This is a bit related to the colour management thread. I want to ask for advice regarding transformation from photographic RAW to video files, while keeping as much colour data as possible. 

In photography, ProPhoto is the widest available colour space when exporting RAW images to proper image files. However, it is not supported in Premiere or Resolve.

We shoot in-studio timelapses on a Sony A7 III. Our workflow is to transcode the RAWs to 16-bit TIFFs using Adobe Lightroom.

When exporting with ProPhoto colour space, these images look great on Photoshop, but are desaturated/washed out/"raw looking" in Premiere and Resolve.

Exporting with sRGB or Adobe RGB results in image sequences that look identical to Lightroom, but at the expense of colour information and grading flexibility.

This is not too big a deal when the timelapse is to be used standalone (since we have consistent studio lighting, we can apply the same grade in Lightroom to all the images and just use the NLE to encode into a deliverable movie file). But when the timelapse needs to be cut with other footage in an edit, we do need that missing flexibility to match colours properly. 

Is there any way to get Premiere or Resolve (or another NLE?) to use ProPhoto colour space? Or, more fundamentally, what is the optimal way to make RAW images usable in an NLE while retaining as much information as possible?

Best,

Marc

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Marc Srour
Producer & Motion Control Specialist
ABL Films Cyprus
+35799308521
marc@...

 ...transformation from photographic RAW to video files, while keeping as much colour data as possible. 

Davinci Resolve is very good at this. Although I’ve never done this with Sony RAW stills I do it all the time with Canon cr2 and cr3 files. If you need to work in a NLE system that does not support the the RAW files Resolve can be used to transform them to linear .exr which retain more then enough color information for color grade, in my experience. 

Actually, the reason sRGB works is because that is what is being applied to the pictures for viewing, via an ICC.

So, to match that, you just need a ProPhoto to sRGB (or Rec709) conversion at the end of your Resolve pipeline.

You can then grade under that, in the same way as working with an ICC, with no pre-clipping/processing of the images.

Steve

Thank you everyone for the replies, they helped me out in getting to the correct workflow: After Effects loads Sony's Raw files with full latitude, since it has Adobe Camera Raw integrated. You only have to ensure that your Project settings are set correctly with regards to working colour space and bit depth. From here we can either finish in AE, or export an EXR sequence for interoperability.

The EXRs seem identical to the RAWs when I look at the scopes, much less damage than the TIFFs at least, and they're compatible with everything. AE is a handful when used for grading and editing, but not having to export saves time and space.

The problem with Resolve is that it doesn't support Sony's .arw raw format, or else the entire workflow could be done there. 
The problem with Premiere is that it doesn't load any photo raw file, and for some reason it doesn't detect the DNG exports as an image sequence (using Camera Raw 14, Premiere Pro 2022). I suspect it would be a piece of cake for Adobe to implement Camera Raw in Premiere, since they have it in After Effects, and this would be an easy solve.

Either way, thank you for the hints, EXR and DNG slipped my mind, and they prompted me to look at After Effects.

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Marc Srour
Producer & Motion Control Specialist
ABL Films Cyprus
+35799308521
marc@...