I thought I was being pretty clever this evening — as I am still very much in the learning stage with Premiere Pro. I took some video at dusk last night, but it lacked a wow factor, so I used a still HDR (I shot stills from the same angle); cut in a nice sky, and Garbage matted in four video layers to make the still look more convincing. I even managed to do a decent feather effect with one of the Garbage mattes using Roughen edges.

My only problem, and it does not seem like a biggie but I'd really like to understand what is going on...

The still image is much darker on the Premiere Pro CS6 timeline than it was in Photoshop CS6. I can fix it with Levels, but why is it happening?

I have now found that fixing the tonal value of the stills layer with levels, and Exporting the clip, resulted in it being too bright. Removing the levels effect and exporting again, resulted in the stills part of the sequence looking the same as it did in Photoshop.

This was exporting to 1080p 25 mp4 with four matted MXF video layers from an XF300. OK it came out right in the end, but surely I should be able to view it properly at the right brightness on the PremPro timeline?

Having said that both monitors are calibrated, I have now discovered that the second monitor - which has only really been used for Photoshop Panels up till now - is just a bit darker than my main monitor. I was comparing the timeline, viewed on the second monitor, to exported footed, viewed on my main monitor, and this particular footage was really showing up that difference.

A quick Google showed that it is fairly common with the Huey Pro I am using, especially with older monitors (my second monitor is an aging 4:3 19 inch Philips). So I think I am in the market for another monitor and a more effective calibration device.