we can do very good color work now. This new color management should make it easier and more consistent and set the stage for more color workflow updates in the future. In the press briefing, Adobe said this: “We’re serious about color—this is only the beginning.”

Properties Panel

A new Properties Panel Will be a big time saver as it consolidates several other panels into a single context-sensitive panel where you can adjust several parameters depending on what you have selected in the timeline. If you’ve used Premiere for any amount of time, then you probably do realize that there are a lot of different panels, and while this is very powerful, it can become a bit unweildy to manage all of them. What I like most about this new Properties panel is that you can simultaneously adjust Effect Controls like scale and position on multiple clips. This means less Copy and Paste Attributes.

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

This new Properties panel is going to take a bit of getting used to, especially if you have a lot of keyboard shortcuts already mapped. Still, I’ll take something that consolidates several panels potentially into one. This new panel isn’t just for video clips; it’s also context-sensitive to things like audio, graphics or captions, so a lot of utility is baked 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 will be incorporated into Premiere, so the look will subtly change. This interface update will also include rounded corners in the timeline. The timeline is where editors spend most of their time, so these rounded corners are potentially the things editors will find most controversial.

A few other things worth noting

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

Skip import mode

Sync with linear timecode or auxiliary timecode

This one entered the shipping version of Premiere with a bit of a whimper. If you’re shooting with audio timecode for your multicam shoot, you can sync using that audio timecode without having to use a third-party audio timecode syncing tool. There’s also now an option for syncing with auxiliary timecode if your workflow requires that.

So bookmark this Adobe Premiere beta page and keep an eye on all things beta.