Subject: Persistent Color Shift Issue After Export in Premiere Pro

This has been covered probably half a billion times, and I am not joking. At. All.

For context for my comments, I work for/with/teach pro colorists, mostly based on Macs, using Resolve or Baselight. I'm a contributing author on a pro colorist's teaching website, one of the largest ones in the world. The leaders of that team were the people Dolby Labs hired to do the in-house teaching videos on professional use of DolbyVision HDR within Resolve. I've been on panels discussing this issue and other things colorist related. I've talked directly in person with several of the top color management/calibration specialists in the world.

Ok ... Rec.709, "SDR", standard video, all non-HDR stuff, has a long established set of required standards. Rec.709 is the name of the standards.

Those include the use of the sRGB color space, primaries/white point of D65, and that for proper end-use viewing via broadcast/whatever, the monitor should be set to 100 nits and used in a semi-darkened room.

Those were the original specs, back when we had digital images available but still used the CRT, tube-based monitors. Which had a 'native', natural electrical signal processing response to input electronic signals equivalent (roughly) to gamma 2.4. No display transform was then used.

However, the new flat-screen tech did not have a 'native' signal response, and to be able to work across both types of monitors, CRT and digital screen, the digital sreens needed a display transform applied to the displayed image. 

Hence Bt.1886 was created by the same standards people that created Rec.709, as an addendum to the Rec.709 standards. It specifies a display transform roughly equivalent to gamma 2.4 be applied to the image file, by the display device at the time of display.

And ... that is the professional standard used across broadcast and streaming, by all pro colorists also.

It is also used by Macs with Reference modes set to HDTV. 

But on Macs without Reference modes, the Apple designed color management utility ColorSync will apply a display tranform roughly equivalent to gamma 1.96.

Do you see the problem here? As only Mac screens on Mac devices without Refernce modes apply the gamma 1.96 display transform to the image. All other devices apply the gamma 2.4 display transform to the image.

You can not apply two distinctly separate display transforms to the same image data, and get the same image on-screen.

So ... you have to choose between two imperfect options. Or sort of, three maybe. And before doing any of the below, unless you are working on a calibrated and profiled monitor, in-house calibrated and profiled, set Premiere's Dislay Color Mangement option to On. Period. (And if you don't know what I mean by profiled, you ain't.)

1) Work to the same professional standard as all broadcast compliant facilities. Which requires the following.

Set Premiere's Viewing gamma option to gamma 2.2 unless you are working in a pretty dark room doing color. The choice between 2.2 and 2.4 is made not on broadcast or web, but only to be decided by your viewing environment while setting image color/tonality.

The result? On most systems, meaning everything non-Mac, and on Macs with Reference modes, your media will look in relative terms like other profesionally produced media.

On Macs without Reference modes only, it will be lighter and less saturated than what it appeared in Premiere while you were working.

2) If worrried more about Macs without Reference modes, then do the following.

Set Premiere's Display Gamma setting to gamma 1.96/QuickTime, and do your corrections.

The results? It will look very similar out of Premiere on your Mac, but of course ... only in apps that allow QuickTime player to control color. Which are QuickTime player, and Chrome and Safari browsers.

But ... VLC and Potplayer will not allow QuickSync to change the image, and will show a darker image, closer to what you got in Premiere if using gamma 2.2 or 2.4 setting.

So you can use VLC and Potplayer to check what non-Mac systems will see from that file.

Yea, it's a mess ... and thank Apple for that. Neither Adobe's Premiere Pro nor Resolve can 'fix' the issue, both allow users to do things to 'jink' the system but neither way actually gets around the dsiplay transform issue across systems.

Mac or PC?