Reverse the Color Management/Working Space

[cre12002789d10u16954438]

We have several projects using rec 2020 color space on the project settings. It's causing shifts to the renders based on the original files. Is there a way to sort of reverse that on the way out using the color management settings to get the colors to revert back to the original space? When I switch the color management to NONE, it screws up my color effects because the colors shift. Any help is appreciated. I'm in a bad pinch here.

[Mylenium]

Well, bad news first: You're very obviously not actually using color management, so even switching to Rec 2020 in the first place seems kinda pointless. Other than that there is no simple way to just invert a profile or LUT. Perhaps you can salvage the situation by applying a Color Profile Converter effect on an adjustment layer/ the pre-comps by picking reasonably matching color profiles, but that's pretty much as far as it goes. In the long run you probably can't avoid instating proper CM if you really want to use that workflow.

Mylenium

[cre12002789d10u16954438]

For some of the shots, it seems that rendering to Rec.709 allows the renders to move back into the same space they came from. Even after all these years and even lots of effort to make sense of CM in AE, it still throws me for loops. Obviously, now that I've looked closer at the situation, I should have just had the color management set to NONE all along. I did not realize that using a color working space would actually throw the colors around like that. I confused working spaces with viewing profiles I guess? When is it even appropriate to use a working space if it just shifts all the colors around like that?

[Rick Gerard]

If the footage you are trying to move back to the original color space is 8 bit and compressed then the original information is gone. You can only approximate the original colors. There is nothing you can do about but fiddle with the knobs and try and reverse the original settings and live with the result.

If the footage is 10 bit or better and lossless then maybe, if things have not been pushed too far, you can return to the original colors without any noticeable loss.

[cre12002789d10u16954438]

I have all the camera masters and our projects are 16bit. The issue is when I try to move the project back to No working space, all my color corrections and keys get destroyed.

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

cre12002789d10u16954438  wrote

I have all the camera masters and our projects are 16bit. The issue is when I try to move the project back to No working space, all my color corrections and keys get destroyed.

That makes perfect sense. If you change the working space the color management is going to get fouled up. I don't know of any way to tell a LUT to look at the working color space and then reset the current adjustments to a new working space.

Personally, I would just create a neutral LUT as a starting point and move on from there. I can't remember the last project I was paid for that did not require a little custom color grading on each shot. I always start with a Neutral LUT based on the general look for the project that is set using color cards in at least one of the master shot.

[cre12002789d10u16954438]

Our normal workflow is to use a viewing lut just to see what we are doing and then deliver the shots back to the colorist in the original color space that it was shot in. So, I don't normally send anything out that doesn't match perfectly back to the original camera raw +/- my vfx work.