I will try to describe this as best I can.

Recently did a project where I edited and color corrected/graded in Premiere CS6. Not the greatest tools ever, I'm sure, but for what I was doing (adding saturation, a little contrast tweaking colors slightly, some secondary stuff) it was fine.

What bothered me was that I would frequently copy the plugin from one clip/shot to another, since they would use identical settings, only to find that when I went into the copied version, the settings would often appear to be reset. I say "appear to be" because the shots would LOOK the same, but the numbers in the dialogue box would read differently.

For instance, say I set the blacks to -7. On the copied version, it would say 0, but would still show up visually looking like the -7 setting.

It didn't do all this nonsense at first, but started to after a while. I thought it was pilot error the first time it happened but I don't know what I could have done to make it do this.

Since I had several of the 3-way plugins on each clip (an overall one, and one to isolate this color and tweak it, and one to isolate that color, etc.), it became confusing trying to tell them apart, since I believe, in addition, they didn't paste onto the new clips in the same order they were copied (if the overall one was on top on the original clip, might be in the middle on the clips where it was pasted).

Is this just how Premiere works? I'm new to the program so not familiar with all it's quirks. Am I missing something?

Two ways to do this -- select the clip, right click copy, then paste attributes to the next clip. This should keep the same numbers, or it does on my version. This will paste everything---crops, etc as well as your color correction.

In your case, with several different presets, you might set up each preset the way you want it, right click on the effect in the effect window, select "save preset" and give it a name. Do this for each different preset and they will appear in the effects menu by name, that way you could keep straight which effect is which. Then you can apply them individually.

I think that's how I did the copy paste. Actually, no, I think I pasted the color correction directly into the effects dialogue since Premiere CS6 doesn't give you (like FCP) the ability to choose WHICH attributes your pasting, and I didn't want to copy everything.

Good idea on the presets. I guess I usually avoid those since then you have a pile of presets you never use again 'cause they're project specific. Oh well.

Have not messed with Speedgrade yet. Guess I also have the option of Davinci Lite.