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Color consistancy between AE and Photosop/Illustrator
This is something that’s been buggin me for a while now. When I import artwork from illustrator or photoshop into AE, the colours will have changed, sometimes pretty dramatically. I do a lot of promo’s for tv, so usually get some client artwork, like cd covers or logo’s that i have to use, and I want the color in AE to be consistent with the original files. The files range in formats from tga, psd, jpg, ai, eps, pdf and then CMYK or RGB. Some will have embedded profiles, some won’t.
I’m trying to figure out color profiles and how to set this up but it seems to be pretty complicated and I’m not getting good results.
What is the best way for me to handle all these different files and keep the colors right in AE? Which file formats should I use and which should I avoid? (i’m getting different results between for instance importing the same file as .ai or .eps file) Do I need to learn about color profiles?
If anyone can point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated! -
3 Replies
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AE will only use RGB files, so any CMYK stuff is useless from the start and must be converted (in worst case, it will cause rendering errors or crashes). AE does not use color profiles so there is no point in maintaining them. You should get rid of them when you open your files in Photoshop or Illustrator and manually adjust your colors back to how they are supposed to look with color profiles. Make sure you work in Standard RGB or Adobe RGB and there should no longer be such noticeable differences (you can’t avoid some very minimal color shifting in some cases, but that can be rectified inside AE using effects).
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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thanks. I know AE won’t take CMYK, but it’s good to know that I won’t have to mess with color profiles. Should I turn off color management in photoshop and illustrator altogether if I’m only working for AE and not for print?
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Yepp, that’s the easiest way. We’ve tried several different approaches to this in our company, but making Photoshop and Illustrator “dumb/ inert” and matching things by eye works best. If you can, you should also try to create templates with color charts and then mangle them thru all programs. You could then create an effects preset or template project containing an adjustment layer with proper tweaks so you don’t always have to start from scratch.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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