How to Use HSL Secondary in Premiere Pro

A workflow taught by Adobe Certified Instructors at Adobe Video World.

HSL Secondary is a powerful Lumetri tool that lets you isolate a specific color or range — like skin tones, a sky, or a single object — and grade just that part of the image. It’s how colorists make targeted adjustments without affecting everything. This guide explains how HSL Secondary works and how to make precise, selective color corrections.

What HSL Secondary Does

HSL Secondary, found in the Lumetri Color panel, lets you select a portion of the image based on its Hue, Saturation, and Luminance, then grade only that selection. This is called a secondary correction because it targets one area rather than the whole frame.

It’s how you adjust a single color independently — making a sky bluer, calming red skin, or changing an object’s color — while leaving the rest untouched. This selective control is essential for professional grading beyond global adjustments.

Primary vs. Secondary Correction

A primary correction affects the whole image — overall exposure, contrast, and color balance. A secondary correction, like HSL Secondary, targets a specific isolated part, letting you fine-tune individual elements after the global grade.

Professional grading typically does primaries first, then secondaries for refinement. Understanding this order, building on our color grading guide, helps you work efficiently — balance the whole image, then selectively perfect specific colors.

Select a Color with the Eyedropper

To isolate a color, use the eyedropper in the HSL Secondary section to click on the part of the image you want to target — a face, a sky, a shirt. Premiere selects pixels matching that color across the frame.

The eyedropper gives you a starting selection based on what you clicked. From there, you refine which pixels are included using the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance sliders, narrowing or widening the selection precisely.

Refine the Selection

The H, S, and L range sliders control exactly which pixels are selected. Narrowing them isolates a tighter range of color, while widening includes more, and the handles let you feather the selection so the edges blend smoothly.

Getting a clean selection is the most important step, since a sloppy one causes the grade to spill onto unintended areas. Adjusting the ranges until only your target is selected, with soft edges, sets up a believable correction.

Use the Selection View

To see exactly what’s selected, enable the Color/Gray or mask view, which shows selected pixels in color and everything else in gray (or as a mask). This makes it easy to spot whether your selection is clean or spilling.

Working in this view, you tighten the ranges until only your target shows. It’s the most reliable way to perfect a selection before grading, much like using the matte view when keying — you isolate first, then adjust.

Grade the Isolated Color

Once your selection is clean, use the correction controls to grade just that area — shifting its hue, boosting or reducing saturation, or changing its brightness. Only the selected pixels change, leaving the rest of the image exactly as it was.

This is where the power shows: you can turn a dull sky vivid blue, mute a distracting color, or warm just the skin tones. The targeted adjustment affects only what you isolated, giving you surgical control over individual colors.

Perfect Skin Tones

A classic use is refining skin. Selecting skin tones with HSL Secondary lets you even them out, reduce redness, or add warmth without affecting the rest of the frame, which is crucial since skin is so important to how a shot reads.

Checking your adjustment against the vectorscope’s skin tone line ensures the result stays natural. Targeted skin grading with HSL Secondary is one of the most valuable secondary corrections for any footage with people.

Add a Mask to Limit the Area

Sometimes a color appears in multiple places but you only want to grade one. Combining HSL Secondary with a mask limits the correction to a specific region, so you affect the target object without changing the same color elsewhere.

This combination of color selection and spatial masking gives you total control. When isolating by color alone selects too much, adding a mask confines the grade to exactly the area you intend.

HSL Secondary Best Practices

• Do primary corrections first, then secondaries to refine.
• Select a color with the eyedropper, then tighten the ranges.
• Use the selection view to ensure a clean isolation.
• Combine with a mask when a color appears in several places.

Common HSL Secondary Mistakes

• A sloppy selection that spills the grade onto other areas.
• Hard selection edges that look unnatural.
• Over-grading the isolated color until it looks fake.
• Skipping primaries and jumping straight to secondaries.

A Real HSL Secondary Example

Imagine a clip where a brilliant red jacket pulls the eye away from the subject’s face. You open HSL Secondary, click the jacket with the eyedropper, and refine the H, S, and L ranges in the selection view until only the red is isolated with soft edges. Then you drop its saturation, calming the jacket so it no longer fights for attention.

Because the selection is clean, nothing else in the frame shifts — the skin, background, and everything else stay exactly as graded. That surgical control over a single color, without touching the rest, is the whole point of secondary correction, and it’s how colorists guide the viewer’s eye and fix distractions that a global grade can’t address.

Build Multiple Secondaries for Full Control

Serious grading often uses several secondary corrections stacked together, each isolating a different element. One secondary might enrich a dull sky, another might calm red skin, and a third might shift a brand color to match a palette — each targeting its own selection while leaving the others alone.

Premiere lets you add multiple Lumetri instances or layer adjustment layers to build these up cleanly. Combined with the primary grade and the precision of curves, a series of well-crafted secondaries is how a flat clip becomes a polished, fully controlled image where every important color does exactly what you want.

After fine-tuning individual colors, using LUTs in Premiere Pro apply a complete look in one click.

Key Takeaways

• HSL Secondary isolates a color by hue, saturation, and luminance.
• It grades a specific area without affecting the whole frame.
• Refine the selection with the ranges and the selection view.
• Use it for skin tones and targeted color corrections.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is HSL Secondary in Premiere Pro?

HSL Secondary is a Lumetri tool that isolates a color by its Hue, Saturation, and Luminance, then grades only that selection. It lets you adjust a specific color — like skin tones or a sky — without affecting the rest of the image.

How do I isolate a color with HSL Secondary?

Use the eyedropper to click the color you want to target, then refine the selection with the H, S, and L range sliders. Enable the selection view to see exactly what’s isolated and tighten it until only your target shows.

What’s the difference between primary and secondary correction?

A primary correction affects the whole image — overall exposure, contrast, and color. A secondary correction like HSL Secondary targets a specific isolated part. Do primaries first, then secondaries to refine individual colors.

Sources: Wikipedia’s overview of the HSL color model.