Photoshop colour profile

[JonasD]

Hi. I'm about to make a YouTube video containing pictures from iPhone 14 Pro and S23 Ultra. Which colour profile shall I use in photoshop? I want the highest possible quality for my video. I made a 16 bit file in photoshop and plans to export the video in 8k prores 4444xq.

 

[arw]

According to the YouTube upload guidlines:
As you mention 4444xq you probably want to go the HDR route which requires Rec. 2020.

HDR Optimization

Learn how to edit and export HDR photos in Adobe Camera Raw. Enhance your RAW HDR photos with the HDR feature in Adobe Camera Raw.

helpx.adobe.com

Upload High Dynamic Range (HDR) videos - YouTube Help

You can upload High Dynamic Range (HDR) videos to YouTube. HDR videos show higher contrast with more colors than standard digital video. Viewers can watch HDR videos on compatible mobile devices

support.google.com

Hopefully others with real-life-experience can help you more.

 

[JonasD]

According to the YouTube upload guidlines:
As you mention 4444xq you probably want to go the HDR route which requires Rec. 2020.

HDR Optimization

Learn how to edit and export HDR photos in Adobe Camera Raw. Enhance your RAW HDR photos with the HDR feature in Adobe Camera Raw.

helpx.adobe.com

Upload High Dynamic Range (HDR) videos - YouTube Help

You can upload High Dynamic Range (HDR) videos to YouTube. HDR videos show higher contrast with more colors than standard digital video. Viewers can watch HDR videos on compatible mobile devices

support.google.com

Hopefully others with real-life-experience can help you more.

Thanks for your reply. The images I have from both phones are .heic. Is it enough to choose Rec. 2020, Color Mode: RGB and 16-Bit in photoshop to get the highest quality? Can people see my video with HDR then? Is it overkill to use 4444xq for my purpose?

 

[JonasD]

I made a file with Rec. 2020 in photoshop. I then tried to paste a section from a picture .heic which came from the S23 Ultra. It says:

Paste Profile Mismatch:
Are you sure you want to convert colors to a destination document with a color profile that does not match the current RGB working space?

Source: DCI-P3 D65 Gamut with sRGB Transfer
Destination: Rec. ITU-R BT.2020-1
Working: sRGB IEC61966-2.1

What should I do?

 

[R S K]

1) Why in the world would you be doing this in Photoshop of all apps? 🤨
2) 4444 XQ is complete and utter overkill, yes. Even ProRes 422 is borderline nonsense in this case. That's like pouring a pint of water into a gallon jug. Zero point, zero gain. Just a bunch of superfluous air in a much too large container.
3) Same goes for your 16bit. You are blowing your data up exponentially (x20? x50 even??) with no sense or gain.
4) Then you want to upload it to Youtube of all places where it will be compressed down to a fraction of its size again.
5) Working in Rec 2020 is also pointless. Unless of course, you can actually output it as such in a way that even uses and maintains the full colorspace (assuming you even have the hardware to display and grade it accordingly) AND then output it in a format that it can be recognized and shown as such on Youtube. Can you?

Can I guess? 😏 Do you even expect to display the final product on an actual HDR display??

You need to be using an NLE such as Final Cut Pro and then read up on the HDR workflow, assuming there's any point in even going with HDR. That's nothing one can explain in a few sentences. Especially when the subject is completely foreign to you to start with.

 

[JonasD]

1) Why in the world would you be doing this in Photoshop of all apps? 🤨
2) 4444 XQ is complete and utter overkill, yes. Even ProRes 422 is borderline nonsense in this case. That's like pouring a pint of water into a gallon jug. Zero point, zero gain. Just a bunch of superfluous air in a much too large container.
3) Same goes for your 16bit. You are blowing your data up exponentially (x20? x50 even??) with no sense or gain.
4) Then you want to upload it to Youtube of all places where it will be compressed down to a fraction of its size again.
5) Working in Rec 2020 is also pointless. Unless of course, you can actually output it as such in a way that even uses and maintains the full colorspace (assuming you even have the hardware to display and grade it accordingly) AND then output it in a format that it can be recognized and shown as such on Youtube. Can you?

Can I guess? 😏 Do you even expect to display the final product on an actual HDR display??

You need to be using an NLE such as Final Cut Pro and then read up on the HDR workflow, assuming there's any point in even going with HDR. That's nothing one can explain in a few sentences. Especially when the subject is completely foreign to you to start with.

Hi. I'm not doing any anything with my images. I'm just copying and pasting. It's a comparison video or shootout. Is 8-bit enough for the full colour gamut of DCI-P3? I don't care about file size, I just want the highest possible quality until YouTube compresses it. Some images are 200MP with HDR. Are you saying that I could use 422 and keep the image quality at 100%? Only 100% is good enough. As little as possible should be lost before YouTube compresses it.

 

[JonasD]

Should I convert the images from 14 Pro and S23 Ultra to rec.2020 or will that introduce other issues?

 

[R S K]

Anything that is "tossed" in advance when working with any ProRes will be completely imperceptible. And if you upload it as HDR, anyone watching it in SDR—which will be 99.998% of viewers—will see it with a different tone mapping than you, so different than you. And "full colour gamut of DCI-P3" is irrelevant in video because it's a digital format for theaters and is useless for Youtube. Never mind that that could even only be relevant if you somehow assume that everyone watching the video even has a screen that can display it, which carries just about the same percentile likelihood as above. You are WAY overthinking matters.

And since I have no clue what export options Photoshop—which is not a video editing app—has, I can't tell you what to output.

If it were Final Cut Pro, where you wouldn't have to think about any "conversions", I'd say simply use any "Apple Devices" preset and switch it to "HEVC 10bit". That will give you a 10-bit file while still being small in size. What Youtube ends up squishing into quality-wise no one knows. It's not a platform for high-quality content, to begin with!

 

[JonasD]

Anything that is "tossed" in advance when working with any ProRes will be completely imperceptible. And if you upload it as HDR, anyone watching it in SDR—which will be 99.998% of viewers—will see it with a different tone mapping than you, so different than you. And "full colour gamut of DCI-P3" is irrelevant in video because it's a digital format for theaters and is useless for Youtube. Never mind that that could even only be relevant if you somehow assume that everyone watching the video even has a screen that can display it, which carries just about the same percentile likelihood as above. You are WAY overthinking matters.

And since I have no clue what export options Photoshop—which is not a video editing app—has, I can't tell you what to output.

If it were Final Cut Pro, where you wouldn't have to think about any "conversions", I'd say simply use any "Apple Devices" preset and switch it to "HEVC 10bit". That will give you a 10-bit file while still being small in size. What Youtube ends up squishing into quality-wise no one knows. It's not a platform for high-quality content, to begin with!

These pictures contains HDR metadata in them so using these HDR pictures in Final Cut Pro could be a bad thing? I thought the only difference would be that people with an HDR capable monitor would see that extra data and people without wouldn't see that data.

 

[R S K]

When did I say it would be a bad thing? 🤨

It would be the better thing since Final Cut Pro would treat the media as needed without having to fiddle with it.

And a clip's tone mapping can only be EITHER OR. If tone mapped for Rec 2020 then people looking at it on an actual HDR monitor (of which there are NOT going to be many) will see the full wide gamut HDR version, yes. But people with SDR monitors will see the same HDR version tone mapped to SDR (assuming you know what you're doing and did it right). Something that is never the same as the original i.e. will always look ever so different. Up to you which you prefer to cater to! If you actually think the vast majority will watch in HDR for some reason, then go for the full HDR workflow.

And it's not "extra data". It's more color depth, yes, but first and foremost a much higher luminance range. All of which will be scaled to SDR on non-HDR screens. Do you even have a proper HDR screen? As in one that does a minimum of 1000 nits?? Becasue if not, then not even you will be able to watch what you've created.

 

[JonasD]

No, I'm on an iMac M1 so I can't see HDR. But I want to offer it for people that has an HDR capable monitor. So what I'm doing right now is to combine 10 pictures into one by copying the same part from all the pictures and pasting them into one picture (10 slices). That's why I need photoshop, or can I do that in fcp?

 

[R S K]

It has nothing to do with your Mac, it has to do with your screen. Any and every Mac of the past several years can feed an HDR screen just fine. And if you go full HDR, then your viewers will see something other than you. If you think that makes sense… go for it. What that process entails is for someone else to explain.

And yes, if you know how, you can easily do that in FC as well.