Adobe 65008009 - After Effects CS4 Using Manual page 296

Last updated 12/21/2009
In some cases, files that you import have ICC profiles embedded in them. When you import these files, you can be
confident that the colors that you see are as the producer of the footage originally intended. After Effects can read and
write embedded color profiles for Photoshop (PSD), TIFF, PNG, and JPEG files.
If a footage item does not have an embedded color profile, you can assign an input color profile using the Interpret
Footage dialog box or by adding or modifying a rule in the interpretation rules file (interpretation rules.txt). After
Effects interprets the footage item as if the source footage was created using this color profile, so be certain to assign a
profile that matches (or at least approximates) that used to create the source footage.
Note: If a source footage item was created by an application that doesn't use color management—such as a movie
rendered from a 3D application—the input color profile is essentially the monitor profile of the system on which the image
was designed and created.
1 Select a footage item in the Project panel.
Choose File > Interpret Footage > Main.
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3 In the Color Management tab of the Interpret Footage dialog box, choose a value from the Assign Profile menu.
If you don't see the profile that you want in the Assign Profile menu, select Show All Available Profiles.
Read the information in the Description area of the dialog box to confirm that the conversion is the one that you
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want, and click OK.
Non-RGB footage items (such as CMYK, Y'CbCr, and camera raw images) cannot be assigned an input profile. Their
native color space is displayed in the Interpret Footage dialog box. Conversion of non-RGB color values to RGB color
values is handled automatically for each format.
If you don't assign an input color profile, and After Effects doesn't have a rule in the interpretation rules file with which
to make an interpretation, the colors of the footage item are assumed to be in the working color space of the project.
When color management is enabled, the input color profile for a footage item is shown in the information area at the
top of the Project panel.
The Interpret As Linear Light option determines whether the assigned input color profile is interpreted as being linear
(gamma equals 1.0). This option also works when color management is turned off for the project. (See
tone response" on page 282.)
You can prevent the conversion of colors into the working color space for a single footage item by selecting Preserve
RGB in the Color Management tab of the Interpret Footage dialog box. This option preserves RGB numbers; color
appearance is not preserved. Turning off color management for a specific footage item is useful when the footage item
is not intended for visual display, but is instead intended for use as a control layer—for example, a displacement map.
Todd Kopriva provides instructions for assigning an input color profile to correctly interpret ProRes 422 footage items
on the Adobe website.
More Help topics
"Interpret footage items" on page 71
Assign an output color profile
You control color management for each output item using the Output Module Settings dialog box.
Important: When you export to SWF format, you use the Export menu, not the Render Queue panel, so the output
module settings are not available for this output type. If color management is enabled for the project, After Effects
automatically converts colors from the working color space of the project to the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 color space when
exporting to SWF.
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USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
Color
"Gamma and