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Question

What is the correct Mac display profile for Premiere? Should I always turn on Color Management?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
August 3, 2021
3 replies
9350 views

I'm a bit confused on how premiere's colors and my iMac's colors correlate; and what the correct settings are. I've been editing with footage from my Sony A7SII and have been going crazy trying to get the correct colors displayed. I have a late 2012 imac, so no retina display. I turned on "color management" and it made my image look more contrasted and darker.

Editing

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A

Andy 1968

Inspiring

My Hi-8 Sony camcorder was designed to be played back on broadcast compliant hardware (a TV) not an iMac using Quicktime. My Canon T3i and your Sony A7S II both have an HDMI cable to connect to your TV. No camera or camcorder was designed for playback on an iMac using Quicktime or OBS studio. That is not to say it will not look correct by doing it that way. Having said that what does the video look like when the camera is connected to your TV ? Keep in mind if you upload to social media you should be more concerned with what your rendered video looks like on a Windows 10 PC at your local library. The video below might be helpful.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

We would need to know what the monitor is set to, and what ColorSync is set to. As it is doing something whether you've touched it or not.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

R Neil Haugen

Legend

The biggest issue is the OS ... is your OS running a newer Mac OS that has ColorSync?

For some bizarre reason, Apple decided to only partially comply with the Rec.709 standards. Notably, they only apply one of the two required transforms in the standard. They apply the camera transform function, but not the display transform.

Instead of the proper display transform, they apply what they call "sRGB gamma" ... which is effectively around 1.96 or 1.95. And has never, ever been part of any broadcast or other pro use standard.

What is the monitor set to for color space? What is the OS set to for color space? Have you done any calibration using a software/puck setup like the Xrite i1 Display Pro?

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

G

Gabriel26979854kpx0

Participating Frequently

Hi Neil,

if youre still around, i would love to get some clarity as well. Im using my 2017 (but up to date) iMac for premiere video editing and lightroom photo editing. I too have been struggling to find out which color profile on my iMac I should be using for an accurate viewing result.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

That's still problematic. I discussed this with staffers at NAB ... and still don't have a "right" answer.

So, here's my personal comments, from long experience.

Typically the Mac utility ColorSync applies the Rec.709 *camera* transform of gamma 1.96, to the display of Rec.709 tagged video files.

The proper *display* transform for Rec.709 is gamma 2.4, though 2.2 is often listed for "brighter room viewing environments and web use". Visually there's not that much difference in shadows between 2.2 and 2.4. So many colorists simply use 2.4 for all Rec.709 work.

Hence the visual problem because there *is* a major difference viewing a file at 2.4 versus 1.96.

So the DCM option was added a few years back to get the Mac Retina monitors showing a more "correct" gamma 2.4 while working in Premiere.

But there are apparently two newish issues that add to the muddlement.

First, on some Macs, the DCM option seems to do the opposite of what is expected from past behavior.

Second, some newer Macs have a display option for HDTV, which *does* use proper 2.4 gamma for Rec.709 files. But many Macs don't have the option, and most users that may have it don't know to look for it!

What a ... mess.

So, maybe start a new thread on this, with details on your system and monitor settings. I'll jump in as will others and try and sort out a usable though imperfect path.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

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