• Adobe After Effects

  Working in Linear color space confusion

  Posted by Anders Schroder on August 10, 2011 at 9:17 am

  When comping in Nuke we usually use Rec. 709 footage and comp in Linear color space. We can then preview in sRGB or Rec. 709 or whatever othe color space to check what it will look like.

  In after effects how do we achieve the same?
  You would think that:
  1/ Interpret footage as Rec 709. No problem here.
  2/ Set Project to Linear colorspace. But this is were the weird stuff happens. Since you have to select a color space other than linear and THEN tick linear compositing. That is the same as saying that you want composite in two different colorspaces at the same time? Thats is confusing so what is the right way of working here to composite in Linear cool space to get after effect to act the way Nuke does?
  3/ Then Simulate Output -> Rec 709
  Thank you in advance.

  Darby Edelen replied 14 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Darby Edelen

  August 10, 2011 at 5:41 pm

  [anders schroder] “In after effects how do we achieve the same?
  You would think that:
  1/ Interpret footage as Rec 709. No problem here.
  2/ Set Project to Linear colorspace. But this is were the weird stuff happens. Since you have to select a color space other than linear and THEN tick linear compositing. That is the same as saying that you want composite in two different colorspaces at the same time? Thats is confusing so what is the right way of working here to composite in Linear cool space to get after effect to act the way Nuke does?
  3/ Then Simulate Output -> Rec 709”

  The simple answer is that the working profile doesn’t matter if you’re only concerned about linear workflow in AE.

  The more complicated answer is that color profiles have more information than simply gamma in them, and a linear workflow means only that the gamma is 1.0. Any color profile can be made linear. The profile will have its own unique color characteristics, gamut, etc. but will have a gamma of 1.0. So the color profile you choose to linearize will be a choice based on the profile’s other attributes.

  If you want to maximize the range of representable colors available to you when you work in AE you should use the Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB profiles with 32 bits per channel and Linearize Working Space checked.

  Darby Edelen

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