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After Effects Animation Washed Out Colors
Hi all,
So I’ve seen countless posts where people are asking this same question, so before anyone goes linking them here please understand that simply saying ‘check your color settings’ or ‘it’s your monitor’s calibration’ is not exactly helpful. Yes, this might just be the quick answer but that clearly hasn’t helped the countless amount of people like me who are stuck with this really bad color loss.
So based on how many responses I see pointing to QuickTime as the cause of the issue in either playback or export, I can see there’s certainly something going on there.. but even when I try playback with different platforms (VLC), and rendering with different codecs (Apple ProRes, ProResHQ) I still either come back with the same result, or when played through VLC, the colors are harsh and too dark.
I’ve attached an image showing a side by side comparison of the After Effects project window using the [none] working space, as well as VLC, and QuickTime both displaying a ProResHQ export. And before you say use lossless / animation, yes I’ve tried this, and its the same result. Also, I’ve been using the same hex# codes as given from the original Illustrator file FYI.
Any Info at all would be very helpful and appreciated, so thank you in advance!!
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4 Replies
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try rendering out to a png sequence..then check the colors on that…
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I never realized it, but yeah, VLC and QuickTime display colors differently.
What are you using this render for? At the end of the day, if you need to know if something is really color-accurate, you probably need a proper monitor for that. Honestly, I don’t really trust the color output I see on my computer monitor.
Damien Ivan
Animation + Video
Just a dude tryin to be awesome.
damienivan.com -
As i understand it all those other codecs you tried are still quicktime files so that probably didn’t yield useful results. Try an image sequence like Rich recommended or try rendering through AME into something that isn’t .mov and see if you get any better results.
I’ve seen this pop up before and it never really gets resolved so let us know if you make any breakthroughs. I wonder if you try other settings besides [None] in AE if you can get the colors to match what one of those players is displaying.
Maybe we can narrow it down to something if that’s the case. also are you sure you want the 2.4 gamma rec 709 setting. Gamma affects the lightness pretty much, so wonder if quicktime/VLC are interpreting that differently.
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When I run into this issue it is typically a color space problem. To fix it, I make sure any of the footage or images I’m using in the project were exported using the SRGB color space algorithm. If it’s too tedious to change all of your footage and assets, the main thing is to get your master project set to SRGB before you do any hires .MOV exporting. Go to: project settings>color and choose SRGBIEC61966-2.1. I find this to be especially important if I’m using Red Giant plugins or other third party plugins for color correction etc. If for whatever reason you’re still having issues with the SRGB color space, you can try one of the other choices. Good luck, I hope that solves it.
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