Washed-out colours in After Effects when rendering

[bpk101]

I know this question has been asked a million times, even i've come up against it before and somewhow managed to solve it but with every AE update i find myself back at square one again trying to remember how to fix it again. So, for the umpteenth time... how do i stop colours getting washed out when i render out in After Effects?! 

Here's some results from a test i've just made of a particular colour (#FF3E24) with screenshots taken in Illustrator and After Effects and then screenshots taken from MP4's outputted from both AE via the render queue and Media Encoder.

For Illustrator i always use sRGB profile, likewise the working colour space in AE project settings i also have set to sRGB and as you can see in the results the colours match between programs. When i output MP4s both via the render queue and Media Encoder however the colours wash out. 

Current settings are:

MacOS Ventura 13.5

After Effects 24.0.1

Media Encoder 24.0

AE Project Settings:

AE Comp Settings

ME Output Settings:

[JasonWhite600]

I noticed that viewing in Quicktime player on the mac looks washed out, I tried VLC and the result was much brighter. Also I tried transfering the same files to a mobile device and they looked fine.

[bpk101]

They still looked washed out if i upload the MP4s to a website so the issue's not exclusive to Quicktime. 

[bpk101]

Still haven't solved this if anyone can help?

[Shebbe]

There is a ton of things wrong with (broadcast standard) video and color management for desktops that is too complex to explain a simple video editor/animator. But a starting point... sRGB doesn't really exist in video land, and especially in Adobe land everyhting you render (that isn't HDR) is pretty much always encoded with the same profile: Rec.709.
There are nuances with how this is managed throughout a system, mac/windows/vlc/quicktime/webbrowsers etc. Even with all the knowledge you won't be able to get an accurate match if what you've mastered is according to reference spec meaning finishing in a dim lit room to a Rec.709 100nits display. 

But for pure web users you could do a sort of 'hack'. If you rely on your colormanagement in AE being sRGB for sake of bringing non sRGB elements (like an AdobeRGB photo/psd?) into your project you could add an adjustment layer on top of your final comp with a Color Profile Converter that converts Rec.709 to sRGB. For sanity sake, I would also set your project color management settings to Rec.709 instead of sRGB because that is what it should be for video. (your os color profiling will convert this to your display so you won't visually see any difference).

The added adjustment layer will "mess up" your colors but the render should look the same as inside AE without that layer.

Alternatively you don't manage at all at the project level, but that only works if your display is already sRGB and not something wider gamut. For non sRGB assets you'd manually convert them with the Color Profile Converter effect. You'd just view the result as is in AE and when you render it will also still look the same. Then just hope that everyone that will view your content is in the same boat as you viewing wise 🙂 which they probably are.

[bpk101]

For context i use AE solely for creating very basic motion graphic pieces (logo's coming to life, brand shapes and patterns moving etc). Everything stay's 'inside' my machine meaning i create the elements in illustrator, animate them in After Effects, present the concepts to clients on my screen (i.e. the same screen i created everything on), concept gets approved and job done. 

What's troubling me is colours in the MP4's i export from AE to form part of a presentation are washed out in comparison to what i'm seeing in illustrator when i design the elements and After Effects when i'm creating the animations. 

Take a particular colour #FF3E24 (as seen in my attachements), Illustrator produces it on screen as expected, After Effects produces it on screen as expected, the resulting MP4's however are washed out regardless of whether i play the video back in Quicktime, VLC or via a web browser.

Somethings going amiss at the export stage, the After Effects project looks good, the export not.

[Shebbe]

Yes, it doesn't look correct for exactly the reasons I mentioned above. For starters, forget about Quicktime player.. it uses a different gamma conversion that shouldn't be there. As to the rest, have you tried any of my suggested methods? I'm trying to keep it simple for you but if you'd like to peek into the mess... https://youtu.be/NzhUzeNUBuM

[bpk101]

Neither of these solutions work for me unfortunately. My working space is already set to sRGB and i don't use any sort of Gamma Correction in my (extremely basic) motion graphic pieces. 

[Hayrullah25803603n7yk]

I am experiencing the same issue. Have you found a solution for it?

[skanm]

My solution is re-render the video file in Davinci Resolve.