Last month, Adobe released a major update for their creative video applications, which added, among other new features, the long-requested ability for a direct link between Premiere Pro and SpeedGrade. Before this update, there wasn't much reason to choose SpeedGrade over other grading applications such as DaVinci Resolve. However, now that the direct link between the two programs is in place, editors and colorists have plenty of incentive to learn SpeedGrade and incorporate it into their workflow. With that said, here's everything you need to know to get started with Adobe SpeedGrade.

These videos come to us courtesy of SpliceNPost, the NY based post house whose excellent DaVinci Resolve 10 video we recently shared. This series is pretty lengthy, but the depth and clarity of the information is absolutely fantastic. So get comfy and put on your learning hats, because it's about to get educational up in this hizzie:


These videos serve as an excellent introduction to the SpeedGrade interface. However, it's important to note that they were in reference to the CS6 version of SpeedGrade, and not the more recent CC update, which added a few Adobe-esque refinements to the interface and workflow. Here's a quick introduction video to what changed in the CC version of the application:

Once you have an understanding of the SpeedGrade interface, the process of grading and creating looks within the program is fairly simple and straightforward. Now it's not only possible to go back and forth between Premiere and SpeedGrade with relative ease, it's even easier to create distinctive "Lumetri Looks" within SpeedGrade that can be applied to your footage in Premiere.

These looks, and the ability to incorporate them into Premiere so easily, is one of the features that really sets SpeedGrade apart. You can use it just for the ability to create looks to use in Premiere. You can use it as a full-blown grading application at the end of your pipeline (it was a professional $30k grading system 3 years ago). Or you can use it as an extremely powerful supplement to the color tools already available in Premiere. It's a tremendously versatile tool that can be used any number of ways within the Adobe video ecosystem, and learning it can benefit your color workflows in numerous ways.

What do you guys think? Will you begin to use SpeedGrade as your primary grading application now that it has been incorporated into the Adobe video workflow? What other ways could you incorporate SpeedGrade into your color workflows? Let us know in the comments!

Link: SpliceNPost YouTube Channel