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Filed under: Motion Graphics •Post Production •

Brighter Whites; Richer Colors Part 2: sRGB

The first image (a digital photo originally saved with an sRGB color profile) has not been corrected; the second image has. Although the difference is subtle, the uncorrected image looks a bit washed out compared to how it should really appear.

In the last column, we discussed the time-honored headache of managing different video luminance ranges, and how After Effects 7 has made this a little easier to deal with. In this column, we cover an even more common problem with color space issues: working with digital photos or scans that have been saved in the sRGB color space.

(Note: The workflow has changed in After Effects CS3; we discuss it in detail in Chapter 25 of our book Creating Motion Graphics 4th Edition. However, if you’re not ready yet to dive head-first into a color managed workflow, the technique in this column provides a workaround that works fine in After Effects CS3.)

sRGB and stills

Digital still image cameras are a great boon for motion graphics work. They are great for shooting scenes and textures when a video camera is not at hand; their high resolution - usually bigger than an HD frame - makes it easy to pan and zoom around the resulting images. If you have a camera that can accept an external shutter trigger, chances are you can find an external timer for it (such as the Canon-TC80N3 timer accessory for many of their higher-end cameras - view on Amazon) that will also allow you to capture timelapse footage.

These days, most digital cameras default to saving images using the sRGB (Standard RGB) color profile. sRGB was based on the reduced color range of inexpensive CRT computer monitors from a decade ago. Some programs - such as Adobe Photoshop, and many web browsers - look for the color profile tag attached to an image, and if it finds an sRGB tag, will convert the image from sRGB to either your display’s color space, or one you defined in your preferences.

However, just as is the case with 601 luminance range video, Adobe After Effects up through version 7 does not automatically detect this tag, nor do any conversion for you. As a result, sRGB images can look washed out when added to an After Effects project. And unlike video luminance issues, you need something more than a simple Levels tweak to unlock the full glory of the underlying image.

Color Profile Converter

The holy grail for high-end image manipulators is color management: A system that knows what color space a source was created in, how it will be displayed, and how it will be output, so that software can compensate for the imperfections of each step along the way and make it always look “right” to the viewer.

After Effects 7 includes some of the first seeds of color management. As noted, it does not sense a source’s color profile in input; nor can it convert to a specified profile or add a color profile tag as part of its render or output settings. However, it does have the ability to do color compensation for your display (monitor), and most important of all, it has a new Color Profile Converter effect that can translate between profiles.

If you do nothing else, you can improve your use of sRGB images by applying the Color Profile Converter to them, setting the Input Profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1, and setting the Output Profile to match your monitor. You may need to manually install this profile under Windows; it happens somewhat automatically with most monitors on the Mac. This will give you correction similar to what you see when you open the files in Photoshop with color management enabled. (If you don’t know the color space of your sources, you can also use Photoshop to see if they already have one assigned to them.)

If you want to dig in deeper, there are two other workflows you can use to improve the accuracy of how you view these images: one involving the use of true video output and monitor chain, and the other using After Effects 7 to do more sophisticated display compensation.

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