[Jeffrey Knapp]

Hi, I am having a related problem. I am working with footage, plate I am compositing a 3D animation on to, that was shot on a RED digital cinema camera. It has a custom LUT that came with it that the DP supplied.

I exported the footage out to 12-bit half float OpenEXR files.

I imported those files into AE.

The colors came in looking VERY washed out compared to the reference QT file the production supplied me.

Using an “Adjustment Layer,” I applied the LUT supplied to me from the DP.

That brought the colors somewhat closer but not all the way there, they were still more washed out than the reference QT file.

I matched the color and shadow densities of my 3D rendered animation to match the background plate, the theory being that I would pass that on to the colorist at the DI house anyway.

I rendered it out directly from AE and, womp! The blacks were absolutely crushed and there were no bright areas at all. It looked like somebody just turned down the black levels to the point where 50% of the pixels were pushed into black and the rest was just dark and dingy. It didn’t matter if I rendered to QuickTime, OpenEXR, or any other file type or codec.

I’ve done a lot of compositing in my days of just five or so years ago but, this is my first rodeo with digital cinema files such as RED raw files and my first time working with 32-bit color depth footage. I’ve been looking all over the place for help but, just have not found anybody who can (or is willing) to talk me through this color management process.

If anybody here can help me out, I will owe you a big favor in return.

Thanks.

 

—jk—