Color management seems to be broken for TIFF sequence import

[chupacabracobra]

If I import a TIFF sequence into PremierePro it fails to use the color management engine and it just seems to just automatically treat the files as sRGB (in much earlier versions of PremierePro before it barely even did color management at all it seemed they were auto-treated as REC709) even when the files are actually ProPhotoRGB or REC2020 or whatever and the files were saved out with Photoshop as having an ICC profile (and load fine back into Photoshop or into other color managed programs). Far worse, it won't even allow one to manually select the proper color format since the whole interpret footage color management section is grayed out for TIFFS! How come the override section is grayed out in the very scenarios when it is beyond critical, the scenarios where PP seems to try to assume that you just want sRGB (or REC709) as the file colorspace, whne it guesses it doesn't let you over ride but then, see below, when it doesn't guess it will let you over ride. It should let you override no matter what, but this way seems worst of both worlds, where you can't override when it guesses. So there is no way to even manually get around this bug (which seems to be here for years) where it fails to bother to apply color management to TIFF imports (even though it does for other formats like PNG).

If I make a PNG sequence instead then the ICC color profiles are read in and it show sunder properties the proper colorspace (for TIFF import it doesn't even list a colorspace when I choose to look at the import's properties!) and the whole interpret footage section is available (not that I even need to alterate in this particular case).

However, it is very annoying to not be able to use TIFFs instead of PNGs as PNGs take so much longer to write out and read in and I'm dealing with tens of thousands of frames so being able to use TIFFs would save colossal amounts of time. I'm using PremierePro 23.3.0 (the last version of PP that both does not crash out on startup, as the last few versions that run on my CPU do, and still runs on my CPU) on Windows 10. Although the same bug for TIFFs not getting the color management engine applied seems to have been here for at least a year or more, perhaps much longer back.

[chupacabracobra]

I don't seem to be getting color management if I use OpenEXR files or .CIN/DPX either on import. If I use PSD for an HDR file it at least somewhat looks like it should only it seems to have the color range clipped to the color palette of sRGB/REC709 since I see all the intensely saturated colors in the scene drop back to their more muted sRGB/REC709 clipped look while all other colors look the same (all the ones already in sRGB/REC709 color gamut range). So currently I seem to only be able to use PNG if I want to preserve wide gamut colors and only PSD if I want to preserve HDR and nothing if I want to preserve HDR and wide gamut colors when importing into PremierePro which seems to strange to believe.

[R Neil Haugen]

Normally, one would test out things before working on them. Premiere, as a video program, was initially built to work in professional video color of the time ... Rec.709. They've added in the ability to work in HDR in both HLG and PQ forms.

But while Photoshop is built to work with a lot of image formats, Premiere is a video application, and works with specific video format color management.

I started in stills for many years, professionally. Then a decade back moved over to pro video. In a decade, I've never seen a ProPhoto color space image needed in video.

So you need to simply work as the program is designed ... for video. In Photoshop, you can save to Rec.709. Probably PQ also. Both can be fully handled within Premiere.

Tis sad you're not on Pr2024, as the color management is much easier to work with, and includes more options.

[chupacabracobra]

Well I am testing things out, this is what I'm finding out in my latest test.

I only dealt with a handful of frames not the tens of thousands that will need to be processed.

And video is hardly only about REC709 these days. ATSC 3.0, streaming, UHD discs, etc. all support wide gamut color (and HDR).

As far as ProphotoRGB goes, first that is not even the issue as I also made test TIFFs with REC2020 and color management still didn't seem to turn on and manual control was still disabled and they just seemed to default to being assumed to be sRGB (which itself I might note is not the everything is REC709 that you imply). Also even Adobe's own website manual for After Effects even suggests ProPhotoRGB as being a useful working space to set. These days it is not only used for stills. Although REC2020 would be fine too. But again it doesn't matter as color management seems to be bugged and only working for PNG and, partially (with a seemingly weird forced clipping down to sRGB/REC709 gamut) for PSD HDR.

REC709 badly clips some of the colors in the stuff I'm working on. Film can handle way richer colors than REC709 can. So I need to deal in > REC709 or sRGB and need to work in ProphotoRGB or REC2020 or some such, P3 at the least. And the speed of TIFFs over PNGs would be very helpful.

[chupacabracobra]

It is a shame I'm not using PP2024 but Adobe has made it for newest CPUs only (which also is also yet another reason why the subscribtion model stinks, since you are forced to pay for stuff and updates that you can't even use, at least with the normal, consumer friendly model, if you can't use a new version, you don't buy it and just keep using the old one without having to keep paying for the new one you can't use).

[R Neil Haugen]

Pr 24.x works decent on most kit under 5 years old or so. I personally have had to migrate forward on computer hardware every 3-5 years the entire 30+ years my business has been using computers. Long before we had our first Adobe Photoshop. 4.6 I think it was.

Yea, it sucks, but it isn't Adobe's fault. That's just computer life in business.

And don't make wild assumptions either. I didn't imply anything. I stated a few things very clearly.

As a VFX app, AfterEffects is an entirely different beast. Because of specifically what it is used for, it has always had the needed ability to work with more color data spaces than Premiere. That's the nature of Vfx and compositing work.

And there have always been ways to work the two apps together. Complex at times, yes. But doable.

As stated in numerous places in their documentation, Premiere 24.x can work with Rec.709 SDR, and with Rec.2020 in HLG and PQ. They also list the file formats that can be used in the various spaces. I wish they also worked with P3, but they don't yet.

I work for/with/teach pro colorists. Including the group that made the Resolve  DolbyVision tutorial series for Dolby Laboratories.

Most pro colorists have yet to deliver a single paid job in HDR. So I think your expectations of how broadly HDR is used in professional workflows is a bit overstated. The vast majority broadcast and streaming is still SDR. That's going to change over the next couple years, sure.

But nearly every movie you've watched on TV or in the theater up until maybe two years ago was in SDR. Rec.709. Still, most of them are.

[chupacabracobra]

After doing some more experiments it does seem like for some reason if you ask After Effects to send something to Adobe Media Encoder it gets a very unfortuante forced intermediate conversion to REC709 and all wide gamut colors (and/or HDR) would be lost. Seems hard to believe, but seems to be the case and also seems to be implied by what I read here on the Adobe site regarding DynamicLink.

Now as far as having After Effects render it out directly, the formats are more limited, no h.265/HEVC, etc. etc. If I try .mp4 output and set REC2100 PQ as the output format it actually does seem to be doing a proper ProPhotoRGB->REC2100 PQ conversion and the output file actually does seem to be REC2100 PQ but the video file doesn't seem to be getting flagged as being HDR so video playback software then is just acting like it is REC709 so it looks all strange.

If I have PremierePro render out to REC2100 PQ the video output does seem to get flagged as being HDR and video playback software does play it back properly.

So maybe the issue with the direct render out from After Effects to .mp4 is just some error in flagging metadata in the file to tell playback software that the file is REC2100 PQ HDR and not REC709?

I suppose it could perhaps render out to .mov ProRes or DNx or something and perhaps those loaded into PremierePro and then re-output as properly flagged REC2100 PQ HDR (or whatever desired).

I guess the things that seem to be bugs or just unfortunate choices are:

1. AE adding to Adobe Media Encoder queue through DynamicLink seems force REC709??!?

2. AE direct render to, at the least, .mp4 h.264 seems to fail to properly flag outputted video as being HDR when you do output REC2100 HDR instead of REC709.

3. Most unfortunately, PremierePro seems to forget to do color management for most stills sequence ingests and only seems to do so if the file format is PNG SDR. Wide gamut TIFF SDR fails to get color managed and same seems to be for some other formats. A similar story for HDR stills images where OpenEXR, CIN/DPX, etc. color management seems to fail to get turned on and only seems to turn on if the images are in PSD HDR but even then there seems to be an issue since the color gamut seems to get clipped to a small sRGB/REC709 color gamut (I assume the HDR part is still there but test image had little HDR and didn't look into that much.).

[R Neil Haugen]

I've not done much HDR out of Ae, personally. Asking on the Ae forum would be a better bet for that app. I do know if you don't start with an export preset with the 'right' form of HDR in the preset name, you're probably going to miss something. 

So for PQ, you do need to start with a preset with PQ in the preset name. Whether exporting in either Ae or Pr or queing over to Me.

For the PQ presets, you can turn on 'static metadata' though I think you have to scroll down and check that option to turn it on. Then it will show up as HDR10, it seems.

Past that, @Fergus H is the master of media, staffer of the formats department. Let's see if he'll pop in.