Color/grading/contrast is not the same when I export my video

Evan Anthony is a colorist I get to 'talk' with at times, and respect. He's got some steps he recommends to his Mac based clients that can help a lot to get the Mac monitors closer to an actual Rec.709 image. So with his permission I'm posting his advice here.

Neil

You can componsate for gamma shifts and slight color shifts during export with a LUT or adjustment layer. I prefer to use an adjustment layer as seen in the video below.

It appears you are using a Mac? If so, then ... the issue is that Apple chose to apply their own unique version of "Rec.709" within their ColorSync color management utility. And there really is no "fix", but only options for working around or ignoring the differences between Apple and everything else.

Within PrPro on a Mac, always set the preferences option for "display color management" checked, so it's active. This will tell PrPro to check the ICC profile for the monitor, and remap the 'internal' monitors within PrPro to show a correct Rec.709 image.

Outside of PrPro on a Mac, any 'color managed' (meaning they allow ColorSync to tell them how to show media) app like most browsers and QuickTime player, the exported file will be shown incorrectly. Why? Because the Mac ColorSync version of "Rec.709" doesn't apply both required transform functions, it only applies the camera or 'scene' transform. It doesn't apply the also required (by the standard) display transform.

And further, the ColorSync utility will use a gamma between 1.96 or 1.95 (depending on who's measuring) rather than the standard Rec.709 gamma of 2.4 for dim-room viewing, or 2.2 for bright-room viewing.

The "gamma compensation LUT" that Adobe provides for exports on a Mac will make the image darker, and outside PrPro but color managed by ColorSync, the file will look 'correct'. However, on all standards-compliant systems and most PCs and TVs, the file will be dark and over-saturated.

I would mention that no one alters their streaming service or network settings for ColorSync. So anything you see on that monitor from other professional services is also showing the same issues as you see from exporting out of PrPro on your Mac. But you don't see the "original" so you aren't aware that the pro-produced media you're seeing on that system is off the same amount.

I work daily with pro colorists, and teach pro colorists how to color-correct/grade in Premiere Pro. Most of them are of course total Mac people, NONE grade on a Mac screen, and they all are vexed by clients who don't view their work on a properly color managed screen because they're typically using Macs.

The one exception, and used by a number of colorists: some iPads models allow the user to turn off a couple settings and tweak a couple others, and can be tweaked to show a very similar Rec.709 image to what the colorists are seeing on their Flanders or Eize Grade 1 Reference monitors, calibrated via expensive spectroradiometers, and run from a LUT generated by calibration software and set in either the monitor itself or in a breakout/in-out device like the cards from AJA and BlackMagic.

And their grading monitors are always connected by that i/o device, never by the GPU. This is to get a "clean" signal out of the system that the OS can't mess with.

Neil

It can be just this: Why black level difference - HW vs SW export? - Adobe Support Community - 11824047

Or this: (fix) Having text on screen makes video brighter. - Adobe Support Community - 11398704