Color management workflow in Adobe After Effects CS4
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Step 1: Set up the After Effects project
1 Start After Effects CS4 and create a new After Effects project (choose File > New >
New Project).
2 Open the Project Settings dialog box (choose File > Project Settings). In the Project Settings
dialog box, select the following options:
Choose 32 Bits Per Channel (float) from the Depth menu.
•
The 32 bits per channel
(float) option allows for over-range values to be used for compositing. This allows for
preservation of highlight and shadow details in composited images. A color depth
of 32 bpc also reduces quantization errors during calculations in your compositions,
reducing the possibility of unwanted artifacts in the final rendered file.
Choose Universal Camera Film Printing Density from the Working Space menu.
•
Choosing a working space allows you to composite footage and graphics using a
common color space that is different from the color characteristics of your monitor.
The Universal Camera Film Printing Density color space is a simplified representa-
tion of common camera film stocks.
Select Linearize Working Space.
•
The Linearize Working Space option allows the
project working space to have a tone response of 1.0 gamma, which provides more
realistic compositing than the commonly used monitor gamma encodings (for
example, 2.2 gamma or 2.6 gamma). This option is only recommended for 16-bpc or
32-bpc projects, as specified in the Depth menu. The Blend Colors Using 1.0 Gamma
option is automatically selected if the working space is linearized; all compositing
operations will be done using linear blending.
Check Compensate For Scene-referred Profiles.
•
Checking this option allows After
Effects to make necessary gamma and contrast adjustments to your footage. See
the “Scene and presentation environment profiles” section of Appendix B for more
details.
You are now ready to import footage and create compositions using a color-managed project
in After Effects.
Step 2: import footage, including graphics
After you have created your After Effects project, you are ready to import and work with foot-
age from other sources. In some cases, footage that you import will have embedded ICC color
profiles. Examples of this case may be film sequences encoded in the TIFF format. In these cases,
you can import the footage confident that you will see colors as the producer of the footage origi-
nally intended. In other cases, footage will not have an embedded ICC profile. In these cases, you
can assign an ICC profile in the Interpret Footage dialog box to define the color and tone char-
acteristics of the footage, and then bring that footage into the After Effects project for accurate
color viewing and compositing. Cineon/DPX files are examples of this type of footage.
1 Choose File > Import > File and select the footage you wish to import.
2 Select the imported footage in the Project panel and choose File > Interpret Footage > Main.
Click the Color Management tab. The Interpret Footage dialog box allows you to select an
ICC profile to define the color and tone of your footage.
For Cineon and DPX files:
•
Choose the Universal Camera Film Printing Density
profile from the Assign Profile menu. You may choose one of the film stock-specific
profiles available in the Assign Profile menu. These profiles may provide a more
accurate representation of colors captured on specific film stocks. However, color
conversions from film stock–specific profiles may produce color-channel crosstalk
and negative values.
For non-Cineon raster and vector files:
•
If the file has an embedded profile, that pro-
file is the default profile used by After Effects when the file is imported into the After
Effects project. If the file does not have an embedded profile, choose a profile that
is appropriate for the image. A common choice for 8-bit images without embedded
profiles is sRGB IEC61966-2.1. (For more information on color spaces, see Appendix
A: “Color spaces and color management”.)
Figure 2 - Interpreting footage and assigning ICC profiles to
footage. After Effects converts footage and image colors to
the project working space for compositing.
Interpret Footage -
film scans (Cineon/DPX)
(Universal Camera Film Printing Density)
Interpret Footage -
vector graphics (PDF)
(ICC profile embedded in image)
Interpret Footage -
raster images (TIFF, DNG)
(ICC profile embedded in image)
computer monitor
(your monitor profile)
project working space
(
Universal Camera Film
Printing Density - (linear)
)
Interpret Footage -
HD footage (MOV, AVI)
(HDTV (Rec. 709))
