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I have found an issue that is driving me crazy when rendering any video in After Effects.
I am not sure if it is related to the last version of After Effects (I am using CC 2018), the last version of my Mac Book Pro, which is High Sierra, or both together. The truth is that is has never happened to me before.
When I render a video, no matter which format I choose it renders the video with washed out colours, or as if something had happened with the saturation of the picture.
This is the original illustration inside After Effects :
This is the results when I open the video on QuickTime (or importing the video to Photoshop in order to get the frames apart):
Note: thumbnails of Illustrator look the same on my desktop (washed out) + If I open the video in VLC colours are displayed correctly.
There must be something wrong with either CC or Mac.
If someone knows how to solve it, please let me know, I need to deliver a few projects and I haven't managed to find a solution,
Thanks,
1 Correct answer
After checking the issue I found out something that may be basic knowledge for experienced animators and designers in After Effects. For me is wasn't. And I also didn't find any forum where this issue was approached and explained using simple terms.
What I found is that colors may vary according to the video player as it is shown below (YouTube, QuickTime, VLC):
It is something I didn't notice when working on Windows, but now that I am working on Mac it is more noticeable to me as the screen is be
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Thank you so much! This solved my problem 🙂
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Thanks for this. Been hitting my head on a wall for days. You rock!
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I've been over multiple forums by now, and most say the problems that form within AE of Premiere should be solved by using Encoder and the right colour settings. however in my experience every step Dynamic link step seems to be part if the problem. as if colour information is lost in the dynamic link, see my reference image below.
I get these washed out steps with every app - premiere, AE and Encoder. I believe MacOS is to blame. But who knows maybe Adobe should update their Dynamic Link algorithm to the new OS. because it wasn't a problem in 2017. or before high Sierra..
Changing the project colour management settings to sRGB didn't help. for me. As you can see there's colour loss along the way of each step.
Hope this could be looked at by someone from Adobe..
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I have the same issue with a embedded vimeo video. The hex value from the website does not match a background color with the same hex value.
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I'm having the same issue man... It's frustrating as hell. If I play my video file in Mac Media Player it displays correctly but if I hit spacebar and play through apple's finder player it's all pale coloring. Vimeo also shows the pale coloring. This isn't a display issue as the player on the same display shows different color information. I'm going to do some test exports and see if there's any fixes for this. Adobe should really address this problem.
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I am having this problem at the moment with bright green coming out like a mint green every time I render. I have tried after effects, media encoder and premier pro renders and still unsuccessful.
Here is my machine:
Any ideas of a work around would be highly appreciate.
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Same problem as mentioned by people before. Changing the working space to AdobeRGB or sRGB is not really a fix.
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Andres007's recomendation is good but for me, I have calibrated the monitor with a Xrite i1Display Pro however if you don't have a calibrated display chances are you can set it to sRGB or Adobe 1998. I would make those settings match between moniter and Project Settings.
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Hi there! have the same issue. I think I found the answer in this link
https://vitrolite.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/quicktime_gamma_bug/
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Still having this issue. It shouldn't have anything to do with my monitor calibration since everything is viewed on one monitor and appears consistently washed out in every channel it's intended to be presented (YT and IG mostly). I've played with interpretting/project color management/profiles... everything and my video still renders significantly washed out. Is it possible to export a video from AE and have the colors appear as they do in my timelines? What is the point of trying to use a brands Hex codes if the color ends up desaturated in the end? (btw the LUT everyone uses kind of works on footage, but when it comes to graphics with specific color swatches, it does not fix the washing out).
I (and my client) are looking for perfection here!
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Not perfect, but this method helped me get the best results.
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Same exact problem persists in current release of After Effects. If I render out a project it's washed out if I view it in QuickTime Player (QuickTime Player 7 or current QuickTime Player). However, if I open the ProRes file in VLC it looks correct. Converting the ProRes to an MP4, regardless of conversion software used, the problem persists. If I upload the converted MP4 to Vimeo and view it on Safari, it looks washed out. If I view the same video on FireFox 84, it looks correct.
Oh!.. I also checked out the video on Vimeo with my iPhone 12 Pro Max using their app, and it looks washed out on my iPhone as well.
This has to be a Apple display issue. What's weird is that movie trailers, etc. don't seem to suffer from this problem. Only content I create in Adobe apps.
I should note that I'm running After Effects 2020 (17.5.1) using MacOS 10.13.6
My monitor is calibrated with Spyder5 and DisplayCAL.
Has anyone talked to any of the engineers at Adobe on this issue?
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I think this is the solution:
Go to: File/Project Settings, then go to Colors and choose "none" at Working space.
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This is a good solution and you need to change it to "none" before renderening.
But while working on AE, I strongly recommend to set it to sRGBIE.... etc, in order to see the colours as they will appear later on after rendering (which is a bit washed out).
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I want to add that the correct answer they have marked in here is not the correct answer.
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Is there a solution to this yet? Our client is super picky about his brand colors and he has all the right to be...
Since a week or two we have the same issue with multiple videos from clients complaining about not exactly matching their brand colors even we have them nailed down exactly off course!
wierdly the aftereffects / mac version puts out other colorvalues than ae/pc... our hypotese is that it has to do with the graphicscard doing the hardwareencoding. When we set the codec to software encoding the problem was not as noticeable.
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So here is what I've worked out. Any playback of the ProRes or MP4 files inside of QuickTime, Safari, or even the iOS Vimeo app displays the washed out colors. If I view the ProRes or MP4 files using VLC or using Vimeo on Firefox... they look correct. So this is definitely a MacOS issue. I wish Adobe would come in and give us a direct answer on this topic as it seems weird that they haven't given direction on this huge issue.
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I want to add, that maybe not colour picking the colours from photoshop or rendering out a jpg and colour picking in any way - use a hex code. that sorted out my colour render issue
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I would like to add that when rendering, it is much better to render the video inside AE, and then compressing it in Adobe Media Encoder. Surprisingly the result is different than when you send the video to render in Adobe Media Encoder, straight from AE.
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I've tried your solution but it doesn't work for me 😕
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Same problem. I've got this AE project file and the first test export was fine, but now...
On MacOS High Sierra and Mojave systems:
AE project -> direct export ProRes = colours different and desaturated
AE project -> ME export ProRes or MXF mpeg2 = colours different and desaturated
The working space is set to Rec709 gamma 2,4 and all export settings just follow this.
Playback in VLC or QuickTime player have wrong colours. When using ME this is already visible in the encoding progress window.
Re-importing the MOV or MXF into AE looks fine.
The same project is handled on a Windows machine, and its export (MXF) is fine. But it is also an older version of AE.
Exports from this machine all look fine on my Mac on the same players. How is that possible?
I'd even fiddled around with QT7 Player, changing the alpha channel setting, Enabling the ProApps colour setting. No difference. Renders from MacOS always look wrong.
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PNG sequence exports are fine though.
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Hi,
Simple and easy solution to this, is just to select the "Adobe RGB (1998)" in "Working Space".
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The issue is adobe. Every month they take your money and it would be nice for them to get off their cozy couches and do the work. This problem does not exist outside of Adobe. Resolve 17 is flawless! That we have to put up with this is insane!
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Pretty simple, just change from the profile you find on AE(check images) and set it to 'None'. That should fix the washout.

