Often, you need to preview how a movie will appear on a device other than your computer monitor. One purpose of color management is to ensure that colors look the same on every device, but color management in After Effects can’t overcome scenarios like the following:

• An output device for which you’re creating your movie has a smaller gamut than your project’s working color space, so the device is unable to represent some colors.

• The colors in your movie are displayed by a device or software that does not use color management to convert colors.

For example, when you are creating a movie on Windows, you may want to see how the movie will look on Mac OS without color management. (Colors tend to look lighter on computer systems running Mac OS.) An even more extreme example: When you are creating a movie using a computer monitor and a high-definition video monitor, you may need to see how the movie will look when transferred to a specific film stock and projected under standard theater viewing conditions.

In situations like these, you’ll want to preview how colors will appear when they’re displayed on a device other than your computer monitor. Output simulation requires display color management.

During output simulation, colors are converted from the project’s working color space to the monitor’s color space through the following flow:

1. Colors are converted from project’s working color space to output color space.

Colors are converted from the working color space to the color space of the output type using the output color profile (the same profile that will be used for rendering to final output).

2. Colors are converted from output color space to simulated playback device’s color space.

If Preserve RGB is not selected, colors are converted from the output color space to the color space of the presentation medium using the simulation profile. This presumes that the simulated device also performs color management and will convert colors for display. Color appearance is preserved; RGB numbers are not preserved.

If Preserve RGB is selected, the color values are not converted in this step. Instead, the numerical RGB color values are preserved and are re-interpreted to be in the color space of the simulated device. One use of this simulation is to see how a movie will look when played back on a device other than the one for which it was intended or a device that does not perform color management.

Note: Preserve RGB is also used when simulating the combination of a capture film stock and a print film stock.

3. Colors are converted from simulated playback device’s color space to your monitor’s color space

Colors are converted from the presentation device color space to the color space of your computer monitor using the monitor profile.

When you create an output simulation preset, you can choose a profile to use for each of these steps.

Even if you’re using a preset output simulation, you can choose the Custom option in the View > Simulate Output menu after selecting the preset to see a representation of which color conversions and reinterpretations are occurring for that simulation type.

Output simulation applies only to a specific viewer (Composition, Layer, or Footage panel) and works only for previews. Color conversions for output simulation are performed when values are sent to the display. Actual color numbers in the project are not changed.

As with all color space conversions, simulating output decreases performance somewhat, so you may not want to simulate output when performing tasks that require real-time interaction.

You can press Shift+/ (on the numeric keypad) to turn display color management on or off. Turning display color management off also turns output simulation off. Simulation settings (including No Output Simulation) are remembered.