iPhone Footage becomes overexposed when added to Premiere making Premiere UNUSABLE.

[guayol53958307]

Title. Anytime I add footage from Iphone to Adobe Premiere it becomes overexposed, or just looks different. This was not an issue 3-5 years ago, what changed?

Yes I tried Tone Mapping. Didn't work.

Yeah I can work around it with color management, but this wasn't an issue a few years ago so this feels like a hug bug that I shouldn't have to constantly color manage to get around.

This isn't an issue with After Effects but AE is MUCH slower to work with when it comes to just editing footage, so again my work flow is slowed down significantly, meaning a software package that I used to rely on is now slow and frustrating to use.

Again, this is making the PR and AE softwares unusable. I want to work in PR but I'll have to lose time color managing footage for no reason. I want to work in AE to avoid the overexposure issue but then AE takes forever to preview videos and it's slow too. This was NOT an issue 3-5 years ago, is there any effort to fix this?

Very frustrated. Been frustrated for years. Been frustrated since iPhone footage was suddenly acting weird in PR for no reason.

[guayol53958307]

Update: AE has the overexposure issue too. This sucks.

[RjL190365]

The problem stems from the fact that the iPhone shoots in HDR by default, and that most of the presets in both Premiere Pro and After Effects are set up solely for SDR content. This mismatch will result in the "overexposure" that you mentioned.

Conversely, if you use SDR footage in an HDR timeline, the opposite will happen: The video will look muddy and gray.

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

It works fine .... IF you set your entire color management settings correctly. As to what's changed?

You're using a phone, shooting an HDR format, and you're asking what has changed? Just everything, actually.

I work for/with/teach pro colorists. It's just stuff.

For working with an HDR clip in SDR/Rec.709, which I still recommend doing  ... set everything this way.

• Display Color Management on
• Auto detect log on
• Auto tonemapping on
• Sequence color space to Rec.709
• Export with Rec.709 presets, those that do not have HLG or PQ in the preset name.

The above are all found in the Color Workspace, Lumetri panel, Settings tab. The one named Settings.

I can give advice on how to work HDR if you wish to deliver to that. I don't recommend it yet, but it also can be made to work.

[Sybren32757033xmeu]

Do you maybe know what settings I need to use to get the same result for After Effects (mac)?

I already use Interpret Footage -> Main.. -> Color -> Preserve RGB, but still the export is pale. 

[R Neil Haugen]

You have to properly define this to get help ... "pale" ...  meaning what, where?

And two images without context is also not helpful.

So ... you do mention being on a Mac ... are you aware of the problem Apple caused by not applying the correct display transform in their ColorSync utility? Which only affects Macs without reference modes?

If your problem is outside of Premiere on a Mac, viewing the file with QuickTime Player, Chrome, or Safari, it's lighter ... then the problem is the Mac itself.

View the file in VLC or Potplayer on the same Mac, you'll probably see an image close to what you had in Ae. Because those players use the correct display transform.

Yea, it's a pain, you can't fix what Apple chose to break. You can decide to make it look "right" on Macs without Reference modes (set to HDTV), and wrong on every other screen out there, including any proper broadcast-compliant setup.

Or look right on everything but Macs without Reference modes.

But first ... be aware ... no two screens ever show identical images, they cannot. Period. And the same screen but in different ambient conditions will seem differernt. NO ONE will ever see exactly what you see, anyway.

All colorists have to learn that right at the beginning, or you'll go nuts. "You can't fix gramma's green TV."

[agence rosseelr32959105]

Hi Neil,

Thank you for the answer, this worked wonders.

I was wondering if this conversion preserves the hdr format or if how you would preserve and export the video if you want to preserve those.

Thank you!

[R Neil Haugen]

First thing ... ok, I have been "around" pro colorists for over a decade now. I actually work for/with/teach pro colorists both on how to work with Premiere, and how to use the Tangent Warp Engine with Tangent control panels in Resolve. Among other things.

Still, as of July 2025, most screens out there do not do HDR at all. Of those that do, most do one or two forms ... but mostly, pretty poorly in testing. It's still the Wild Wild West of video production.

The majority of pro colorists have yet to produce a single!!! HDR deliverable for a paying customer. If it isn't a 'big' show on streaming, or a major broadcast series, it's not going to have any HDR deliverable request. I think that will now start shifting a bit faster ... but, I've thought that every year for the last six years.

My first experience with HDR was in 2019, as a presenter in the Flanders/MixingLight booth at NAB. Flanders makes many of the best Grade 1 Reference monitors used by pro colorists. They provided their first 30 some inch full HDR monitor and that was amazing. I spoke between Alexis Van Hurkman, on his first HDR film, and the guy from Dolby explaining their brand new DolbyVision HDR workflow in Resolve.

We all thought HDR was going to take over within the next year or two at most. But then ... the tech for those first monitors was spendy, difficult to manufacture, and not, as it turned out, reliable in use for longevity. The factory went belly up.

Other tech, pushed to do HDR, has had problems ... the next Big Hope after another failed to really produce good screens. And now, finally! ....  the quantam dot stuff is seemingly able to rise to the occasion. Flanders has some that are only about $9,500, rather than the previous $30,000 range.

And there's a panels from Asus that is also looking quite usable if you understand it's limitations, such as the inability to completely turn off auto dimming ... and can calibrate it externally.

HDR has been extremely frustrating for colorists. To put it mildly. As there isn't yet a really good paying market for producing HDR, most colorists have not been able to justify the massive cost of a true HDR grading capable panel.  Even at "only" a bit under $10,000, and that just in the last year.

But ... if you wanna jump in, go for it!  When it works it's gorgeous.

HDR Settings for Premiere Pro 25.3

Diplay color management, auto detect log, auto tonemapping all on. Add Extended Dynamic Range if you are on a Mac.

Set the sequence CM to probably HLG, and make sure both the OS and the monitor are set to work in HLG/HDR. (PQ is mostly a pro level pass-through format at this time.)

Set the Lumetri Scopes panel probably to 10 bit, and keep the Graphics White set to 203.

Most computer monitors really don't go that much above 300 nits yet, though some make it clear to 500 nits, although they tend to lose saturation pretty much anywhere up 'high'.

Give that a try, and post back whatever results you get. We'll all be happy to see samples and answer any other questions.

[R Neil Haugen]

Oh, and if you're on a Mac without Reference modes, after export, there's a problem due to the Apple decision to use the wrong display transform function on those computers.

They do use the correct display transform on the Macs with Reference modes, when set to HDTV. So it's only the Macs without reference modes that have this oddity.

Which gives a lighter view of the image than it should be, and would be on any other display. As Apple uses the camera transform function, essentally gamma 1.96, on those computers.

The Macs with Reference modes, and all other screens, use a power function roughly equivalent to gamma 2.4 as the display transform. 

You can't display an image at to different gammas, and of course get the same image.

QuickTime player, and Chrome and Safari browsers allow Apple's colorsync utiility to control color, and will display the files lighter.

VLC and Potplayer, and Firefox browser, do their own CM work on Macs, and so use the correct display transform for Rec.709 video, so they are better for use in viewing your export out of Premiere.

Or ... Mac users can set the Premiere viewing gamma option to gamma 1.96/QuickTime, and then do the color/tonal corrections ... and the file outside Premiere viewed in QuickTime player on Macs without reference modes will be the same as inside Premiere.

It will be much darker on all other systems with 'normal' Rec.709 display transforms, however.

[JOSHUA_H]

I had to use Media Encoder to fix the issue, , in Video Settings change HDR Graphics White to 300. Then in Effects check Tone Mapping, select Max RGB, change Exposure to -1

[R Neil Haugen]

If that's the case, it's because you didn't have the proper settings to begin with. And doing a hinky-jink later in the process to attempt to correct an earlier mistake is guaranteed to lead to disaster.

Premiere's 25.x era color management works perfectly with iPhone ... and most any HLG media ... if you do things correctly. From the beginning.

By properly setting your project and sequence color management options, AND then using the correct export presets for the sequence color space.

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