Color management options

Here are the specific options that are available in the updated Premiere Pro color management system.

New input color space settings

Premiere Pro Color Management adds compatibility with the following input color spaces for media in formats including QuickTime, MXF, XAVC, R3D, MP4, CRM, and ARI.  

Supported RAW Camera Formats

Premiere Pro color management now automatically handles media in supported raw camera formats as well. Since camera raw media has the most reliable metadata for communicating color space information, this makes camera raw media one of the best ways of working in a color-managed way.

Supported formats include:

• Apple ProRes Raw
• ARRI
• Canon
• RED
• Sony

Tone Mapping options

Tone mapping is a method of modifying the dynamic range of a video signal. As implemented in Premiere Pro color management, it compresses the highlights to automatically convert wide gamut, extended, or high dynamic range (HDR) media to the narrower dynamic range of SDR (standard dynamic range) so that the result appears perceptually similar to the original.

Different algorithms do this differently and may exhibit different results with clips that have exceptionally bright highlights or high saturation in the highlights. While the Hue Preservation algorithm is one of the best all-around algorithms (and is also the most flexible with an adjustable knee), the By Channel and Max RGB algorithms are provided for content that exhibits unwanted color shifts or other noticeable issues in the highlights for media in your sequence.

All of these algorithms can be used either for input tone mapping or output tone mapping (found in the Advanced section of controls in the Color tab of the Sequence Settings). On input, individual clips can use different tone mapping algorithms, but tone mapping is applied before effects and color adjustments are applied, which may make some highlight details irretrievable if you need to make corrections to the result. On output, all effects and color adjustments happen prior to tone mapping, but you apply a single tone mapping algorithm to the entire sequence.

The available tone mapping algorithms are:

By Channel—This option has been available previously. It produces a smoothly tone-mapped result but can slightly darken the image as a result. It does a good job of avoiding awkward-looking saturation in the highlights of wide gamut sources with exceptionally saturated color in the brightest highlights, but it can produce highlights in other media that may appear somewhat desaturated.

• Highlight Saturation—This setting lets you fine-tune how much saturation is allowable in the highlights of the tone-mapped result. It defaults to 0.5, which is good for many images. Lowering this setting can produce results similar to those of the By Channel algorithm.

Max RGB—This option has been available previously. It produces a smoothly tone-mapped result, but can slightly darken the image as a result while maintaining more saturation in the highlights than By Channel.

• Highlight Saturation—Lets you fine-tune how much saturation is allowable in the highlights of the tone mapped result. It defaults to 0.5 which is good for many images. Lowering this setting can produce results that are similar to the By Channel algorithm.

Hue Preservation—The default selection is more customizable than the other options with two adjustable parameters. This option works well with a wide variety of media and usually does a better job of maintaining brightness than By Channel or Max RGB. On the other hand, some images that Hue Preservation doesn’t handle well may appear better using By Channel.

• Highlight Saturation—Lets you fine-tune how much saturation is allowable in the highlights of the tone-mapped result. It defaults to 0.5, which is good for many images. Lowering this setting can produce results similar to those of the By Channel algorithm.
• Knee—Lets you set the threshold below which the image is not affected by tone mapping of the highlights. Raising this threshold protects more of the image, but results in tone mapping that may appear less smooth depending on your media.

Gamut Compression options   

Analogous to tone mapping, gamut compression is a method of fitting a larger gamut (or range of color) into a smaller gamut by compressing it so the result appears perceptually similar to the original. If your wide gamut source media doesn’t have saturated highlights, then Gamut compression won’t result in visible differences. However, wide gamut source media with saturated highlights will look considerably improved when you use gamut compression along with tone mapping to automatically convert wide gamut, extended, or high dynamic range media to the narrower dynamic range of SDR. SDR clips will be completely unaffected by these gamut compression settings. 

The available gamut compression options are:

• Luminance Preserving—The default option that preserves brighter colors at the expense of desaturating them to bring them into the gamut.
• Saturation Preserving—This option preserves highly saturated colors by darkening them. Highlights may diminish as a result.

Color space aware effects

A subset of all effects in Premiere Pro can sometimes produce a different result in one working color space versus another or be harder or easier to adjust based on your working color space. For some of these, the difference may be visible; for others, the difference may be so subtle as to be indistinguishable. An ongoing effort to make all such effect color space aware is underway, and this section lists the progress that’s been made. 

The current list of color space-aware effects includes: 

Color Management options in the Project Settings section

These settings affect every sequence in your project, although some can be overridden if necessary.

• Default graphics white—Sets what level of white is used by generated text and graphics in HDR programs. Sequences can be set to have independent settings from the project. This defaults to 100 nits for SDR programs.
• Enable Color Space Aware Effects—Enables effects in Premiere Pro to work correctly no matter what the working color space is set to. When disabled, all effects assume the color space to be Rec.709, as in previous versions of Premiere Pro. This setting is turned off when you import projects and sequences from older versions of Premiere Pro to present the same color as before.
• Color Manage Auto Detected Log and Raw Media—Enables compatible raw and log video formats to be automatically detected for color-management. This setting lets you disable clip auto detection when it's not convenient for your workflow.

More like this

• Configure a sequence’s output color space
• Color Management and Lumetri Color
• Premiere Pro and After Effects Color Management compatibility

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