AE Color management settings?

[Andrew Somers]

While this thread is a little old, I’d like to add my two cents as it seems to come up in a lot of google searches.

RANT:

First off, I’d like to mention that there is no such thing as aRGB. There is s RGB, and there is AdobeRGB, but Adobe RGB should never be written as aRGB.

Among other things there is obvious potential confusion (not to mention typos) relative to sRGB, not even mentioning that “Adobe” is a proper brand name and should be capitalized.

“ARGB” is ALSO wrong, as it could lead to confusion with RGBA (red/green/blue/alpha), but WORSE, Windows uses ARGB as the method for storing colors in windows (alpha/red/green/blue), but Windows uses sRGB as the target COLORSPACE. ARGB in Windows is NOT a color space.

So you see, when you use aRGB, you are ambiguous and will create confusion.

Adobe RGB can be referred to as “Adobe 98” or “Adobe RGB”. I suppose if you really must desperately conserve characters because your fingers are too tired to type out all 9 characters, you could type “AdbRGB”. But never aRGB. End of my rant.

ADVICE:

I’m not sure what AE for, but for compositing and most effects I prefer working in 32 bit mode with a linearized color space. When you do, additive operations act like light int he real world, and come across as more natural.

When you are using 32 bit mode in AE, you can use pretty much any colorspace you want to as a working space. 8 bit mode is *not* recommended.

As for camera and export colorspaces:

With dSLRs you are going to be creating 8 bit compressed camera originals. 8 Bits means that you will have 256 levels of red, 256 levels of green and 256 levels of blue. This is regardless of if you are in Adobe RGB or sRGB.

The difference between sRGB and Adobe RGB is the *distance between colors*. If you increase the distance between colors, you are actually increasing the potential errors (i.e. delta E errors). Since Adobe RGB is larger than sRGB, the distance between colors is greater.

The reason for using a larger colorspace is when the smaller colorspace is clipping colors. But when you are in 8 Bit, the larger color space will as a consequence be more prone to *banding*.

The standard for HDTV is Rec709, and Rec 709 and sRGB share the same primaries, and thus have very close to the same gamut size (the difference between Rec709 and sRGB is in the gamma curve).

If your final output is for HD, at Rec709, then you may not derive any real benefit from shooting in a larger space like AdobeRGB – in fact you may find additional *problems* due to delta E types of errors.

Instead of using AdobeRGB to shoot, consider using sRGB, and set the contrast LOW and also possibly reduce the saturation slightly so that you get no clipping of colors, but then you will have an image that can be “expanded” back to a higher contrast one, retaining more detail in blacks, and with less clipping on highlights and saturated colors.

Obv., tests should be done with your intended subject matter to find the right workflow along these lines. Note that if you are going out to actual FILM, or DCI, then Adobe RGB *may* be a better choice (but not necessarily).

As a “rule”, use the smallest colorspace that does not result in clipping, i.e. “out of gamut” errors. If you do not get out of gamut errors (clipping) in sRGB, then you will gain no benefit from using Adobe RGB.

*Also* if you are using a Canon dSLR, go to the Technicolor website and look at the CineStyle picture profile:

https://www.technicolor.com/en/hi/theatrical/visual-post-production/digital-printer-lights/cinestyle