Fix iPhone footage — Exporting from Premiere pro

Ever since Apple introduced HDR to their phones, they also introduced an issue for all of us who like to produce content that was shot with an iPhone. The HDR was impossible to export, the colors would not match, the video would look washed out, desaturated, or simply unusable.

After some research and in an effort to help the videography community, I have found a method that may just be the solution.

The sequence settings

Here the most important part is to make sure that “Working Color Space” is set to Rec. 2100 HLG. For me, Premiere is setting it automatically but older versions do not do it.

Export Settings

Now for the good part. Most presets would not work or give the unexpected and unwanted results.

Setting the preset to Apple ProRes 422 HQ HLG and also making sure that the color space is matching the sequence settings of Rec. 2100 HLG will create a video that is also HDR.

This exported version is going to be a .mov file and will look great on the iPhone, with the same colors and looks as the original (plus your edits of course), and will maintain its HDR capabilities.

Let me know if this works for you, and thanks for reading!