Adobe needs to bring back SpeedGrade as Lumetri Pro and have a proper finishing workflow

Now I was a huge fan of SpeedGrade when it existed, and greatly lamented it’s passing when it went away. For those of you who don’t know, SpeedGrade was a professional color correction software much like DaVinci Resolve that Adobe purchased and added to their creative suite for a while, and then gutted it and that is where the Lumetri color panel came from. What I miss the most was that unlike with DaVinci where you render out movies with the grade baked in, the grade from SpeedGrade could be exported a single movie or movies of each shot, but you could also roundtrip to premiere and the entire grade came back to Premiere as the Lumetri plug in on your clips! Not only was this much faster, especially since most Lumetri grades would play back in real time without rendering in Premiere, but it saved hard drive space too and made the whole round-tripping thing a real pleasure.

Sure it wasn’t quite as powerful as DaVinci Resolve at the time, but it was plenty powerful and at the time even beat DaVinci on a couple of things.

Of course by this point DaVinci has vastly moved on from SpeedGrade, but this is Adobe we are talking about, and they could certainly update it (and give it multi-monitor support). And maybe bake in some After Effects tools for masks and tracking and the like.

Now Premiere Pro has the Lumetri Color Panel, but it isn’t near what SpeedGrade was and no where near what Premiere can do. So the Adobe Creative Suit really needs a high end color correction package and it could be the evolution of SpeedGrade or as Randi Altman called it Lumetri Pro (I wish I could take credit for the name).

An awesome Mockup for a new Adobe Professional Color Tool Lumetri CC

So Bilal Alsurri at Nine Productions has created an awesome mockup of an upgraded SpeedGrade, which would obviously then be Adobe Lumetri CC.

This is a dream of mine, because I so miss SpeedGrade. Sure it isn’t DaVinci, but it was very powerful (and I love being able to control the contrast in different regions so easily) and I loved being able to have a grade come back into premiere as plug ins on clips instead of having to render out movies with the grade as currently has to be done. Especially since Lumetri within premiere is good, but not great, and certainly not a professional level color correction program.

It is so unfornunate that Adobe seems to have given up on a professional color app for a very begginer implementation and something like this would certainly go a long way to making color pro again in Creative Cloud.

If you are like me and like this idea, please go to Adobe User Voice and give it an upvote! It only has 19 right now!

Adobe Feature Request Add X-Rite Video ColorChecker color Matching to Lumetri Color

Since Adobe has gotten rid of it’s professional Color Grading software SpeedGrade to instead just use the less powerful Lumetri Color within Premiere Pro (and now After Effects) it is missing powerful color correction tools. And it could really use some.

So I made a Adobe Creative Cloud feature request on adding support for X-Rite ColorChecker for Video to Lumetri. This would add a very powerful color matching tool, and alleviate me from having to go out to DaVinci Resolve as often.

Here is my feature request text:

Since removing SpeedGrade from Adobe Creative Cloud, there is only the less powerful Lumetri controls within Premiere Pro and After Effects there are not full pro color correction features within the creative Cloud. Now i have gone back to using DaVinci Resolve for complex grades and a tool that I use all the time is color matching using X-Rite ColorChecker for Video as well as the Passport model. It is an extremely powerful tool for color correction and really helps with color matching between various cameras. The addition of X-Rite color matching would greatly increase the power of Lumetri color tools. And it would alleviate me having to go out to DaVinci for a full grade as often.

I made new feedback to Adobe to bring SpeedGrade back to Creative Cloud

Anyone who reads my blog (I know there are not many of you, but there are some) should know how much I miss SpeedGrade. Creative Cloud used to have a full professional Color Program, and it’s replacement Lumetri is not a full replacement, but a small feature set. The ability to have a full feature set in a color correction suite and have it come back via direct link as a plug in was a huge asset that Adobe thew away completely.

So I made this comment in the Adobe Feedback Form.

Lumetri is great and all, but it is still barely a small feature set of Creative Cloud. And the old ability to create a full grade and have it come back in as a Lumetri effect was essential, especially for new features in the future. Before SpeedGrade I had used DaVinci resolve to finish a project because of it’s great power, but with SpeedGrade I was able to do everything and leave the effect not pre-rendered into footage after a grade. On some small projects I am able to use Lumetri, but it is not powerful enough. The Creative Cloud suite needs a full professional color suite, and it had one, and it is a huge loss missing it.

Adobe needs to bring back send to SpeedGrade in Premiere Pro

I have made a lot of posts about Adobe needing to upgrade SpeedGrade, but I had been using it with premiere Pro 2014. And with Direct link to Adobe SpeedGrade you could send your sequence and do a full grade in SpeedGrade, then send it back to Premiere and it showed up as a Lumetri Grade Filter on the clips. It was awesome!

Sure DaVinci Resolve is more powerful, but mainly because it has been consistently upgraded. There are still some things that I like better in SpeedGrade, like not only overall grading controls, but the same controls in light, medium and dark. I love just being able to increase contrast and saturation in just the mids! And the best features was Direct Link because the grade came back to Premiere, instead of being a rendered export from Resolve, making itinerant version changes much easier in commercials so much easier!

What I hadn’t realized because I was using SpeedGrade with an earlier  Creative Cloud, was that not only have try not upgraded SpeedGrade, but in Premiere Pro 2015.3 they removed Direct Link to SpeedGrade!?!?!? So it is obviously gone in 2017.

Sure they have put some Lumetri controls in Premiere, but nothing like SpeedGrade. You can do color corrects, but the controls are very dumbed down, and not nearly as powerful! With most of the masking controls gone, and such simple controls, it is no replacement for SpeedGrade! And while DaVinci Resolve stills works great, the loss of Direct Link is a huge minus! There is of course a thread about it at Adobe Forums, but I doubt adobe is listening!

Honestly this move is so very Apple like. Exactly like Apple buying Shake, making it affordable, then gutting it for the smallest technology out of it. Or Apps buying FinalTouch, turning it into color and killing it. Or killing Final Cut Pro 7 for iMovie Pro, oops, I mean Final Cut Pro X.

And the best part is that while SpeedGrade could use some upgrades, even without them it is still so much more powerful than Lumetri controls in Premiere Pro!

Adobe has made a huge mistake in losing it’s powerful color correction tool. It is a huge sore point missing in Creative Cloud now.

Adobe pulling an Apple with it’s awesome SpeedGrade and gutting it, and not updating it

As you can see from my last post, Adobe has just announced it’s next set of features for the Video Tools in Creative Cloud at IBC 2016. Unfortunately once again one program has been left out, Adobe SpeedGrade. Yes they are adding more color correction tools from SpeedGrade into Premiere Pro, but it has now been many years since SpeedGrade has had an update.

This is really a shame as it is a great color correction tool that needs some love, especially since it’s ability to do a grade, and have it roundtrip back to Premiere Pro as a plug in, makes it so much more powerful for projects that have many versions than doing a grade in the more powerful DaVinci Resolve, in which you have to render out your grade. With Master Clips Grades in SpeedGrade those grade would be there for whole clips in future versions while you edit.

I just think it is a shame that they seem to be gutting SpeedGrade and not giving it the love it deserves. It really needs multi-monitor support so you can pull your scopes to a different monitor, and it needs some updates, especially moving some of the tools they have created for Premiere and moving them back into SpeedGrade. The lack of updates make it looks like it will go the way of the dodo, much like Apple did with the amazing Shake and Color apps that they purchased and then killed.

The death of SpeedGrade is a real shame!

Yet again it looks like no SpeedGrade Upgrade in the next version of Creative Cloud

RedShark has a post on the Roadmap for the next version of Creative Cloud for Video to be shown at NAB this year. And the rumors look like once again, no more upgrades for SpeedGrade.

At a press briefing a few weeks ago where we first learned of these upgrades, but of course were not allowed to speak until the official announcement, a journalist questioned Adobe about Speedgrade future development and received a response to the effect of “we’re concentrating on Premiere Pro in this iteration.”

Actually what Adobe is doing with SpeedGrade seems to mirror what Apple did with Shake. Buy it, make it cheaper without changing it much, and integrate some part of it’s tech into it’s other apps, then stop updating it, until they just eventually kill it.

And the unfortunate thing is that SpeedGrade is a really great program, and the fact that a full grade comes back into Premiere Pro as a plug in is so much greater than having to render out each shot in DaVinci. And really the only thing it needs to get better is to let you move windows to a seperate monitor so you can have scopes be as big as you want.

And while it is great to have more SpeedGrade tech in Premiere (and even better to have it carry into After Effects), the simplified Lumetri color panel is so much less powetful than a full grade from SpeedGrade that it is almost useless. And really should have a more advanced version that allows for more powerful grades instead of lightroom like simplified controlls!

Adobe Upgrades SpeedGrade update, but still not multi-monitor support, SpeedGrade needs an interface upgrade now!

Eric Philpott at Adobe blogs has the info on the latest update. While I am excited for some of the updates, especially LumetrinColor changes in Premiere carrying over to SpeedGrade, overall I am completely dissapointed.

I have really come to love SpeedGrade, and it’s ability to put the grade as filters on clips, but the program needs an interface overhaul! The fact that it is still a single monitor program is unforgivable! You need to be able to move the viewer and scopes to a seperate monitor as you see fit! I want my controls and timeline on one screen and 3 scopes and a viewer on a second monitor (the viewer for doing masks, which you really can’t do on an external video display). 
Sure DaVinci is a more powerful program, but the integration with Premiere and not having to render out your grade is amazing, but Adobe needs to stop porting it’s features into Premiere, and fix it’s interface!

Oliver Peters on Lumetri Color in Premiere Pro CC 2015

Oliver Peters at digitalfilms has a nice look into Lumetri Color in Premiere Pro CC 2015.

It is worth checking out, and actually pointed out some things I didn’t realize.

I didn’t realize that the grade in Premiere Pro is separate from a SpeedGrade grade, and none of the grading passes over. This is really too bad. I really like SpeedGrade is an awesome Grading program, and it could be amazing with just a little work from Adobe, but instead they are porting some of it’s functionality into Premiere, but dumbing it down to a much more Lightroom like interface, instead of a Pro Grading Suite as SpeedGrade is.

I would be much happier if the grade was in fact the same and passed from one to other so you could use the high end grading controls if you want or the lightroom like controls in Premiere.

It actually kind of scares me that they might just dump speedgrade (no upgrades this time around), when really all it needs are a few little tweaks like multi monitor support to make it really powerful.