Color Management in After Effects (Should I use display color setting or not?)

[kaihin30]

I'm on apple and mainly I export video for social media usage (YouTube, Instagram, etc.) in mp4.

I've been dealing with color managemnt issue for a long time yet couldn't really figure out how it works, this one is by far the most detailed explaination I've found, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf3x4dhxydk .

Here's another video by Adobe telling me to disable "use display color setting", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqz7WGK2pCo .

I don't even know how to ask a proper question about the issue actually, when I enable "use display color management" the color just looks completely off, so I always keep it disabled.

I wonder if it's the reason my video always look a bit washed when playing with QuickTime Player and YouTube (yet it looks fine in VTC player.)

Hope someone can help me out and suggest me the best setting for social media export. Great thanks!

[ToolfarmJP]

I understand the color issue is always annoying. I would recommend you determine and set your default color setting like Adobe RGB, sRGB, ACES. I recommend to set ACES if you combine some 3D CG files in After Effects. The color space of 3D CG files is usually a scene liner workflow.

[Tom_edit · Accepted solution]

I wonder if it's the reason my video always look a bit washed when playing with QuickTime Player and YouTube (yet it looks fine in VTC player.)

This is due to quicktime using a different gamma profile than youtube/web/most other players. Prem/AE default to 2.4, youtube will be either 2.2 or 2.4 (I think it can be browser dependent? I don't remember what youtube does), quicktime uses gamma 1.96 which leads to that washed out look. Ignore quicktime, apple is the problem.

[kaihin30]

It's there a reason that the color goes completely off when I enabled "use display color setting"?
I'm asking this because I use the plugin FX Consoles to take screenshots within a project, and I believe its using my display color setting which makes the color so weird.

[nishu_kush]

Now sure about how FX Console stores the screenshot. You may reach out to the plug-in manufacturer's support. Here you can find details about the Use Display Color Management.

Hope it helps.

Thanks,
Nishu