Ae Color

---
name: ae-color
description: Colour in After Effects through the AE MCP Bridge - grading with Lumetri Color on an adjustment layer (white balance, exposure, contrast, saturation, vibrance, faded film, vignette), looks and LUTs without freezing the app, duotones and brand tints, matching shots and a brand palette, selective colour, broadcast-safe limits, and checking a grade with rendered frames. Verified effect and parameter names. Use when asked to grade, colour correct, match shots, apply a look or LUT, recolour to brand colours, make it warmer, cooler, moodier or filmic, or fix washed-out or clipped footage.
---

# Colour

Grade on an **adjustment layer** above the shots, not on each shot. One
layer changes everything under it, and turning it off (`enabled: false`)
gives an instant before and after.

```json
ae_create_layer {"kind": "adjustment", "options": {"name": "Grade"}}
ae_apply_effect {"layer": "Grade", "effect": "ADBE Lumetri"}
```

## Before you grade: bit depth and space

- **8 bits per channel is not enough to grade.** Push contrast or a gradient
  in 8-bit and you get banding that no later fix removes. Set the project to
  16 bpc for anything with soft gradients, glows or heavy grading; 32 bpc
  (linear) when you are compositing light — glows and blurs behave correctly
  over bright areas — at real cost in speed.
- Keep one working space across the piece, and do not change it halfway.
  A master graded in one space and delivered in another shifts, most visibly
  in skin and brand colours.
- **Log or raw footage** needs its input transform or input LUT applied
  first, in Lumetri, before any creative grading. Grading log directly gives
  the washed-out look people then try to fix with contrast.

## Lumetri Color

Its controls are addressed directly under the effect. The first control with
a name is the one in Basic Correction:

```json
ae_set_property {"layer": "Grade", "path": ["Effects","Lumetri Color","Temperature"], "value": 12}
ae_set_property {"layer": "Grade", "path": ["Effects","Lumetri Color","Exposure"], "value": 0.3}
```

| Control | Range | Does |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature | −100 … 100 | cooler (−) or warmer (+) |
| Tint | −100 … 100 | green (−) or magenta (+) |
| Exposure | stops, about −5 … 5 | overall brightness |
| Contrast | −100 … 100 | |
| Highlights · Shadows · Whites · Blacks | −100 … 100 | tonal ranges |
| Saturation | 0 … 200 (100 = unchanged) | all colours |
| Vibrance | −100 … 100 | the less-saturated colours only, so skin stays natural |
| Faded Film | 0 … 100 | lifted blacks, the filmic "matte" look |
| Amount | −5 … 5 | vignette (negative darkens the edges), with Midpoint, Roundness, Feather |

**A grading order that works:**
1. Balance (Temperature, Tint) until whites are white.
2. Exposure, then Whites and Blacks to set the range: nothing important
   clipped, true blacks where there should be.
3. Contrast, then Highlights and Shadows for shape.
4. Colour: Vibrance first, Saturation only if needed.
5. The look: Faded Film, a split tone, a vignette.

Change one thing at a time, and look after each step
(`ae_render_frame` at 2–3 representative moments).

## Looks and LUTs without a frozen app

**Apply Color LUT** (`ADBE Apply Color LUT2`) opens a file picker the moment
it's applied. That dialog freezes After Effects until someone clicks it, so
`ae_apply_effect` refuses it unless `allowDialog: true` is passed with a
person at the machine. Instead:

- use Lumetri's own Look and Input LUT menus (the user picks one in the
  Effect Controls; ask them), or
- apply an **animation preset** that already contains the LUT
  (`ae_apply_preset`). Make it once, by hand: apply the LUT, then Animation ▸
  Save Animation Preset.

## Brand colour and stylised looks

| Look | Effect (matchName) | Key parameters |
|---|---|---|
| Duotone in brand colours | `ADBE Tint` | Map Black To, Map White To, Amount to Tint |
| Three-tone | `ADBE Tritone` | highlights, midtones, shadows colours |
| Five-zone toning | `CC Toner` | Highlights, Brights, Midtones, Darktones, Shadows |
| Black & white with channel control | `ADBE Black&White` | Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues, Magentas, Tint Color |
| Keep one colour, grey the rest | `ADBE Leave Color` | Amount to Decolor, Color To Leave, Tolerance, Edge Softness |
| Swap one colour for another | `ADBE Change To Color` | From, To, Tolerance, Softness |
| Warm or cool filter | `ADBE PhotoFilterPS` | Filter, Color, Density, Preserve Luminosity |
| Gentle saturation | `ADBE Vibrance` | Vibrance, Saturation |

```json
ae_apply_effect {"layer": "Grade", "effect": "ADBE Tint",
                 "params": {"Map Black To": "#1b1640", "Map White To": "#f3eaff", "Amount to Tint": 60}}
```

## Precise correction

| Need | Effect | Key parameters |
|---|---|---|
| Exposure in stops, per channel | `ADBE Exposure2` | Exposure, Offset, Gamma Correction (and per channel) |
| Levels | `ADBE Easy Levels2` | Input Black, Input White, Gamma, Output Black, Output White |
| Levels per channel | `ADBE Pro Levels2` | Red/Green/Blue Input Black, Input White, Gamma… |
| Curves | `ADBE CurvesCustom` | the curve is drawn in the Effect Controls; use Levels or Lumetri to script it |
| Shadow and highlight recovery | `ADBE ShadowHighlight` | Shadow Amount, Highlight Amount |
| Colour balance by range | `ADBE Color Balance 2` | Shadow/Midtone/Highlight Red, Green, Blue Balance |
| Channel mixing | `ADBE CHANNEL MIXER` | Red-Red … Blue-Const, Monochrome |
| Selective colour | `ADBE SelectiveColor` | Colors (the range), then Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black |
| Hue shift or colourize | `ADBE HUE SATURATION` | Master Hue, Master Saturation, Master Lightness, Colorize |

## Building a palette

Most motion-design work is not footage; it is colour you choose. A palette
that survives contact with a real brief:

- **One accent, one neutral, one background.** Roughly 60% background, 30%
  neutral or secondary, 10% accent. The accent is for the thing you want
  looked at, and nothing else.
- **Saturation scales down with area.** A saturated accent on a chip is
  lively; the same colour across the full frame is loud. Drop saturation as
  the area grows.
- **Text carries the contrast, not the colour.** Body and caption text want
  a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against what is behind it, and large
  display type at least 3:1. Sample the rendered frame rather than trusting
  the swatches — a gradient background fails the ratio in places the flat
  colour passed.
- **Gradients want three stops, not two.** Interpolating straight from one
  hue to another runs through grey; adding a third stop that bends through a
  neighbouring hue (blue → violet → magenta rather than blue → magenta)
  keeps it rich. Banding is fixed with 16 bpc and 1–2% noise
  (`ae-effects`), not by fiddling with the stops.
- **Dark and light themes are not inverses.** A dark theme needs its
  brightest accent dimmed and its text lifted off pure white; a light theme
  needs shadows to have hue rather than grey.

## Colour that changes over time

- A colour change reads slower than a move. Give it at least 6–8 frames, and
  hold the new colour long enough to be seen as a state, not a flicker.
- Drive every element's colour from one Colour Control on a Controls null
  (`ae-templates`), so a theme change is one value, not forty edits.
- Cross-fading two saturated hues passes through mud. Fade through the
  neutral, or change luminance first and hue second.
- Pure saturated red and blue at small sizes fringe badly after H.264
  compression. Keep body text near neutral.

## Matching shots

1. Pick the **hero shot** and grade it first.
2. Render a frame of the hero and of the shot to match, at the same kind of
   moment (`ae_render_frame`). Compare whites, blacks, skin and overall
   colour temperature.
3. On the shot being matched (its own effect, not the shared adjustment
   layer), correct in this order: black and white points (Levels or
   Lumetri Whites/Blacks), then balance (Temperature, Tint, or
   `ADBE Color Balance 2`), then saturation.
4. Render both frames again and compare. The `video-reference-compare`
   skill's `--diff` row shows remaining differences brightly.

To match a brand palette, sample the brand colours (as hex from the brand
guide) and put them in `ADBE Tint` or `ADBE Tritone`, or on the Controls null
as colour controls that every element reads (see `ae-templates`).

## Broadcast and delivery

- `ADBE DigitalVideoLimiter` (Video Limiter: Clip Level) or
  `ADBE Broadcast Colors` keeps levels legal for broadcast. Put it on the
  topmost adjustment layer.
- OCIO transforms (`ADBE OCIO Color Space Transform`,
  `ADBE OCIO Display Transform`) are for colour-managed pipelines. Only use
  them when the project uses OCIO, and ask first.

## When it looks wrong

| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Bands across a sky or a gradient | 8 bpc, or a low bitrate | 16 bpc, 1–2% noise, and a higher-bitrate output template (`ae-deliver`) |
| Washed out and flat | log footage without its input transform | apply the input LUT first, then grade |
| Skin looks green or plastic | Saturation raised instead of Vibrance, or a tint pushed too far | Vibrance, and check faces against a reference frame |
| The grade looks right in the viewer, wrong in the file | a working-space or bit-depth mismatch | render a frame and compare it with `ae_render_frame` of the same time |
| Text disappears over footage | contrast fails where the background is bright | a scrim behind the text, or a darkened gradient, not a bolder font |
| Brand colours are not the brand's | hex converted through the wrong space, or a grade sitting over the graphics | keep graphics above the grading adjustment layer |

## Check it

Colour cannot be judged from numbers, and `ae_proof` deliberately does not
try: it screens geometry and timing, never colour, contrast or banding
(`ae-motion-proof`). That part is yours to look at. After each change, `ae_render_frame` at
full resolution (`downscale: 1`) at 2–3 moments, including the brightest and
darkest shots, and describe what you see: "whites now neutral, shadows
slightly blue, skin natural". Before and after: toggle the Grade layer with
`ae_set_layer_props {"enabled": false}` and render the same frame.