Colour shift proxy vs native

[Felicity24698341ii7y]

I just updated to Premiere Pro 2025 and migrated a project I've been working on (using MacOS Sonoma 14.6.1). I'm using proxy files and noticed that when I render my sequence (or switch to view native files) the colour is different.
I wonder if this has something to do with some auto colour management feature as my native files are MXF (Canon) and proxy files are Pro res 422 MOV files.
You can see in the screenshots that the proxy file has more contrast to the native. These are ungraded clips. Once graded the discrepancy is even more noticeable.
I have made sure my sequence is set to rec 709 and I have overridden any colour space on the clip to rec 709 but the problem persists. I have toggled on and off the various settings that could causes this like "display colour management" "auto detect log video colour space" "auto tone map media" with no luck.

[IanB_360]

Hi @Felicity24698341ii7y 

Welcome to the Premiere Pro forums! We are glad to see you here. We need a few more details to try to help with the issue. Please see, How do I write a bug report ?

Thanks for submitting your bug report. I hope we can help you soon. Sorry for the frustration!

Thanks,

Ian

[R Neil Haugen]

Neither Premiere nor Resolve completely make proxies and originals the absolute match for color/tonality after you've done some grading. And I work in both daily.

Proxies are intended to be used for playback smoothness. They don't match all other applied effects. So you use proxies for playback, toggle with the keyboard shorts to original if you need to see accurate images.

That's just the way it is in all these apps.

[Felicity24698341ii7y]

I've been colour grading for 15 years and I understand the minor difference between a proxy and native footage. Perhaps the screenshots here don't fully illustrate how different it looks once and grade has been applied but the variation is extreme to the point where I added an adjustment layer to the sequence increasing the contrast as a quick fix for a project that was needing completion.
I ended up just taking the time to delete and recreate proxies in my projects that are not as far along and this fixed the issue.

[R Neil Haugen]

I'm struggling to understand your post. Because in my personal experience, I can't think of a project where I've done extensive (or even just notable) grading, in either Premiere or Resolve, where the proxies and the full clips match.

This also comes up on the BM forums about working in Resolve, btw. Same behavior.

And as someone who works for/with/teaches pro colorists, mostly based in Resolve or Baselight, that's a normal bit of discussion in training. And gets long discussions in the differences between proxy workflows, "optimized media", and online/offline workflows.

The latter is where you delink the originals to full grade on the proxies for playback reasons. And at the end, delink proxies/reconnect originals. As this way you do see the full grade on the proxies.

So coming from that training and background, it isn't expected that proxies carry the complete color/tonal data of the original clips. And as applying that would mean less difference in playback between proxies and originals, with some of the grading I do ... there'd be no sense in making proxies.

They wouldn't play back any better.

But everyone is different, and expects different things.

[Rach McIntire]

Hi @Felicity24698341ii7y ,

Thanks for your post.  Please do fill out the bug report info Ian posted.  Were the proxies made in camera or were they created afterward?
Thanks,
Rach