Understanding Linear Workflow

on Dec 10th 2009 with 40 comments

This tutorial is an introduction to using linear workflow within After Effects in order to achieve more photo-realistic composites. This is a prerequisite tut to pave the way for one we’ll be posting soon on how to work with RED footage within AE.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size 36.2MB

 
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Daniel Broadway is a professional graphic designer working at an NBC affiliate as Graphics Director. He is also a freelance visual effects artist and compositor, having worked as visual effects supervisor on two independent feature films "20 Years After.", and most recently "A Lonely Place for Dying."  

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  • http://www.henrymatt.com Matt Henry

    Very nice video. I would love to see more explanations like these in addition to all the quality tutorials. It’s one thing to be able to follow a recipe and recreate an effect, but this taught me a ton about a subject I knew absolutely nothing about. Hope you decide to make some more videos like this in the future!

    • Raoul

      “Hope you decide to make some more videos like this in the future!”

      I think there will be others ^^

      “This is a prerequisite tut to pave the way for one we’ll be posting soon on how to work with RED footage within AE.”

      • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway
        Author

        Yes, I will be working on a RED/AE workflow tutorial next week when I get back from vacation. :)

  • ckRED

    Great one, finally this topic has been covered, I’ve been confused for too long!

  • eric

    Great tut. Thanks a lot.

  • krizZz

    Well. This definately seems to be an important AND interesting point but I would need to know more benefits of using colomanagement than this one excample, because the result is not that big thing I would expect when I look at time and effort.

    I really would love to go a little bit deeper into this stuff to decide whether it’s useful for my project o not.

    Thank you!

    • http://gh0stdigital.wordpress.com/ Ghost Digital

      It’s more important in 3D work than AE composites. Most motion graphics artists won’t worry about linear workflow in a compositing program like AE. Sure it makes things technically correct, however, it just chews time and is more a waste of time in AE than being valuable.

    • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway
      Author

      Color Management overall is VERY important. Every person who uses After Effects would benefit from understanding color management. Luckily, AE is pretty good at guessing things for you, but the more you understanding going on under the hood, the better.

      Linear workflow, is part of that. In motion graphics, it’s not as important, but for visual effects work, it’s essential knowledge. Simply put, if you are not using a linear workflow in your 3D and compositing, you are quite simply doing it the wrong way. People have been doing it the wrong way for so long, many have a hard time admitting it they’ve never been doing it right. In 3D software, it will make inverse square falloffs appear correct, highlights to midtones more natural. In compositing, it blends your edges in a more photographic and natural way.

      All VFX artists at studios are required to use linear workflow, so if your goal is to one day do VFX for a living, linear workflow is quite simply a MUST.

      • http://gh0stdigital.wordpress.com/ Ghost Digital

        I understood linear workflow before your written tutorial.

  • http://www.c-r-u-x.de c-r-u-x

    Thanks a lot, great tutorial! I’ve definitely learned a lot here and am looking forward to the one this is a prerequisite to.
    Like Matt said, it would be nice to have well and understandably done informative videos like this more often!

  • tot pal

    the hidden face of the modern world ..lol

    plzzz I need further explanation ….

    thanxx

  • http://www.youtube.com.br/ianhpiratao IANH – BR

    Very nice tut man!
    thank you so much!

  • http://www.vimeo.com/everettoptions Adam Everett Miller

    We took it down to make a couple quick changes, but it’s back up now. Enjoy!

  • http://www.lunaproject.com Martin

    Very good tutorial. hope we get more of these. saves a lot of time searching for the good pro technical stuff. Thanks alot!

  • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway
    Author

    Glad you guys like it. This post over at aeportalnews has some additional links on linear workflows…

    http://aeportal.blogspot.com/2009/12/understanding-linear-workflow.html

  • http://colorcram.com Marc R Leonard

    This is killer Daniel!

  • Ahada

    Thanks for your useful tut

  • Matt

    Usefull information, but why do so many people insist on using gamma 2.2 settings in their 3d package (reason; more light information) and why does mac osx snow leopard have a default screen output gamma of 2.2 ?
    Does this mean we create thing in photoshop/c4d etc in 2.2 and composite them together in a 1.0 gamma space ?
    Quite confusing but would be nice to fully get this workflow right.

    • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway
      Author

      You are supposed to use a Gamma 1.0 (Linear) workflow in 3D programs as well. That way your shading and lighting are more accurate to real life. If you don’t set up linear workflow in a 3D program, you are in effect crushing your blacks in midtones visually. Now, in 3ds max, when you use a Gamma LUT for correction, you would set it to Gamma 2.2 to let max KNOW that’s what your monitor is.

      As far as Mac 0SX, I believe Macs used to have a gamma of 1.8, but they changed it recently to 2.2 to fall in line with the rest of the computer world and make things easier. PCs also have a monitor gamma of 2.2

      And yes, most of the time when you paint in Photoshop, you are painting at gamma 2.2 Photoshop will usually save out to sRGB which is around gamma 2.2. That’s why when you bring some sRGB element into AE, you have to tell AE what it is via color management, so that it knows how to properly use it withing a linear composite. Also, if you paint textures in photoshop within a 3D program and then use it on a 3D object using linear workflow, your 3D program will apply an inverse curve of around 0.46 on your texture map to make it work as gamma 1.0 internally, even if the original source is 2.2

      Whew! I hope that made sense :D

  • maj

    Wait…
    Lemme get this straight:

    If I film something at say, Adobe RGB, import into after effects, change the color profile to Adobe RGB, Linearize it, do the composite, and then export it with a color profile for Adobe RGB (Not the Working porfile), I will get a more accurate looking result, eventhough theat gamma output is 2.2?

    Thanks for this cool and informative tut,
    maj

    • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway
      Author

      Yes, that’s correct. You are doing the composite “under the hood” as linear, even though you are doing the composite while viewing Adobe RGB on your monitor.

      • maj

        Ah, it comes together!
        Thank you.

  • abhay sharma

    this is best tutorial of AETUTS!
    Daniel you are great!

  • Jonny134

    can u pls upload the fire footage just to be able to try this myself

    • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway
      Author

      I downloaded it from this site.

      • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway
        Author

        Opps, here’s the link…

        http://www.sxc.hu/

  • frankyframe

    hehe this is the best tut !
    maybe it is possible to get new tutporial?
    explaning how to use the blending modes in a correct way?
    im just always playing around to get a realistic look.
    maybe someone knows a great book, that explains all the modes
    to use and and not just that screen and add are nearly the same

  • Martin

    Daniel, thanks a lot for that. As a pro photographer I know quite a bunch about colourmangement for the print workflow and it is the most essential thing but always wondered how to get colours right in the video world.
    A question though: How can you ever know in which colourspace your video camera works? For the RED ok, you shoot a linear raw and then export it after your first grade with a profile attached, so no problem for AE to interpret it right. But what about shooting on a EX1 or a Canon DSLR or any video camera for that matter? They don’t assign profiles to the footage, how would you set AE CM up to interpret this footage “right”? Which profile would you use?

    Thanks again and keep em coming, this is so important!
    Martin

    • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway
      Author

      Well, with the EX1, I’m pretty sure it’s HDTV Rec 709. That’s a pretty safe bet for any HD camcorder. As for the Canon or Nikon DSLRs, I would also imagine it’s HDTV REc 709, but I do not know for sure. You can probably find this information in the manuals, or by contacting the manufacturer directly. :)

  • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway
    Author

    Well, with the EX1, I’m pretty sure it’s HDTV Rec 709. That’s a pretty safe bet for any HD camcorder. As for the Canon or Nikon DSLRs, I would also imagine it’s HDTV REc 709, but I do not know for sure. You can probably find this information in the manuals, or by contacting the manufacturer directly.

    • Martin

      Thanks for the reply Daniel.
      HDTV Rec 709 and sRGB are quite similar colourspaces, and both are fairly small, assuring that even on a crappy monitor colours look alright. But assigning either of both to your footage results in losing some information in your files as you are pushing the whole range into a small colourspace, which is not good and nobody in print world would ever do. I tetsted different settings in AE and when you apply hdtv rec or srgb to 5dMkII footage I can realy see colours getting clipped, especially the reds and yellows. (thats on a hardware calibrated eizo 241), so this doesn’t seem to be a very good solution. Unfortunately it seems the only one so far.
      Anyway, just trying to understand all this a little better.

      • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway
        Author

        Martin, in the interpret footage dialogue, under color management, there is a “Preserve RGB” checkbox. Try that to see if you get better results. AE will try it’s best to use the embedded color space of the file when that is checked on.

  • illd

    Nice explanation of the lin workflow. But when I activate “linear Working Space” a lot of colors in the AE-Colorpicker disappear or at least get “crunched” somehow. Is it because this are in nature no real existing colors, so they get cut off?
    Anyway, for Motiondesign (where I need all of the colors) I turn the “lin working space” off but activate the “Blend colors using 1.0 gamma” which give sometimes nice results. But its important to set that up before you start your work on the project – activating it afterwards gives in most cases not the best results. You have to be in control of the 1.0 gamma all the time to now what you are doing with the colors.

  • bill.clay

    it will go away if you’d just stop playing with it

  • Danny Hilton

    Thanks for the tutorial!

    I’ve got a question though: When I follow the advice from your video and set my AE project to 32bpc and “linearize working space”, every footage I import looks and blends good in the final render output (again, just as you said), but as soon as I create something from scratch in AE (e.g. a black-to-white gradient), those parts of the composition will be too bright in the final render. When I add a levels effect to them, setting gamma to 0.455 they look good again, but this can’t be the correct workflow, can it?

    • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway
      Author

      Humm, that is very odd. I’m not sure what is happening. If you want to e-mail me a project file with a gradient in it, I can take a look at it, but I can’t say out right what the problem is. The only thing I can think of is that you are using overbright colors in your gradients.

  • jiangting

    为什么我要密码 难道不是免费的吗 我是第一次来这个网站

  • Andreas

    Hi Daniel,

    nice and simple Tut! Thanks fo that.

    I work with a photographer and a retoucher on stills with CGI cars and real backplates.
    They do NOT understand linear workflow at all and force me to set up a profile (ECIRGB v2) in PS.
    We do the comp in Photoshop. The cars are rendered in linear workspace, 32bit, exr from a realtime editor called VRED Photo.

    We do not see the same result in PS like they were set up and seen in the realtime 3D editor.
    The render window does not have the ability like in Maya to put a Gamma correction node on it.

    Can you outline a linear workflow in PS, so I get the result like when previewing rendering?

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/WayfareFilms Amey Adchule

    Excellint Tutorial.
    Found it really helpful.
    Mostly helps me in colour grading..Earlier used to colour grade on my monitor and the other montor used to give darken or brighten result.
    Hope this would solve the problem.
    Any tips about choice of monitors-LED/LCD/CRT”???

    Thanks,
    Amey Adchule.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000984755551 Richard J. Davis

    Log, Monitor Gamma… they roughly mean the same thing.
    That’s kinda confusing. Isn’t Monitor linear and Film log?