Color Shifting Issue in Premiere Pro 2024

There is one assumption in this thread that I must correct.

Colorists do not ever expect that anyone, on any screen, via any delivery system, will see even close to what the colorist saw while grading. Period.

For most editors, please ... re-read that!

So if you are trying to get other screens to see what yours was, it will fail, guaranteed.

Why?

Because no two screens are alike.

All that calibration, special expensive monitors, and external LUT boxes colorists use? That is NOT so their reference monitor looks identical to any other reference monitor.

Because they can't even do that with two "identical" monitors, side by side, calibrated with the same system, and fed the same signal. There will be differences. Not just metamerism, which can be major and will always vary per screen. But all sorts of other things, as the electronic parts that make up a modern monitor are many and all will have small variances in performance. So each monitor is a compendium of the variances of the hardware within.

So why do colorists care about calibration and profiles at all?

What they do is try to be as close to "the standard" as possible. Because then, and only then! ... will anything they produce, when viewed on any screen out there, appear similar to other professionally produced media viewed on that screen.

That is their only goal. It's the only goal you can acheive in the screen lottery.

The gamma LUT is only for those (edit: phone spelling correction is a pain!) using a Mac without Reference modes, and even then isn't what I'd use.

If I were gonna put that as my chief concern, and not worryabout everyone else, I'd set my Mac's Viewing Gamma preferences in Premiere to 1.96/QuickTime.

For most people?

IF in a fairly dark room, use the Gamma 2.4 preference.

IF in a normally lit, fairly bright room, use the Gamma 2.2 in Viewing preferences.

This is the most simplest and understandable solution to this problem I've read until now. Just wanted to ask that if we grade in 2.4 Viewer Gamma in Premiere, set Mac display to HDTV Rec.709 and export for web, do we have to apply a gamma corretion LUT while exporting? Or that LUT is just for users on Mac to view it correctly in Quicktime, Chrome, Safari etc?

Then your color management controls are not correctly set as a group. Those are interactive, and you can't simply set one, try, undo, set another ... they don't work that way.

On a Mac you have two other issues due to well ... Apple always choosing to be unique.

• They chose to apply the Rec.709 camera transform as the display transform ... WRONG. This affects the tonal values of the viewed image (not the underlying file data) ... the Macs will display the shadows lighter than a correct Rec.709 display will do. This is also part, but not all, of the perceived 'saturation' issue.
• From a colorist's recent (and very rigorously thorough) testing I've seen, they also clearly do not properly remap the Rec.709's sRGB color primaries and individual hues within the monitor's P3 color space. Resulting in a good share of the color issues between Rec.709 off and on a Mac Retina.
• To further show how this is an Apple caused issue, there are now Macs with "Reference Modes" for their monitors. On those Macs, when using the Reference mode for HDTV, suddenly ... the image on-screen is bog-standard Rec.709, and matches that within Premiere set to viewer gamma 2.4 precisely.

So your Mac is not showing a correct Rec.709 image unless you are using Reference mode set to HDTV.

Once you understand that, the rest can be controlled within ... what anyone can control. Do this for Rec.709:

• Set Display Color Management on, and also (for Macs) Extended Dynamic Range.
• Set both auto detect log and auto tonemapping to on.
• Set the Sequence CM to Rec.709.
• Use only export presets that do not include HLG or PQ in the preset name.

Now for the hard part!

The other Premiere color management setting you need to deal with is a pick your poison thing, unfortunately, due to the above bullet points. But it is what it is, so let's deal with the options directly.

What do you need to produce for?

That is the main question to answer to make one of the following choices.

I only care about how this looks on Macs without Reference Modes in QuickTime Player.

Ok ... set the Viewer display gamma option in Premiere's CM settings to QuickTime/gamma 1.96.

The good ... outside of Premiere, on Macs without Reference modes, it will look the same in QuickTime player as within Premiere Pro. Awesome, right?

The not-so-good ... on all other systems, whether Macs with Reference modes or broadcast-spec systems or PCs and Android devices, most TVs ... the image will be way too dark, many shadows simply crushed, and it will be oversaturated.

But I need a professional looking export file!

Also simple. Set the Viewer gamma option to 2.4/broadcast. Like nearly all colorists do. Grade with a correct image, and after export, let it go out into the Wild where you have no control whatsoever.

The good! ... now your media will look like all professionally produced Rec.709 media on any particular screen. As ALL Rec.709 media is graded on screens under full Rec.709 specs, including gamma 2.4 displays. Period. You can't pass b-cast QC machines otherwise.

The not-so-good ... yea, on non-reference mode Macs, it's going to look a bit light and low in saturation.

But did you realize that's what you're getting on everything? As ... you are. You're not seeing the same image I see on a b-cast spec system, or my Android tablet, for any professionally produced show.

Colorists are taught outta the box that you grade to the Standard. Strictly and only! But you also must understand no one watching your program will ever see exactly what you saw on your screen. No matter whether viewed via broadcast, streaming, or theatrical release. You grade it tothe Standard, and ... let it go. "You can't fix gramma's green TV."

This is why most colorists have clauses that specify that all tonal/color corrections requests can only come from being viewed on a specified, calibrated/controlled screen and viewing environment.

Isn't there something in-between?

Well ... sorta maybe. Set the Premiere color management viewer gamma option to 2.2/Web. Nothing professional is produced with this, but ... it will be a little light on a Mac/no-reference-mode, a little dark on a b-cast spec system ... 

And note, when people say "the web is sRGB/2.2 anyway" ... that refers to still images. Web video is still Rec.709/2.4.

The good! ... well, sorta? The image will be not quite so bad either Mac or non-Mac.

The not-so-good ... the image won't be pretty close to correct about anywhere ...

That's why I list this as a pick your poison choice.