Newb Color Setting Question

[Walter Soyka]

I think Todd (who is extremely knowledgeable and helpful, and who is generously offering his time on a Saturday) meant that arguing about it is useless. Of course the question is valid, but the way you’re phrasing it suggests a misunderstanding of how color management works.

[Kevin Camin] “If you work in an unmanaged project you are using your monitor’s profile–it is a profile even if it is straight and crappy from the factory. But the program is interpreting the RGB values into something and it is going through a profile.”

Not really. Without color management, AE doesn’t interpret those RGB values to anything; it just passes them on, and the monitor displays whatever color matches those values in its own space.

The point of color management is to convert all incoming color to a common working space to get consistent and predictable processing and output. Without CM, you miss that conversion-to-a-common-standard step, so you’re just blasting raw RGB values (NOT the colors they’re supposed to represent) to the monitor. Who knows what colors they were supposed to be, and who knows what colors they will display as? It will be different on every device.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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[Todd Kopriva]

I’ll let Walter speak for me. He seems to do it without being interpreted as snide.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
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[Andreas Urra]

Sorry if I am late to this thread, but I have a question that fits in quite well. And I would be very thankful if someone could help me clarify this (all related to AE):

Summary from above:
1. Always work in a managed environment, i.e. have CM activated (project settings)
2. Work with a calibrated monitor

Now come my questions:

Setting: I have a Dell U2709 monitor, a Spyder 3 Elite, Windows 7.
I do video work generally in HDTV and web video.

a) the monitor itself offers different color modes (sRGB, Adobe RGB, custom RGB, …). Which one should I activate before/when calibrating the monitor with the Spyder?

b) the monitor should stay in this mode for all subsequent work, or is there a possible situaton when I should switch modes?

c) after the calibration, in AE > project settings > working space the profile list offers now also my saved monitor profile (from the Spyder software) in addition to the default ones. Should I choose that profile, or one of AE’s own? (and which one)

It would be very kind and helpful to clarify this for me.

Best wishes,

Andreas

[Todd Kopriva]

a) the monitor itself offers different color modes (sRGB, Adobe RGB, custom RGB, …). Which one should I activate before/when calibrating the monitor with the Spyder?

Use the space with the largest possible gamut.

b) the monitor should stay in this mode for all subsequent work, or is there a possible situaton when I should switch modes?

I wouldn’t mess with my monitor once it was set up and profiled. The goal is to have everything always as consistnet as possible.

c) after the calibration, in AE > project settings > working space the profile list offers now also my saved monitor profile (from the Spyder software) in addition to the default ones. Should I choose that profile, or one of AE’s own? (and which one)

The working space is not (or shouldn’t be) based on your monitor profile. The working color space is the space within which colors in the project are manipulated. If you’re working with HDTV, you may as well use a working color space of HDTV (Rec. 709); if you’re working with lots of different sources and outputs, use a color working space that has a large enough gamut to encompass them all.

All of this is explained in the color management white paper:
https://www.adobe.com/devnet/aftereffects/articles/color_management_workflow.html

See this page for resources on color management.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
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[Andreas Urra]

Hi Todd,

thank you very much for the precise explanation and the links to the resources.

I would like to emphasize that I highly value your teaching style having watched several of your videos in the past. Very informative, concise and simply professional.

Kind regards,
Andreas