Help problem with workspace e.g. colour space!

Question

Hi everyone, made a bit of a mistake...I completed a whole short project with alot of shots from after effects.  However I did not select a workspace, so for a long time now I have been going mad trying to work out why the project wasn't coming up to scratch after I exported it.  The colours were becoming way to saturated, and darker.
Now I have realized that its because of the workspace, but now if I select a preset the whole scene will change.  This is especially apparent with one shot which I have done with a 3D camera, and lighting.  What ever colour space I select effect how the image looks, either it will be too dark, to light or too saturated.  I am working in HDV, so the most obvious colour space to use is the one for that.  However the image becomes low in contrast, and due to the nature of many differnt items in one shot, they are all effected differently...
Is there any easy way I can export the video with no colour space, without the colours changing in the render?  Or is there a way I can use the presets without effecting what I have already done?  With no colour space selected, what are the colour settings?  Many thanks.

Answer 1

Is there any easy way I can export the video with no colour space,
without the colours changing in the render?  Or is there a way I can
use the presets without effecting what I have already done?  With no
colour space selected, what are the colour settings?  Many thanks.
That's a complicated question, Will. Many people turn off Color Management (in applications tha traditionally had Color Management, I mean) because they hope that turning it off means avoiding color management. It probably means bad color management
But that's a long subject. There's also room for opinion.
The very, very short answer could be: if the Project Working Space is the one you should use for your target medium (say, HDTV REC.709), and you make sure source files are intepreted correctly (HDV files should automatically show an embedded profile, but you can manually assign an HDTV. REC 709 Input profile if they don't.), then color rendering should behave even better than the generic RGB space used when there's no Project Working Space assigned (CM off).
Two things are true, though. One is that turning on Color Management if you're not familiar with what you're doing could do more harm than good (there's a very good white paper on Color Management available from Adobe).
For example:
Do not use an output profile in the Render Queue unless you know why you are doing it.
Do not use display management/device simulation if your computer monitor is not calibrated.
Do not linerize the project or enable the option to blend using 1.0 gamma unless you know what you're doing.
And the other, that people have been using AE without CM (it debuted in CS3) without getting color or luminance shifts. If you see very noticeable shifts, it probably is because of something else (or bad use of CM).
An imporant question - the color shifts you are seeing, are these evident in the Comp panel as soon as you assign a project working space (like HDTV. REC 709) or do they appear later in the rendered file? Because changes introduced by the project space should be immediately noticeable in the Comp panel. If they appear in the rendered file only, then it's most likely something else (the rendering options, the format/codec you're exporting to, etc).