Use Display Color Management

[Ferdinand83]

Hi everyone,

Apologies, if this has been dealt with before, but I can't seem to find anything on the web.

I've got a Dell U2515H display connected to my Windows 10 machine and I'm trying to use it correctly - especially when using After Effects.

I'm working in Linear Working Space with sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as the working space.

When not activating Display Color Management, things look alright:

But when I activate Use Display Color Management things look completely washed out and dull:

I'll keep my question short: What am I doing wrong?

Shouldn't the Display Color Management render things in the Comp Viewer more 'correct'? Currently it really messes things up.

Thanks for letting me know.

[Ferdinand83 · Accepted solution]

OK, I may just have accidentally stumbled across the solution myself.

First of all, I found a button named "Show Color Profile" in the UI of Cinema 4D's Picture Viewer:

I'm currently rendering an animation sequence with Octane Render in 32bit using a Linear Workflow. When I deactivate the "Show Color Profile" button, the image gets very dark. According to the C4D help, the image is shown in sRGB if the button is deactivated and in the respective color profile, when you click it.

Now I imported that image sequence into After Effects, set the Depth to 32Bit, the Working Space to sRGB and then activated Linearize Working Space.

Guess how things look, when "Use Display Color Management" is deactivated?

Exactly! Just as dark as the image was in Cinema 4D, when "Show Color Profile" was deactivated.

Now guess what happens when I activate "Use Display Color Management" in After Effects?

The image is shown correctly, i.e. in the same way it was rendered in Cinema 4D, when "Show Color Profile" was enabled.

This leads me to assume, that the "Use Display Color Management" option in After Effects is simply there, to help display 'linear' images properly on your monitor. If that's the case, it's a bit of a misnomer, because it rather does, what's written on C4D's tin, i.e. display the color profile (in this case linear) in the correct way.

There will obviously be people who know this far better than I do and if so, I'd appreciate to be corrected. But in the meantime, I think I solved my own question 🙂