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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Colours look washed out…

  • Colours look washed out…

    Posted by Sam Freeman on May 29, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    Hi Guys,

    I am having trouble with one of our machines running CS3 – when we bring footage from capture files and place it in a comp it ends up looking mighty washed out. When we double click from the project window and open in the footage window or even in finder it looks fine. We initially thought it was something to do with the colour management settings in CS3 but have tried multiple permutations to no avail… We have duplicated the project settings from another mac running CS3, opened a project from another machine, and set colour management to ‘none’ also with no joy.

    I started thinking it may be the GFX card. This machine runs a Radeon X1900 whilst the other machines are old and knackered and run Geforce 6600. Having tried to update the GFX drivers for the Radeon X1900 it tells me that this card is not suitable for an Intel Mac (which this is). Does anyone know if this is actually true..?

    Does anyone have any thoughts as to what’s going on?

    Any help would be really really appreciated. For my sanity.

    Thanks
    Sam

    Specs:

    Mac Pro
    3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
    Radeon X1900
    4GB Ram
    OSX 10.4.11
    AFX 8.0.2.27
    QT 7.4.5

    Sam Freeman replied 17 years, 11 months ago 4 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Todd Morgan

    May 29, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    Can you provide more info? Are there other layers in the comp that may affect the colours? What kind of footage file is it? Is your comp project settings at 8- or 16-bit per channel? Does the file have an alpha channel?

    Todd Morgan
    Creative Director
    morgancreative
    http://www.morgancreative.ca

  • Sam Freeman

    May 29, 2008 at 3:38 pm

    Thanks for replying Todd.

    The project is setup to 8 bit (although I have tried 16 bit also). It is the only layer in the composition (I’ve dragged the clip from the project window and dropped it on the new comp button).. It’s blending mode is set to normal. I am working in PAL and have tried DV-PAL footage filmed with a Sony Z1, HDV footage from the Z1 and DVCAM, DVC PRO and DVC PRO50 from a Panasonic P2 HPX500. It’s all direct from the camera – although I have tried NQT’s of the same from FCP. All with the same result…

    The resulting washed out look is also there when I render.

    Thanks for your help!

    Sam

  • Ron Coy

    May 29, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    try trashing your preferences for After Effects.

  • Sam Freeman

    May 29, 2008 at 5:19 pm

    err… do you mean purge? I didn’t know you could trash the AFX preferences. How could I go about this?

  • Ron Coy

    May 29, 2008 at 6:25 pm

    From Adobe’s website… in relation to AE 6.5 but should still be relevant.

    3. Re-create the After Effects preferences file.

    If After Effects started successfully in the past, but won’t start now, a damaged preferences file may be the cause. You might be able to resolve the issue by re-creating the preferences file.

    To re-create the preferences file:

    1. Remove or rename the After Effects preferences file in the Users/[user profile]/Library/Preferences folder.

    2. Restart After Effects. After Effects creates a new preferences file.

    3. If the problem isn’t resolved, the preference file was not the problem. Replace or rename the preference file with its original name.

    Note: After you re-create the preferences file, you need to respecify any custom settings.

  • Joey Foreman

    May 30, 2008 at 1:10 am

    Try turning off color management. Then click the checkbox by Use Legacy After Effects Quicktime Gamma Adjustments.

    Joey Foreman
    Editor/Animator
    Nowhere Productions, Athens, GA

  • Sam Freeman

    May 30, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    Thanks for the thoughts guys (real useful to know more about the preferences trash) but I’m still having the same old problem. Does anyone have thoughts on the graphics card being suitable for an Intel machine?

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