Add Color Range (Full vs Limited) Control in Export Settings

Report · Jul 29, 2025

Hello Adobe Team,

I would like to suggest adding a dedicated option in Premiere Pro’s export settings to control the Color Range (Full 0–255 vs Limited 16–235) for video exports, especially for H.264 and H.265 codecs.

Currently, there is no direct way to choose or force full range color levels during export, which often results in washed-out or desaturated colors on platforms like Instagram and sometimes YouTube. This leads to extra steps and workflows involving external tools to convert color levels after export, complicating the process.

Having this option built directly into Premiere Pro would greatly improve color accuracy and streamline the export workflow for professional users working with social media and online video platforms.

Thank you for considering this feature!

Best regards,
[Marina]

Report · Jul 29, 2025

Rec.709 full/legal is a quandary. The original reason for this was for tape to tape professional workflows ... where the 0-15 and 234-255 values were used for metadata, essentially ... as there wasn't anything like file metatdata then.

And it's only an encoding thing ... the absolutely same data is encoded both ways ... just how it is encoded to file changes.

So there is no gain nor loss of data between full and legal encoding. Period.

And for many years, even long after tape encoding joined the dinosaurs, it wasn't a problem. ALL YUV (technically Y/Cb-Cr) encoded media was required by the applicable standards to be encoded in legal, and all RGB media ... typically 12 bit and higher ... was required to be encoded in full range.

And all display devices/systems correctly, automatically, displayed both encodings as full range on-screen.

Ok, it was weird and stupid to still have it, but it worked. Flawlessly.

Then manufacturers started listening to their marketing folks and giving users the option for Full encoding of YUV media because it sounds like you get more levels ... even though you don't in reality.

And since then it's been a faulty system as so many users have files that are YUV, should be expectable to be legal, but are full ... and!!! ... so many users went to their monitors assuming that setting them to Full will magically give them more levels.

The only thing you get is weird playback, and ... if you do get any actual RGB 12 bit media, you'll get totally crushed blacks and blown out highlights, as the monitor will force all data at 16 and below to black, everything above 235 white.

And people wonder what's wrong ... sigh.