NTSC safe color question

DF
Posted By
Darcy Fitzpatrick
Apr 23, 2004
Views
1455
Replies
7
Status
Closed
I have applied this to several images and I don’t see any change – even when I color pick an area and view its RGB values – a white of 255,255,255 remains just that after an application of the NTSC color filter, which means it is still completely illegal for TV.

Can anyone confirm if this plugin actually works, or perhpas if there is a step needed that I’m missing in order to make it work?

Thanks!

Darcy

Master Retouching Hair

Learn how to rescue details, remove flyaways, add volume, and enhance the definition of hair in any photo. We break down every tool and technique in Photoshop to get picture-perfect hair, every time.

CC
Chris_Cox
Apr 23, 2004
White should remain white — that is legal for NTSC.
Yes, the plugiin works just fine.

What I suspect you are wanting is the levels to be changed so that black is about 16, and white is about 235 — which would correspond to NTSC encoding.

But that is VERY dependent on how you are encoding the image to NTSC — some video cards scale themselves, some don’t. The same goes for compressed video formats.

We haven’t tackled that in the filter because we can’t get any agreement on exactly what it should do, and the options for scaling vary with different cards, codecs and video standards….
DF
Darcy Fitzpatrick
Apr 23, 2004
Thanks for the reply, Chris.

I’m a little confused by it, though.

A "pure" white of 255×3 is not legal for NTSC screens. After I run the plugin, I am left with a 255×3 white.

I run an all-Adobe suite, using all-Adobe (which technically is a lot of Main Concept) encoders. AFAIK, none of these encoders will bring my RGB values down to NTSC legal colors for DV or DVD if they exceed them.

I assumed for images and photos, Photoshop’s NTSC color filter would do that – before the image found its way into the video. That’s kind of what the name of the filter suggests.

What does the filter do?

Do you know of any way to take an image with illegal colors and shift those to legal, without involving a lot of masks, selections, painting, etc?

Thanks – much appreciated.

Darcy
CC
Chris_Cox
Apr 23, 2004
No, pure 255,255,255 white is very much legal for NTSC.

It’s called NTSC colors because it only scales back the colors – it does nothing to the black and white levels. It does exactly what you’re asking.

You can change the black and white levels easily enough in levels or curves, once you’ve determined what you need for your encoding system.
PC
Philo_Calhoun
Apr 23, 2004
Chris: why does Encore then not allow pure black or pure white when you select NTSC safe colours?
CC
Chris_Cox
Apr 23, 2004
Because there are differening standards for how it should be encoded… Their standard includes the range compression.
DF
Darcy Fitzpatrick
Apr 24, 2004
This is weird.

It seems like everything I thought I knew from working in video for the past 4 years is not actually true, even though I’ve witnessed a white of 255,255,255 buzz like crazy on an NTSC screen more than once.

Ok, if the NTSC colors filter wants be semantically correct and not deal with black or white, that’s fine – but it isn’t scaling back my colors either. I’ve got a red of 237,28,36, and after I run the filter it remains the same. The 237 in the R makes it illegal, doesn’t it?

I’m just gonna mess with levels until I get it all where I want it. I’ve yet to see any actual purpose behind the NTSC colors filter.

Thanks,

Darcy
DF
Darcy Fitzpatrick
Apr 24, 2004
It’s so simple. I was so wrapped up in what NTSC colors wasn’t doing for me, I couldn’t see that the sollution was as simple as using Levels and changing the output levels to where I wanted them. Brilliant. Thanks for the suggestion, Chris.

Darcy

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections