Exports Color Shift on Mac OS and Color Management

Hello,

I know that the topic has been faced a countless number of times but, after having read the most different topics, I am still unable to achieve a correct color management for my work.
Every time I export something, regardless of the setting I am using, I always a more or less pronunced, but always still there, color shift (less saturated and contrasted).

System:
Mac Pro: Late 2013
Led Cinema Display 27"
OS: 12.3.1
DaVinci Resolve Studio 18 Public Beta

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Now, I have a properly calibrated monitor (done with an Eye1Profiler and Eye1Pro 2 Spectrophotometer) and my resulting ICC profiler properly installed and running with Mac Color Sync.
I had read to turn on (under Davinci Preferences/General) "Use Mac display color profiles for viewers" ON and also to turn, in the same panel, "Automatically tag Rec.709 Scene clips as Rec.709-A".

In my project setting, under "Color Management", I have set:
Color Science: DaVinci YRGB Color Managed
Color Processing Mode: HDR DaVinci Wide Gamut Intermediate
Output Color Space: Rec.709 Gamma 2.4 (but I tried Rec.709-A and the problem remain)

At the same time I export the video as, under "Advanced Setting":
Color Space Tag: Rec.709
Gamma Tag: Rec.709-A

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Now, I have read elsewhere in the forum to take a look at this article (https://daejeonchronicles.com/2020/06/24/7313/ ) which basically suggest the opposite, to disable "Use Mac display color profiles for viewers" and "Automatically tag Rec.709 Scene clips as Rec.709-A" in case somewone is working with an calibrated display. At the same time this article (https://www.thepostprocess.com/2020/07/17/color-on-mac-displays-from-davinci-resolve-to-the-internet-with-quicktime-tags/) states that "Use Mac display color profiles for viewers" works the opposite way after Mac OS 10.14.6 (so I tried to disable everything but again, the difference with the exported files is always there).

Checking the Studio 18 manual it states:

— Use Mac Display Color Profile for viewers: If you’re using DaVinci Resolve on macOS, this
checkbox enables all viewers in DaVinci Resolve to use whatever display profile is selected in the
Displays panel of the System Preferences. This lets DaVinci Resolve use ColorSync on macOS so your
Viewer image should better match your output display.

Still, I get a closer (but not the same) output if I leave it turned OFF.

I have tried basically almost every possible "Preference" / "Project Setting" / "Exporting Parameter" combination but I haven't been able to solve the issue, I always end un with washed out colors, is there a soul who might help me get around this big headache?

Really, thank you very much!


Alessandro

What software are you using to view your exports? You should never use QuickTime for viewing as it has known gamma shift issues.

Also there's a pretty big difference between gamma 2.2 and 2.4; if you're viewing this on a computer screen in a brightly lit environment (and if youtube is your destination for these videos), gamma 2.2 might be the better choice.

I feel your pain. If you haven't already seen it, give this a watch:

At the beginning he's talking about Premiere Pro, but it's the same for Resolve on MacOS and he talks a little bit about Resolve specifics towards the end.

Basically: Give up and be okay with it. You aren't doing anything wrong. It's a fundamental flaw in MacOS color management (called ColorSync). Not Resolve's fault or your export settings. If it looks good in Resolve, then that's all you can do. Anywhere else is the wild west and the best you can do is try to communicate that to your paying clients.

You can read "Final Explanation of Gamma and Color Shift Problems" here:
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=101253

Hello,

thank you very much to all of you for your precious advices and sorry for my late response but I wanted to properly look all the videos and make some more experiments.

At the end of all the things I have seen, IF I understood correctly, it could all be synthetize as follow:
- Gamma Shift in Mac OS environment, due to ColorSync applying gamma 1.96, there is no real solution about it unless Apple will updated their Color Management Software.
- There are some works around it: increasing contrast (by applying a LUT when exporting to compensate for the gamma shift or simply increasing the contrast in the timeline) or, in DaVinci, using Rec.709-A. Still, BOTH methods will end up displying with too much contrast on systems that do not run on Mac Os. So basically they are just a hack to view things properly on purely Mac OS (read ColorSync) envirnoment.

So, assuming we are grading for the whole world, and we do not want to make something specific for mac, I personally feel the most reasonable thing to do would be to accept it and do nothing about it. Also because, the day Apple will make this change to ColorSync everything will look properly on Mac OS as well.

Now, this whole thing left me with some confusion regarding some of the setting I use in DaVinci (my case Resolve 18 Studio):
- "Use Mac display color profiles for viewers": what does it do exactly? If checked it applies the my monitor ICC profile to DaVinci Resolve that, if not, would be simply not color managed? Or what...?
- Input color space: This should be set to Rec.709 (scene) in case of general Rec.709 material coming from an unknown camera. Otherwise, in case the camera is known, to the specific input color space of the camera.
- Output Color Space: Rec.709(Gamma 2.4). Why should I export to Gamma 2.2? I mean, I understand it will look brighter, and therefore more "correct", if viewed in a brighter environment BUT, assuming we are delivering just one output, shouldn't it be the standard 2.4? Then it should all be down to viewing condition of the room and capabilities of the display reproducing the footage for the viewer...or not?

Thank you very much for your patience and your help!

My very best,


Alessandro