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Color shift on imported graphics
It seems that when importing graphics (tiff, jpg, png) that FCP and Motion shift the colors somehow. I have clients complaining that I’ve changed the colors on their logos. If I open a jpg in Preview and also in the FCP canvas and have the windows side by side it’s clear the colors don’t match.
Here’s an example:
Can anyone explain to me what’s happening and how I can get FCP and Motion to not shift these colors?
TIA,
–Kurt Cowling
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6 Replies
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Hi Kurt,
Make sure that you’re artwork is RGB and not CMYK. I’ve had similar problems in the past, and by changing the Image mode in Photoshop from CMYK to RGB did the trick for me.
All the best,
Simon
“Is it me or do I spend half my life watching little grey bars turn into little blue bars??”
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Hi Simon,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I had a chance to somewhat try out your suggestion. I’m experimenting with two different files.
The first is a PDF that contains vector data. I need to convert this to TIFF, PNG or JPEG to bring it in to FCP or Motion. I open it in Photoshop Elements to do the conversion. PS tells me that it will convert use RGB when rasterizing the vector data.
The colors look fine in PS. I export to one of the above formats. These exported files look fine when opened back up in either PS or Preview, but not right when opened in FCP or Motion. When exporting those files I have the option to include a color profile, but the option makes no difference for my issue.
Secondly, have some files that came to me as JPEGs. When I open those in PS I get an error message saying they use an unsupported color mode and I should consider converting them to RGB (which I do). I save a copy as. Actually, I save two copies because I have options for a color profile – I choose the standard RGB and one called “Adobe 1998”. I open the two converted files and the original JPEG in Motion (3 files total) and just the original JPEG in Preview. All four look different!
At a loss,
–Kurt Cowling
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All four look different?!
OK well first off, Motion does except vector based images as long as they are pdf. If you have the artwork as .ai, save as pdf and you can scale without quality loss to your hearts content.I’m racking my brain as to what the issue could be with the colour shift that you are experiencing. With the new colour profiles, are you still seeing a noticeable shift in hues or is it more a difference in the gamma levels?
Using the standard RGB Adobe 1998 profile has never caused me issues. I’m wondering whether it is a display issue more than a literal colour shift issue of the pixels. If you can open the images in Motion and PS and using the colour picker, compare the RGB colour values to that of the originals it might help shed some light on the issue. Can you upload an example of the varying images and their colour issues to the pasture so we can see what you are seeing?
All the best,
Simon
“Is it me or do I spend half my life watching little grey bars turn into little blue bars??”
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I re-read the manual and discovered that PDFs are imported with fixed resolution switched ON by default and the PDFs I was importing looked terrible that way (in terms of resolution). The resolution was set waaay to small. I thought maybe Motion was using a preview icon instead of the vector data. I have now figured out how to either switch fixed resolution off or set it to an appropriate value. (That fixed resolution switch is only available when you select the PDF in the Media tab, not when selected in the layers tab, so I never spotted it.) This allows me to use the PDF without conversion and… the colors are not shifted!!!
This solves half my problem. The other part is to deal with the shift that is happening when bringing in other formats (TIFF, JEPG and PNG). I will post some information on that when I get a chance.
Thanks so much for taking the time to help me on this!
–Kurt
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Had the same issue here
Check the Media properties of the PSD file in the inspector tab.
Go and see how ‘Gamma’ is handled.
(The PSD file itself should have an RGB color profile.)This solved my problem.
Cheers,
Jaap -
Hi Jaap, thanks for your reply. That seems to work with PSD files if they have a problem. My issue seems to be with jpegs and tiffs created for print that are CMYK. I change the gamma in the media tab, but the colors are still a little off.
I’ve taken to insisting that if all possible files be sent as PDF or EPS (which I then convert to PDF).
Thanks again for your reply!
–Kurt Cowling
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