color shift when importing Illustrator to After Effects

[Angelo Lorenzo]

After changing and saving your illustrator file did you do one of the following:

– Restart After Effects
– In the project bin in After Effects, did you right click the AI file and select reload?

In After Effects, also make sure you’re now interpreting the AI file as sRGB as to avoid introducing a conversion in the other direction if it’s still interpreting the file as US Coated, or some other CMYK profile.

Just want to hit this with some of the “duh!” troubleshooting first.

Angelo Lorenzo
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[Michael Greenwald]

Reloading footage is no problem, I do it all the time.

About color management: I changed the Working Space in Color Settings to “sRGB IEC61966-2.1”. So now all footage is being interpreted as sRGB. Nothing has changed, though.

[Chris Vo]

Did you find the answer to this?

I have the same issue where I use the same HEX code in both Illustrator CC and AE CC and yet they are significantly different on-screen within AE (AE tends to come out lighter). Illustrator is in RGB mode.

[Jason Soquet]

My problem was that the .eps when imported into After Effects they looked darker. I found that if I save the file from Illustrator to make sure that Include CMYK PostScript in RGB Files is unchecked. Boom. same color. Hope that help some of you.

[Adam Kois]

^^ the above works for saving .EPS files but I’m trying to import as composition and having the same problem. Any solution?

[Adam Kois]

So I found a work around for this. I’m importing the AI file and setting the color profile as ColorMatch RGB.
So Right click on AI file – interpret footage – main – color management (tab) – select ColorMatch RGB from “assign profile” drop down

It’s really annoying especially since I’m importing a bunch of layers as a composition… but at least the colors are correct 🙂

If anyone finds the correct way to fix this within Illustrator please let me know.

Using Adobe CC 12.2.1.5

[Brendan Reilly]

I’ve been having the same issue and this workaround helped, but when I take the animation, which now looks correct in After Effects, into Premiere Pro, I’m having the same issue with the colors being darker again. What am I missing? I’m using the latest version of Adobe CC for everything.

[Adam Kois]

How are you exporting?

What is your project settings? : Working color space, depth?

You might want to try setting your working color space to make sure it is exporting in that and use the same setting in premier.

I don’t really have much experience working in Premier, but I’m assuming that you aren’t rendering out the project and then importing the footage correct? I would just do that if you can. I don’t see why the colors would change after rendering.

[Brendan Reilly]

I’m using ColorMatch RGB and 32 for depth. No matter what export settings I try, I’m still seeing a slight but noticeable darkening of the colors. I’ve tried exporting the footage from After Effects and then importing it into the Premiere project, and I’ve tried linking the comp directly to Premiere and then exporting. No luck either way.

[Adam Kois]

Hmm Sorry, don’t really know what to tell ya 🙁