How do I get my colors to match up?

[Joseph W. bourke]

Obviously the best way to accomplish NTSC color matching is to hook up an NTSC monitor to your computer – assuming there’s a card on it which will output NTSC.

The other options involve calibrating your computer monitor, or profiling it to get as close to NTSC color as possible. Here are some options:

https://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/monitor_profiling.shtml

Note, however, that this article is slanted toward digital photographers using Photoshop, but we’re talking about the same realm here.

There’s also the Pantone Eye-One Display 2, which calibrates your monitor to match a variety of situations.

That said, to me it’s all a matter of eyeballing the colors. I get logos from clients who aren’t even aware that CMYK and RGB aren’t even close to the same language. I always make it the clients’ job to convert the color space first – at least there’s then a chance that what shows up in NTSC (Never The Same Color) has a slight chance of looking right. Good luck!

Joe Bourke
Multimedia & Graphic Design

[Bryant Vander weerd]

Those systems look like they work great, but the problem is, I’m on a limited budget, being a college student and all. Seems like most of those things only work on a CRT monitor, and I have an LCD on my laptop.

You mentioned converting the color space… does that mean I should try and convert it in After Effects? Do you think it helped when I put the “broadcast colors” effect on it?

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“I’ve always found it’s better to shoot something than it is to troubleshoot it…”

[Chris Wright]

Photoshop comes with a free Adobe Gamma ICM profile creator in windows-control panel. I can’t guarantee perfection because low end LCD’s aren’t as accurate as professional ones. But you’ll definately be better off.

You’ll use SD-TV color color management for project settings and view simulate output.

The broadcast spec out 16-235 levels so that the NTSC won’t get line crawl use a gradual change so its a legal signal, but Color finesse does a better job.

For starters…

use photoshops’ Adobe gamma in control panel, adjust each red, green, blue, and save the icm file at gamma 1.8(mac) or 2.2(win) gamma, then setup AE with color management.

you need to give your project’s Working Space a color profile in order to use a color managed workflow (this includes simulated outputs). You can do this in Project Settings (cmd-opt-shift-k on Mac, ctrl-alt-shift-k on PC).

Each file has an interpret color management plus AE has blend color, legacy colors, etc. all these plus you need the exact same codec versions, gamma calibrated monitor…

plus how you are viewing them back out. Quicktime player preferences could be different too. Use your scopes rather. Do a full render-loop, export/import file, with no color changes, there should be no change in gamma. That way tests for a correct color management setup.

Now unless, you have software like powerstrip that changes your LCD to interlaced 59.94 hz, you won’t be able to check for line flicker. But a 10 cent dvd-r can do that, can’t it? A long time ago I used to change my monitor to interlaced and send out composite to TV before I had decklink/aja, but there’s noten like a shoestring budget, is there?

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Bryant –

All Broadcast colors does is limit your color range to the “legal” colors that can be broadcast in NTSC (or PAL if you work in that world). What it does is compress the high and low end of the color range to fit the legal parameters of a broadcast signal. The whites cannot be 100% white, and the blacks cannot be 100% black. If you’re looking at the 0 – 255 range, the blacks and whites are squeezed to 16 – 235, with 16 representing black and 235 representing white. When you see a bright white screen on your tv and hear a buzz in the audio channel, that’s what an illegal white does. Illegal blacks and oversaturated colors cause smearing. Here’s a good article on exactly what it does:

https://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/help.html?content=WSE0A9B424-9673-4fd0-BED7-2ED4E1EB1E8D.html

Joe Bourke
Multimedia & Graphic Design

[Bryant Vander weerd]

I watched Aharon R’s podcast on broadcast colors, and learned a bit from his video, as well as that article. So, thank you.

I suppose in my ideal AE/post producing setup, I would have an NTSC playback monitor hooked up right there to check colors on the fly. In the meantime, I slapped the broadcast safe plugin, and a few color corrections on my anims to make my yellows not look so green. It has appeared to work well.

Another thing I have learned to do is just eyeball it. I transferred my videos to Avid NewsCutter and further color corrected them – on a PC program the colors look a bit different, too, don’t they??

Thanks for the help, guys. Cheers

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“I’ve always found it’s better to shoot something than it is to troubleshoot it…”