Apple Log to Rec.709 in Premiere Pro, step by step

Apple Log was built for Final Cut first, so Premiere needs an extra check: not just the log curve, but the wider BT.2020 gamut underneath it. Miss that second step and an iPhone clip stays green and oversaturated no matter what LUT you throw at it.

Get the curve AND the gamut, not just one

Apple Log records in BT.2020 primaries, a substantially wider gamut than Rec.709. Premiere's automatic log and raw workflow, the Color Manage Auto Detected Log and Raw Media setting in the Lumetri Color panel's Settings tab, handles a broadening set of camera and phone log formats, but confirm the result actually looks corrected, not just less flat. If green stays heavy in foliage or skin will not settle after the transform, you are most likely looking at a curve conversion with no gamut mapping. Set an Input LUT built specifically for Apple Log (curve and BT.2020 both) in the same Settings tab if auto-detect does not resolve it.

If several clips are not being picked up, right-click and use the footage interpretation override to force the correct color space reading, rather than layering a second LUT on top of a partial one.

White balance and exposure, in that order

1. White balance with the eyedropper. Phones meter and auto-white-balance aggressively in camera, but mixed indoor light still leaves a cast. Use the WB Selector in the Lumetri Color panel's Basic Correction section against a gray or white reference rather than trusting what the phone already did.

2. Protect the highlights. Apple Log has real highlight headroom. Roll bright skies off gently on the Lumetri Scopes waveform instead of dragging the whole exposure down to protect something that was never actually clipping, or the clip loses the dynamic range that made shooting log worth it.

3. Match to the main camera, then grade. Line the iPhone clip up against your A-cam's neutral baseline on the scopes before any creative look goes on, so the same look lands identically on both.

Where an uncorrected iPhone clip gives itself away

Gamut left unmapped. Radioactive greens and skin that will not settle, even after the footage looks "less flat." This is the single most common Apple Log complaint and it is almost always the gamut step, not the curve.

Crushed instead of matched. Dragging exposure down to force an iPhone clip to "look like" a real camera usually throws away the highlight headroom Apple Log actually has. Match on the scopes instead of by eye.

The part that is measurement, not taste

Curve conversion, gamut mapping, white balance, exposure, and cross-camera match are all objective steps, which is why Basecut automates them for a whole card dump at once, locally on your machine. It culls the shoot, applies the full Apple Log conversion (curve and BT.2020 gamut both) per clip, and hands a matched Rec.709 baseline to DaVinci Resolve, where the creative grade starts. It exports ALE and FCPXML so Premiere can pick up the same bins and tags, but to be direct about the limit: its automated color correction is built for Resolve, not for a Premiere project, so if Premiere is where you finish, the steps above are what you are running by hand.

The 14-day trial (5 free exports, no card) is enough to see the correction on your own footage before deciding anything. See it on real footage.