Compositing with ACES

Step 1

OCIO Support for Photoshop is still less than ideal, for now the best way to use ACES in Photoshop is to first download and make use of the fnord plugin OpenColorIO for Photoshop.

Step 2

First open your ACEScg footage in Photoshop.

Step 3

Then convert your ACEScg layer to a smart object.

Step 4

Then apply the OpenColorIO plugin as a smart filter to your ACEScg footage layer.

Step 5

Then set your OCIO config file path.

Set the mode to "Display"

Input Space: ACEScg

Display: sRGB (or your own monitor's display color space)

View: ACES 1.0 SDR-video (or the same View transform you were using in Redshift)

Step 6

Now the ACEScg footage is being previewed with the correct ODT but it still does not look correct in Photoshop, this is due to an extra gamma correction that Photoshop is applying.

Step 7

To counteract this gamma correction issue apply another OpenColorIO smart filter to the ACEScg footage, but this time with different settings.

Use the same configuration file used last time.

Set the mode to "Convert"

Input Space: sRGB

Output Space: scene-linear Rec.709-sRGB

Step 8

Now the ACEScg footage looks correct and is working properly with its two OpenColorIO transforms.

Step 1

First open your ACEScg footage in Photoshop.

Step 2

Next go to Edit > Assign Profile.

Step 3

Set the Profile to ACEScg.

Now your image will probably look a whole lot nicer and more saturated but we're still not quite there yet, most noticeably the highlights are clipping much more harshly than we would expect and in general the whole image might be brighter.

In-progress result after assigning the ACEScg color profile

Step 4

Next, from the Layers panel, create a new Adjustment Layer > Color Lookup.

Step 5

Next you must load the appropriate LUT from the Color Lookup's Properties panel seen below.

Click on the "Load 3D LUT" drop down and then click on the "Load 3D LUT..." text to bring up a file open dialog.

Step 6

Navigate to where you saved the downloaded LUT file:
ACEScg_Photoshop_SceneLinear_to_DisplayLinear_Transform_DimSurround.csp and select it, your Color Lookup properties should look like the image below when set up correctly.

Step 7

Now the ACEScg footage looks great and is working as expected with the properly setup Color Lookup Adjustment Layer.

Reminder

The correct way to adjust ACEScg footage with this Photoshop workflow is above your ACEScg footage but below the Color Lookup adjustment layer. This is demonstrated below with an Exposure effect being applied to an adjustment layer titled "Exposure 1" in between the two layers. The reason for this is that you want to apply any color corrections to the ACEScg footage when it is still linear so it must be done before the ODT conversion that converts your image to non-linear via the Color Lookup. This also means that you can composite multiple ACEScg openEXRs render layers all under the same one Color Lookup adjustment layer.

Correct color correction result and layer order	Incorrect color correction result and layer order

Step 1

OCIO Support for After Effects is still less than ideal, for now the best way to use ACES in After Effects is to first download and make use of the fnord plugin OpenColorIO for After Effects.

Step 2

First import your ACEScg footage into After Effects and place it in a new composition.

Step 3

Now set up your Project Settings. This can be found either by clicking the small button at the bottom of the Project panel circled in the image below or going to File > Project Settings.

Step 4

Under the Color tab set the following settings:

Depth: 32 bits per channel (float)

Working Space: sRGB IEC61966-2.1

Linearize Working Space: Enabled

Step 5

Next create a new adjustment layer above your ACEScg footage in the composition. We will name this adjustment layer and refer to it as " ACEScg to sRGB."

Step 6

Then add an OpenColorIO effect to the "ACEScg to sRGB" adjustment layer. This effect is found under Effects > Utility > OpenColorIO.

Step 7

Now set your OCIO config location for the OpenColorIO effect.

Step 8

Use the following settings:

Set the mode to "Display"

Input Space: ACEScg

Output Space: sRGB

View: ACES 1.0 SDR-video

Step 9

Now the ACEScg footage is being previewed with the correct ACES ODT but it still does not actually look correct in After Effects, this is due to an extra gamma correction that After Effects color management is applying.

Step 10

To counteract this gamma correction issue add a Color Profile Converter effect beneath the existing OpenColorIO effect, this can be found under Effects > Utility > Color Profile Converter.

Step 11

Use the following settings for the Color Profile Converter:

Input Profile: sRGB IEC61966-2.1

Output Profile: sRGB IEC61966-2.1

Linearize Output Profile: Enabled

Step 12

Now the ACEScg footage looks correct and will render out properly.

Step 1

Navigate to the Color tab of your Nuke Project settings.

Step 2

Set your "Color Management" to OCIO.

Step 3

Set the "OCIO config" to an ACES configuration or provide the path of your own custom OCIO config.

Step 4

Your Read nodes for ACES footage should already be set up with the correct color space of scene linear as pictured below.

Step 5

Set your Viewer to the correct output display transform that corresponds with the display you are using to view your work on.

Step 1

To make the results of your settings changes more apparent start by adding your ACES footage to a timeline..

Step 2

Then open your "Project Settings" which is found in the File menu.

Step 3

Next select the "Color Management" section on the left side of the Project Settings panel and then change your "Color science" to ACEScc or ACEScct.

Step 4

Then set your ACES version, Input Device Transform to " CSC - ACEScg" and Output Device Transform to the color space corresponding to the monitor you are working on, in most cases sRGB.

Step 5

Now your ACES footage is set up properly.

Step 1

Start by adding your ACES footage to a timeline and switching to the Edit page.

Step 2

Then add an  ACES Transform effect to your footage found under the Open FX > Resolve FX Color section.

Step 3

Next switch to the Effects tab so you can access the ACES Transform options.

Step 4

Then set your ACES version, Input Transform to " CSC - ACEScg" and Output Transform to the color space corresponding to the monitor you are working on, in most cases sRGB.

Step 5

Now your footage is set up properly.

Step 1

From the Color page start by adding an ACES Transform node to your color correction graph.

Step 2

Then set your ACES version, Input Transform to "CSC - ACEScg" and Output Transform to the color space corresponding to the monitor you are working on, in most cases sRGB.

Step 3

Now your footage is set up properly.

Step 1

With your footage imported via a Loader create an OCIO Colorspace node downstream from your footage. This effect can be found under the Tools > Color section.

Step 2

First specify the location of your OCIO Config file.

Step 3

Then set your Source Space to "ACEScg" and Output Space to the color space corresponding to the monitor you are working on, in most cases sRGB.

Step 4

Now your footage is set up properly.

Step 1

Before you begin working you must first specify your OCIO config path by opening the Affinity Preferences > ;Color section.

Step 2

Then press the " Select..." button and navigate to and select your OCIO config file. A restart of the program may be required after this step.

Step 3

Next open your footage and add an Adjustment by clicking the button located at the bottom of the Layers panel circled below...

Step 4

...and select the OCIO adjustment.

Step 5

Then set your Source Color Space (IDT) to " ACEScg" and Destination Color Space (ODT) to the color space corresponding to the monitor you are working on, in most cases sRGB.

Step 6

Next add a Levels adjustment and apply a Gamma adjustment of 2. 

Step 7

Now your footage is set up properly.

Step 1

Start by bringing in your footage with a read node. A read node has built in OCIO support but should be left to ACEScg / raw for the input and output transforms so we can work in ACEScg and then transform to sRGB later.

Step 2

Then create an OCIO Colorspace node (this will function as our ACES ODT) and set your OCIO config file. Set your Input Colorspace to ACEScg and your Output Colorspace to sRGB. This color transform should take place before writing out / rendering your footage so the ACES ODT is baked in.

Step 3

To remove the unwanted sRGB transform make certain to set your viewer lut to " Linear (None)" as highlighted in the image below to preview your footage correctly.

With this change now your footage looks correct in the viewer and you can do your compositing work in ACEScg as long as the editing takes place before the ACES ODT.

Step 4

Make sure that when exporting your footage with a Write node that you set the Input and File Colorspaces to linear / raw in order to avoid the double sRGB transform as well.

The ACES ODT is already coverting the footage to the appropriate sRGB output.