Two Artists, Two Project Files, One Color Pipeline
A three-person studio is building a 30-second retail spot. The project holds eight Sony FX6 S-Log3 clips (XAVC, 3840x2160, 23.976 fps), three Illustrator end cards, and one H.264 screen capture. The lead artist created the project with default color settings and left bit depth at 8 bpc. In the Composition panel the Illustrator artwork reads lighter and less saturated than it does inside Illustrator, while the S-Log3 footage looks flat and washed out. A second artist opened a brand-new project with New Project and is assembling two of the shots there, planning to paste them into the lead file later. The producer needs a review render this afternoon and final delivery is Rec.709 at 2.4 gamma.
1. Diagnose both color symptoms and name the concrete project and item-level changes you make before any further compositing.
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These are two different faults that happen to look similar.
The S-Log3 clips are display-referred by accident. Nothing in After Effects detects a log curve. The file's encoded values are dropped straight into the project working space, so the low-contrast log image is shown as if it were already graded. Options:
- Per-item: Interpret Footage > Color, assign an input transform or apply a camera LUT via an effect. Fast, but you now have eight independent decisions to keep in sync.
- Project-wide: switch to a managed workflow (Adobe or OCIO engine) with an explicit input transform for the camera, a working space wide enough for grading, and a Rec.709 display transform. With eight shots, upcoming revisions and a broadcast deliverable, the managed route is the one I would defend in review.
The Illustrator files are being reinterpreted, not converted. A vector import carries no reliable screen profile, so its numeric colors are assumed to belong to the working space. If the artwork was authored in a wider space or in CMYK, those numbers land in a narrower space and desaturate. Fix at the item: Interpret Footage > Color, assign the correct input profile. Fix at the source: re-export from Illustrator converted to the agreed working space.
Bit depth. Move the project to 16 bpc before grading. At 8 bpc the log footage banding is baked in and cannot be recovered later.
2. The second artist's file was created from scratch. What will actually break when the two are combined, and how do you stop it recurring on the next job?
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What breaks:
- Color settings live in the .aep, not in preferences. The second file has its own engine, working space and display transform. The same clip can look correct in one file and wrong in the other while both are open on the same machine.
- Footage interpretation is stored per project, per item. Even if both artists point at the same source file on the shared volume, each project holds its own frame rate, alpha type, field order and input profile for it. Pasting layers does not carry the source item's interpretation; the receiving project applies its own.
- Comp bit depth and comp color settings are per comp. A pasted comp can arrive at 8 bpc inside a 16 bpc project.
- Relinking resets to defaults. A missing-item relink re-creates the footage with default interpretation, quietly undoing the log fix.
How to stop it:
- Build a template .aep with the agreed color engine, working space, bit depth, comp presets and folder structure, and require everyone to start from Import of that template rather than New Project.
- Keep source interpretation decisions in a written shot sheet so a relink can be audited.
- Hand off with Collect Files so the receiving project is the one you tested, not a merge of two.
- Make the color decision before grading, not after. Values you picked by eye are relative to the working space; changing it later invalidates approved looks.