Color Management for Production

[Mrloafbot_vb]

I work at a small studio and we do mostly print work, but would like to expand into doing more broadcast work. I’ve found that our renders dont look that great on our broadcast monitor. I read about working in linear color space and rendering at gamma 2.2 and alot of other stuff… But there really isnt a defintive guide to how to manage your color across applications. We use 3ds max and maya with after effects ( looking into Shake and Digital fusion) Well if anybody has any ideas on or any info about the practial parts of color management.Such as:

Monitor Calibration, and temprature.. what about lcd’sf?
Application Gammas?
What bit depths should I use?

I would be great to render, and have it display as it would look on a monitor.. then be able to composite in the same color space.

Thanks for any info or suggestions.

[Shervin Shoghian]

here ya go buddy

http://www.fxguide.com/postt1677.html

already covered.

Swerve.

[Mrloafbot_vb]

Thanks for the link. I was more wondering about what sort of stuff a 3d person would do to be working in broadcast color. Like what kind of files should I be rendering out? What bit depth? At what Gamma? How do I make my monitor display such images properly?

[patdawg]

Mrloafbot wrote:

Thanks for the link. I was more wondering about what sort of stuff a 3d person would do to be working in broadcast color. Like what kind of files should I be rendering out? What bit depth? At what Gamma? How do I make my monitor display such images properly?

The most important thing to know, in my opinion, is that broadcast will never look quite as nice as your print, or web work. The range of legal colors is significantly smaller, as is the resolution (assuming you work in SD for television). It may be worth getting a calibration probe if your broadcast monitor supports it, the same with your computers, but you are never, never going to get them to match exactly. Learn to live with it, and do the best you can within the limitations given you by NTSC.

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