“Viewer Gamma” Settings Affect Exported Video

[Guillaume30883528kcuh]

"viewer gamma" settings dont act the same wether a clip color space is unchanged or not

• Adobe Premiere Pro version number: 25.1.0 (build 73)
• Operating system : macOS sequoia 15.3.1
• System Info:
  

  • Apple M2 MacBook air

  • 3,5 GHz apple GPU 10

  • 16Go DDR5 RAM

  • Hard Drive 1To

• Video format: any image media
• Workflow details: any project, any sequence
• Steps to reproduce - (Very important!)
  

  I'm french so excuse my english please.

  Place any image media clip with rec709 2.4 profile (video, png, jpg...) on a timeline (any settings)

  select the clip
  In the lumetri color settings panel :
  Display color management is on

  working color space : rec709

  Set the "source clip" section on "use media color space" (so rec709)

  "viewer gamma" on 2.4

  export the clip as an h264 file (any settings) this is FILE 1A
  change "viewer gamma" to 1.96
  then Image should look different inside Premiere's program monitor
  export the clip as an h264 file (any settings) this is FILE 1B
  
  Now Set the "source clip" section on "override Media Color Space" and select sRGB (for instance)Same pattern of export :
  Set "viewer gamma" to 2.4
  export the clip as an h264 file (any settings) this is FILE 2A
  Set "viewer gamma" to 1.96
  This time image should not undergo any change of look inside Premiere program monitor
  export the clip as an h264 file (any settings) this is FILE 2B
  
• Expected result - "viewer gamma" should not change the actual gamma correction of exported files even if we override some media color spaces, since it seems meant to be a monitoring setting. HOWEVER, it woulb be very nice to be able to apply a gamma correction on a timeline (wich would apply on exportted files)
• Actual resul
  FILE 1A and FILE 1B look the same, same luminance, even with different viewer gamma set in Premiere
  FILE 2A and FILE 2B look differents, shift of luminance, because of different viewer gamma set in Premiere
  

  SUMMARY :Viewer gamma set on 2.4 or 1.96 change the look of images inside premiere's display but does not affect the exported file.

  EXCEPT

  if for some reason we want to override media color space of the clip (here set to sRGB instead of rec709) then we get in the reverse situation : changing "viewer gamma" from 2.4 to 1.96 won't do anything in premiere display, but the exported files will be different.

  It seems like overriding color space of the media is applied after the gamma viewer correction, wich is very weird logic to me.

  Am I missing something ?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi @Guillaume30883528kcuh,

Thanks for the post and welcome to the forum. I am Kevin from Support, a mod here. I appreciate you filing the bug report and providing all the details here. I hope the team will answer you shortly. Sorry for the problem.

Thanks,
Kevin

[jamieclarke]

Hi @Guillaume30883528kcuh -   We are aware of this issue. When using the Auto Detect Log Video feature and tonemapping to Rec. 709, a gamma shift may occur when exporting with "Viewer Gamma" set to 1.96, 2.2, or 2.4, with the most noticeable shift occurring at 2.2. As a workaround, set “Viewer Gamma” to 1.96 or 2.4 before exporting.

[Guillaume30883528kcuh]

Hi Jamie

I didnt notice the big shift at 2.2.

The problem with my kind of edits is that its mixing different sources of medias with multiple color spaces. So when setting the viewer gamma to 1.96 (in order to export preview for  my clients who are macOS users), some clips would keep the look I see in Premiere and some others wont (those with color space override).

Thanks for your answer though, I hope it would be fix soon because its a very tough issue for color managing