Color Profile Converter effect

The Color Profile Converter effect converts a layer from one color space to another by specifying input and output profiles.

In most cases, you should use automatic color management features to convert from one color space to another, rather than using the Color Profile Converter to manually do the conversions. (See Color management.)

Important: In general, you should either work with color management features or use the Color Profile Converter—not both.

The profiles you select are embedded in the project, so you can use them even if you transfer the project to a computer that doesn’t have the same profiles. When converting from one color space to another, you can specify how After Effects handles the color conversion by selecting a rendering intent. You can also choose whether to linearize the input or output profile.

This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color.

To convert the color profile of the layer, select a color profile from the Input Profile menu. Select Project Working Space to use the profile specified in the project settings (File > Project Settings). To linearize the input profile, select the Linearize Input Profile option. Then select an output profile from the Output Profile menu. To linearize the output profile, select the Linearize Output Profile. In the Intent menu, select a rendering intent.

Rendering intent options determine how source colors are adjusted. For example, colors that fall inside the destination gamut may remain unchanged, or they may be adjusted to preserve the original range of visual relationships when translated to a smaller destination gamut.

The result of choosing a rendering intent depends on the graphical content of an image and on the profiles used to specify color spaces. Some profiles produce identical results for different rendering intents.

When specifying a rendering intent, you can choose to use black point compression. Black point compression ensures that the shadow detail in the image is preserved by simulating the full dynamic range of the output device.

The following rendering intents are available for the Color Profile Converter effect:

Perceptual: Attempts to preserve the visual relationship between colors so it’s perceived as natural to the human eye, even though the color values themselves may change. This intent is suitable for images with many of out-of-gamut colors.
Saturation: Attempts to produce vivid colors in an image at the expense of color accuracy. This rendering intent is suitable for images, such as graphic logos, in which bright saturated colors are more important than the exact relationship between colors.
Relative Colorimetric: Compares the extreme highlight of the source color space to the extreme highlight of the destination color space and shifts all colors accordingly. Out-of-gamut colors are shifted to the closest reproducible color in the destination color space. This rendering intent preserves more of the original colors in an image than Perceptual. This rendering intent is used by default throughout After Effects.
Absolute Colorimetric: Leaves colors that fall inside the destination gamut unchanged. Out-of-gamut colors are clipped. No scaling of colors to the destination white point is performed. This intent aims to maintain color accuracy at the expense of preserving relationships between colors.

Use the Scene-ref. Profile Compensation control to determine whether each instance of the Color Profile Converter effect compensates for scene-referred profiles:

On: Compensates for scene-referred profiles.
Off: Doesn’t compensate for scene-referred profiles.
Use Project Setting: Uses the setting indicated by the project’s Compensate For Scene-referred Profiles option.

For an explanation of scene-referred profiles, see System gamma, device gamma, and the difference between scene and viewing environment.

Note: If you open an After Effects 7 project that uses DPX Scene and DPX Theater color profiles in the Color Profile Converter effect, After Effects CS4 does not automatically update these profiles to the new equivalent profiles (Kodak 5218/7218 Printing Density and Kodak 2383 Theater Preview). Instead, the profiles are listed as Embedded. You can convert your project by manually assigning the new profiles in After Effects CS4. However, if the same profiles were assigned to the footage or selected in Proof Colors in After Effects 7, they are automatically updated to the new profiles in After Effects CS4. (Proof Colors has been replaced by Output Simulation.)

On his fnord website, Brendan Bolles explains how to use the Color Profile Converter effect and film color profiles to adjust colors and perform tone mapping to make an HDR image appear as if it were shot on motion picture film.