ok so i finally started shooting in d-log on my mini 4 pro after putting it off forever because i was scared of the editing side of things. and yeah, its pretty scary. my flat footage looks absolutely nothing like what i see people putting out and i genuinely cannot figure out what im doing wrong in premiere. ive tried a few free luts and some of them make it look worse somehow, like this weird green tinge that i cannot get rid of no matter what i do with the hue curves.

i know theres no magic button but i feel like im missing something fundamental about how people approach grading log footage. do you start with a lut and then adjust, or do you do manual corrections first and lut after? or both? ive watched maybe five youtube tutorials and they all contradict each other which is not helpful. im using premiere pro if that matters, also have resolve but it terrifies me even more

resolve is actually way less scary than premiere for color once you spend a few hours with it, i promise. the node system looks intimidating but it makes way more logical sense than premiere's lumetri panel once it clicks. for dlog specifically what worked for me was ? and i know you said no magic button but this is close ? using the official dji color science lut as a starting point, not a random free one. dji actually provides them on their site for each camera profile. then i do exposure and white balance tweaks on a node before the lut, and then any creative stuff after. the green tinge you're describing is almost definitely a white balance issue upstream of the lut, log footage is super sensitive to that.

i went through this exact thing a few months ago and what finally made it make sense was just accepting that the first node or adjustment layer is purely technical ? get the exposure right, fix the white balance, make sure your blacks arent crushed ? and only after all that do you even think about look or feel. when i was slapping luts on raw log footage without doing that first it always looked off because the lut is designed to work with properly exposed neutralized footage not whatever weird color cast came out of the camera that day. also dlog on the mini 4 pro in particular tends to be a bit warmer than you expect so dont be afraid to push the temp cooler than feels right, it usually needs it