B/W tonal adjustment during rendering/export process?

[Fvta100]

My first little project of 30 still b/w images. All have been carefully adjusted in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop, output to jpgs of the highest order, imported into Pr and all look decent in the project monitor.  The jpgs look good in a number of apps.

After exporting to a H.264 file in any of the HD formats, the export file looks 5% brighter than what I prefer. The blacks especially, lack richness.

I can use Lumetri Color for overall Tone adjustments of exposure and blacks on an individual clip basis, but not for more than one clip at a time.

Is there a setting for the rendering process to preserve blacks, or reduce exposure for the entire sequence? 

Or, it's a clip-by-clip adjustment process?

Thanks.

[R Neil Haugen]

What color space are they in from Photoshop? For use in Premiere, they should be sRGB ...

Neil

[Fvta100]

Thanks, yes... the jpgs are all exported using sRGB. The pics originated from Nikon D500, APS-C, RAW 14-bit, adjusted in PS, exported to 1920x1280 .jpg, maximum size. 

Comparing the jpgs side-by-side on the display monitor with the PS source pic, the dynamic range is almost identical between the 2 images. But, once inside Pr, the tonal quality is not quite the same, especially the blacks, nor is the H.264 export the same.

I am not so experienced in finishing for final production, but after going to File > Export, I toggled Lumetri Look on, experiemented, and found the SL Clean Kodak A NDR generated the b/w tonal qualities that were closer to my .psd and jpgs.

For the few stills where this didn't work so well, I adjusted the blacks manually using Effects > Lumetri Color > Basic Correction > Tone > Blacks -20%.

It all worked out in the end. I feared that I had some import or file setting wrong, but maybe this is the nature of the beast in dealing with b/w imagery? Thanks!

[R Neil Haugen]

I'd have to look at the files themselves to be able to say for sure.

Neil