Premiere Pro renders wrong the color for vector graphics from creative cloud libraries

[aTomician]

I've always had this problem and had to find a workaround but it's becoming more of a pain.  When I drag vector graphics from CC libraries into a Premiere Pro timeline, the color is never accurate and I don't know why.  Sometimes it isn't always obvious but it's almost always incorrect.

In Illustrator, I have a red hexagon filled with the color #e30513.

The document color mode is RGB.

In Edit > Color Settings I have tried different RGB color spaces:

• Rec.709 Gamma 2.4
• sRGB IEC61966
• Adobe RGB
• Rec.709 PQ

I then add this to CC Libraries, go to Premiere Pro and drag it into a timeline.

In Premiere Pro, the hexagon is the right color in the Libraries panel but in the timeline it looks more pink then red.  I can't get the file to be the right color on the timeline!

Something else very confusing about this is that After Effects interprets the color correctly.  If I simply duplicate the graphic, right click, and "replace with After Effects composition", the color of the AE comp updates to the correct color as soon as it's saved in AE.  See the comparison difference in the second screenshot below.  Left side is Illustrator file, right side is Illustrator file converted to AE composition.

Please can anyone help me fix this?  Really annoying, I either have to convert all graphics to AE compositions or render them to a raster file - either way it limits editing the file at a future date.

EDIT: a small update for the sake of clarity.  I've detailed above that using the file from Creative Cloud causes this effect.  I've imported a Illustrator file manually, not through CC libraries and it has the same effect so the problem clearly lies with the AI file and not the CC libraries. 

[Ann Bens]

Set MPE hardware to software and see if that makes a difference.

[aTomician]

Thanks for the reply Ann, which application do I set this in?

[Peru Bob]

Premiere Pro.

[aTomician]

I've given that a go, hardware or software doesn't make any difference...  I often have to switch to software rendering for complex projects anyway so I'm sure I would have noticed if it fixed the problem.  I'd be interested to know what results other people get when they follow the procedure above - make a basic shape in Illy, fill it a specific color, add to CC libraries, drag it into Premiere Pro and check the color of the graphic there to see if it matches...  I've always had this so presumed it was a Premiere Pro quirk...

[R Neil Haugen]

What are your color management settings for that in AfterEffects?

And have you gone to the Sequence settings in Premiere, and unchecked the "linear space ... " option?

Neil

[Peru Bob]

and unchecked the "linear space ... " option?

By @R Neil Haugen

You mean this:

"Composite in linear color"

[aTomician]

Thanks all.

I've tried the sequence with "composite in linear color" turned on and off and it makes no difference.

These are the default After Effects color settings that i've been using: 

[aTomician]

Some further observations:

I thought of going to the graphic in the projects panel and using "Interpret footage" to modify the color space.  However the color space options are greyed out.

I also tried right clicking on the graphic and "Edit in Photoshop" - when it opens in photoshop, the color is dead on #e30513.  It's like Premiere Pro is interpreting the color wrongly but not actually changing the color in any way.  Does PPro try to convert it to a Rec.709 color space or something?

[R Neil Haugen]

If you are going to video, you either need to have the original in sRGB/Rec.709 or convert it to that. Which is the color primaries by the standards for 'normal' video.

HDR forms use a wider color space, but all 'standard' video uses the sRGB primaries and the other items of the Rec.709 specifications.

Neil

[aTomician]

Thanks Neil,

Agree with what you've said, but I'm afraid that this doesn't seem to have made much difference in this case - I've documented in the OP that I've tried several different colour spaces in the Illustrator file, including sRGB and Rec.709, but these don't have any effect when importing into Premiere Pro.  I believe that changing color space in Illustrator settings does not affect the Illustrator file - it seems to be a user setting not a file specific settings.  There's no option in Premiere Pro to interpret the graphic in any other color space - it's greyed out for Illustrator files.

I can't see any way to change the color space of the original AI file?

[R Neil Haugen]

Haven't been in Illustrator for a while. I'll see if I can get a look over there today.

Neil

[R Neil Haugen]

In Ilustrator's menu options, in the Edit menu on PCs, is the option for Color Settings.

That needs to be set to the Rec.709/Gamma 2.4 option for using objects in an SDR/Rec.709 workflow in PrPro.

Neil

[aTomician]

Hello Neil, thanks for your reply.

The color settings in Illustrator are global settings and don't affect an individual Illy file.  For instance:

1. Open up Illustrator, change Color space to Rec.709.  
2. Make a graphic and save down as .ai file.
3. Close / reopen illustrator
4. Change color space to sRGB, create a new file with a graphic and save it down.
5. Close / reopen Illustrator and open the first graphic created with a Rec.709 color space.
6. The first graphic color space has now changed to sRGB.

So I believe that this setting only changes how Illustrator interprets and renders color, and doesn't affect the output of any documents.  However I can't find anything in the online user guide around this.

[R Neil Haugen]

I"ve always been told by those using Ilustrator to create graphics for PrPro that you must match Illustrator's color settings for that project to the working color space ... Rec.709. sRGB, of your Premiere workspace.

Although far more Premiere users do this stuff in Photoshop than in Illustrator.

Where you also must make sure that project is in Rec.709/sRGB.

So ... that's what is always taught. Anywhere I've been or read.

Neil

[aTomician]

Ok fair enough....  I wanted to keep it as a vector file because I'm doing some zooms effects where I scale the graphics by 5000% as part of the transition - vector doesn't pixelate and stays a small file.  Will use a raster image for now then if that's best, it's just going to be a pretty big file because of the resolution I need - better that then wrong colours though!

[R Neil Haugen]

There seem to always be trade-offs in video post, Haven't found something yet without 'em, I don't think ...  sigh.

Neil

[Fabio22557433ezjg]

Hey @aTomician, did you ever found a solution to this? Happened to me in the past and I initially thought I was missing something, but today after stumbling on this again and looking up this thread I realized I have the exact same issue placing .AI files into Premiere:

• Tried changing color profile on the Illustrator file from sRGB to Rec.709
• Tried saving with or without embedded ICC profile
• Tried interpreting the footage in different ways on Premiere, from Rec.709 to sRGB and others

Nothing really worked, and it's not even a subtle difference, very saturated colors are completely washed out. Exporting a .PNG and importing that actually interprets the color correctly, and also After Effects actually interprets colors correctly and it's perfectly on point between the .AI and the .PNG.

[R Neil Haugen]

What's the total set of color management settings you're using in Premiere? Top to bottom, the entire Settings tab of Lumetri ... project through sequence CM. Screengrabs are fastest of course.

[Fabio22557433ezjg]

For the sake of starting fresh (and not violating a client's non disclosure agreements whose logo is indeed red) I'm creating a new project named Test, with a new sequence named Test:

Here is the color management tab of the new sequence:

And here is the Settings tab in the Lumetri panel, which should match what we see above:

Let's create a new #FF0000 color matte in Premiere:

Drag into the newly created Test sequence and scale it down 50%. Here's how it looks:

Now let's open up a new Illustrator file, 3840x2160 sRGB canvas, and let's create a #FF0000 circle in the corner:

Let's assign a Rec.709 color profile for good measure:

Let's save the .AI file and make sure to embed the ICC profile:

Now let's also export a .PNG from the same canvas. Notice how there's no option to embed the profile here:

Let's bring everything into Premiere, rotate the .PNG 180°, and see the colors we get:

Here is how the "Modify > Color..." looks like for the .AI file:

Before you shout at me that I missed something in the above steps, there are the things I tried in order of appearance from top screenshots to bottom (let's make clear I don't usually work by toggling stuff on or off until things work, but when they don't you try to troubleshoot everything you can):

• Switching up color spaces in composition
• Toggling "Auto Tone Map Media" in composition color tab or Lumetri settings tab
• Trying sRGB, Rec.709 Gamma 2.4, Rec.709 PQ or any other color profile that could make sense in Illustrator
• Tried exporting the .AI without toggling the "Embed ICC Profile", or even the "Create PDF compatible file" or "Use compression" to see if they were affecting color in the saved file
• Tried interpreting the .AI with "Modify > Color..." using different color spaces, some get close but none is a perfect match like the .PNG (which by the way is interpreted with the standard, working space Rec.709)
• A combination of most of the settings cited above just to see if I could get it working

As previously mentioned, doing the same exact thing importing things in After Effects just works out of the box, in both Rec.709 or sRGB color spaces for both Illustrator or After Effects. As of today I never managed to actually import an .AI file (usually logos) with very simple colors and have it match elements in my comps.

So am I missing something?

[R Neil Haugen]

A couple questions to start with. What is your OS? What is your viewer gamma setting in Premiere?

And have you tried the "preserve RGB" CM option?

File CM differences are so freaking annoying ... definitely. So you may need to use the png format.

[Fabio22557433ezjg]

Testing on the latest version of Premiere on MacOS. Viewing gamma defaulted to 1.96 on the test project shown above, but the same issue was present on my client's project at 2.2 (and still, would not really explain the difference from the .PNG matching while the .AI doesn't).

Yes, tried also the Preserve RGB and basically a combination of all the checkboxes I could find, but the .AI doesn't seem to budge from that desaturation.

[R Neil Haugen]

So I'm guessing that sticking with the png format would be the practical way to handle this. And I'm all about what works as well, what don't work ain't working.

One of the colorist's I've been around posted some extensive testing of the Apple Retina rigs without the Reference mode HDTV setting available. His conclusion?

There are two separate issues with the ColorSync color management's actions.

First is the basic gamma mis-application, which actually far more affects tonal things than hue ... yes, lighter is a bit less saturated, but ... not nearly as much as it seems visually.

The second thing he found is that the hue remapping applied by Apple's ColorSync to put sRGB hues within the Retina's native P3 color space is not ... nearly ... as accurate as one would wish. So Apple blew both the tonal and the color transforms. Way to go, wowza.

For any of these devices, they all treat different formats and spaces of images a bit differently. So I'm wondering if that's part of the question. As from what I can tell, Ae treats the system color stuff a bit differently than Premiere, still. And that's part of what keeps some Pr/Ae pipelines not quite ... usable.

Staffers have posted here that for certain, very specific, workflow needs, you can't quite totally match Ae and Pr. Which is very frustrating.