Scene vs. Display Referred Profiles

Color management has been improved in After Effects CS4 to now recognize and compensate for the differences between “scene-referred” and “display-referred” color profiles. The short explanation is “Don’t worry - CS4 is merely more accurate now. Leave the option File > Project Settings > Compensate for Scene-referred Profiles enabled when using color management, and in some scenarios your output will now be even more accurate than it was before.” For a longer explanation, read on; these changes affect Photoshop CS4 as well.

Make It Go Away!

After Effects CS4 has introduced two subtle but important changes in the way it deals with many common video formats:

1) There are new PARs (Pixel Aspect Ratios) for NTSC and PAL standard definition 4:3 and 16:9 content. (Actually, they’re not new; they’re the correct, original ones that no virtually one actually used - until now.)

2) Color management now makes a distinction between scene-referred (how you shot it on the set) and output-referred (how it will be displayed at home or in the theater) profiles, and will adjust the former to look like the latter on your normal computer display.

In the long run, you really want to embrace these two changes. And we’re in the process of working up a pair of articles for PVC on these subjects (they will appear in the CMG Keyframes channel, hopefully in the next couple of weeks). But in the near term, these two changes are causing some users headaches, especially as they update projects from earlier versions of After Effects to CS4: however subtly, colors are switching and shapes are squishing. This is causing users to cry out “please - make it go away!”

Okay - here’s how:

Imagineer Systems 80% Off Sale for the Holidays

Imagineer Systems is offering high-end, high-dollar software solutions at 80% off through the end of December. To give you an idea of what that discount means, you can pick up a node-locked license of Mocha for AE for just $99. I have it on good authority that this does not indicate bad times or major changes at Imagineer, rather they are being sensitive to the current economic climate worldwide and expanding their userbase to freelancers and the little shops that can’t always afford high-end solutions like monet, mokey, or motor. Note: when shopping software at imagineersystems.com, you will see the 80% discount applied in the cart midway after you enter the Google Checkout process.

After Effects 9.0.1 Update

If you have After Effects CS4 (aka version 9.0), and if you haven’t already gotten into the reflexive habit of dismissing the dreaded Adobe Updater every time it appears, then you might like to know that an update - 9.0.1 - is now available. You can trigger an update from inside After Effects CS4 by selecting Help > Updates. (It will try to update all CS4 applications as a default; if you are in a hurry, you can disable some updates in its options.)

Here is the list of bugs that were addressed according to the release notes:

On Artbeats.com: Intro to Color Finesse

As more of us acquire our own media and import it directly into our computers, the art of color correction becomes more important. However, many - particularly non-editors - shy away from it. Well, if you have a recent copy of After Effects, you have no excuse, as a very powerful color correction tool - Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse (CF) - comes bundled free with the program. This article we just wrote for Artbeats.com will give you a quick tour of the CF interface, and then walk you through a sample correction using footage archived with the article so you can compare your results.

Click here to download a .zip file containing a PDF of the “Introduction to Color Finesse” plus associated footage.

By they way, credit where credit is due: Steve Hullfish’s own color correction videos here on PVC are what prompted us to get back into color correction ourselves. His recent video on using Color Finesse is what prompted us to focus more in our piece for Artbeats on using the Waveform Monitor rather than the familiar old Histograms.

The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

Ultimate Insider Gifts

Shopping for holiday gifts? For a peer or co-worker who already has every book, video, and plug-in imaginable? And don’t want to go broke in the process? Here are a couple of gift ideas guaranteed to impress (or at the very least, puzzle) that favorite nerd in your life:

The Top Ten Things After Effects Users Love and Hate about Motion

I teach Motion to a lot of After Effects users. Sometimes they end up in my class because they want to be there; other times their organization has sent them and they arrive kicking and screaming, ready for a fight. Either way, after clearing away a lot of misconceptions and getting them to actually use Motion for 3 days, I find almost every After Effects user comes away with a new respect for - and frustration with - this wonderful yet sometimes annoying application.

Ease and Wizz

Virtually all After Effects users take advantage of the Easy Ease keyframe assistants. Applying them makes your animations elegantly speed up and slow down. But there are alternatives, right?

There are. Switching a keyframe’s interpolation to Auto Bezier, for example, will give half the ease of Easy Ease. You can also edit the keyframe interpolation handles in the Graph Editor, or Option (Alt) + double-click a keyframe outside of the Graph Editor to open the Keyframe Velocity dialog, where you can numerically dial in the ease amount.

Beyond these Bezier interpolations are a set of interpolation behaviors originally written by Robert Penner for Flash users, based on other mathematical formula such as sine or exponential curves. Ian Haigh has adapted these for use inside After Effects by writing a series of scripts that apply the equivalent expressions to After Effects keyframes. The package is called Ease and Wizz, and is available for free (although donations are appreciated).

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