Exporting TIFFs for DCP conversion: Color space madness

[Mick8888]

I made an animation by creating the art in Photoshop CC and bringing it into Premiere CC for compositing/editing. I want to export it to TIFF so that I can have it made into a DCP. The exported TIFFs need to be 16 bit, which Premiere CC can't do, so I brought the project into Premiere 2023 to do the export.

When I view the TIFFs in Photoshop (in sRGB working space), or in Windows Media Player, they look slightly washed out. If I switch Photoshop's working space to Rec 709 they look correct - but switching to this going forward isn't a solution since everything I've created on this system so far was created in sRGB.

A few more details:

In Premiere 2023, if Display Color Management is turned OFF, the program monitor has the washed out display, but source elements viewed in the source monitor look correct. If Display Color Management is turned ON, it's the other way around: The program monitor looks correct, but elements viewed in the source monitor are washed out. The rendered TIFFs are washed out regardless of whether color mgt is on or off.

More info:
I'm working on a PC (Win 10) with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980. I'm dealing with uncompressed TIFFS - not using the Quicktime Player - so I don't think the Quicktime Gamma Bug figures into this.

Any ideas how I can get the project to display correctly in the program monitor, and also render out 16 bit TIFFs that look correct? Would it make sense to apply an adjustment layer to artificially "correct" the image in both program monitor and rendered image? Or, since the output is intended to be converted to DCP, might it be better to leave it washed out assuming that the facility that does the conversion will be working in Rec 709?

[Warren Heaton]

Try using tbe Photoshop Timeline or After Effects.

Premiete Pro leans too heavily in professionally video to export to the settings that you are looking for.

[Mick8888]

Photoshop or AE wouldn't be an option - it's a complicated, layered timeline in Premiere with multiple drawings imported as individual clips. I think I got this figured out  - see my next post.

[Warren Heaton]

Actually, I missread your post.  I thought you wanted sRGB, not Rec709.

[Mick8888 · Accepted solution]

After poking around on this forum and elswhere, I realized that the issue is that Premiere 2023 is working in Rec 709 color space, and the PNGs I created in Photoshop were created in sRGB. The fix was to select the PNGs in the Media Browser window, and under Modify > Interpret Footage, change them to Rec 709. Some of the source material is TIFFs and the option was grayed out for them for some reason, but dealing with the PNGs did the job.
This video is key to understanding what's going on. The process is not well documented; Adobe should, at the very least, alert you when you migrate an older file to the fact that you need to do this.