Photoshop Ocio

[Hayley Sweigard]

Asa means of supporting a great many artists that use it, Photoshop needs to support OCIO / Aces asap natively. The request has been put in directly to Adobe by several people in the past, including myself, but we're still not seeing it. AE just implemented it.

As I've said before, I'm all for it as long as it doesn't interfere with standard icc based color management. OCIO is only used in the video community, which for Photoshop is a small segment of its total user base.

OCIO works on exactly the same principles as icc color management, so there's no reason it couldn't be implemented. On the other hand, there are no advantages over icc color management, just a different set of reference color space and input/output color spaces adapted to common video workflows.

The problem is that icc color management is at the very core of Photoshop, its whole architecture revolves around it. That's not a consideration in video apps, because traditionally, video hasn't used any color management at all. Video creators just calibrated their monitors to accepted standards, such as Rec.709 or DCI-P3, and that was close enough.

The purpose of OCIO is to allow archival encoding in the large ACES color space, with output to whatever purpose appropriate. That's in itself a very sound concept, and again, parallell to standard icc color management.

OCIO is the (relatively new compared to icc) standard for post production and definitely isn't limited to video work. I couldn't disagree more with your statement re. this. CGI is a massive part of the post production workflow and is used in both stills and video projects. Think about advertising renders that go to both video and print campaigns. The goal here, much like the goal with icc colour management, is to establish a standard workflow across the board. ICC has worked really well for a couple of decades now for print work. The world has changed pretty dramatically in the last several years and video and print work and workflows should play nicely together and have compatible standards. I agree that there's no reason why these two standards can't coexist. OCIO in Photoshop would be a massive improvement to how things have to be done currently in order to get things to work. It's a hack workflow that needs to mature asap.

I agree with Carson. Our Studio has an established workflow around ACES. We work in different render applications. OCIO color management is essential. I find it embarrasing that Adobe is years behind this. We do videos and stills. Having to go to photoshop is the worst. I make my edits in DaVinci Resolve or After Effects when possible. And thats the main reason. The other being Photoshop is an old piece of c....

Hi Brendan,

Thanks for making this available for photoshop! Unfortunately I'm getting a "Photoshop is not responding crash" whenever I try to select the "convert" or "display" options in Windows 10. Can this be supported for Windows?

Thanks. I'm having some trouble converting exr images. Using the spi-anim OCIO, if I select input:Inf output:Film(vd16) this makes the EXR image over-bright. This is not the case if I do the same to an 8-bit PNG. It appears that Photoshop (CC 2017) does not read in EXR files as linear raw, and applies a 2.2 gamma view transform to them. This is true even when the color profile is set to linear (gamma 1.0). So instead of getting the EXR displayed in vd16 it appears to be vd16+2.2 gamma. Do you know a way to address this?

Ultimately, I would like to generate ICC profiles. However when I export the ICC profile and then assign it to an EXR in Photoshop I get a very different problem: the image has a blue tint to it and appears to still be in gamma 2.2 rather than vd16 (which has a noticeable toe and shoulder).

Photoshop automatically sets 32-bit images to linear color space, 8- and 16-bit to non-linear (typically sRGB). If you convert an 8-bit sRGB PNG to 32-bit, it will be made linear in the process, and then if you switch back to 8-bit it will be changed back to sRGB.

So Photoshop does import an EXR as linear, but then it displays it as sRGB using a display transform. You can turn it off by going to View > Proof Setup > Monitor RGB.

Thanks that works for converting the image with the filter. However, when I write out an ICC profile and apply it to the image (with raw Monitor RGB display as you described) using "edit>assign profile" the ICC appears to have no affect.

Tried exporting a LUT and using the Color Lookup adjustment layer as you suggested. While the OCIO filter displays the image correctly in the bright areas, the LUT clips these. Oddly it clips them to a bright yellow, which is odd since the pixel values are actually blue (if I sample them in Nuke I get ).

It looks like the filter (both for the "display" and convert" options) bakes the display transform into the image, so if I save the EXR and open it in Nuke it is no longer linear and has the vd16 tonemap baked into it. I would like to instead simply view the linear EXR through the OCIO display transform in Photoshop, like one does in Nuke. The Color Lookup adjustment LUT would be perfect for this, but as I described above it clips the brights.

"Convert" is used to simply convert from one color space to another. For example, you might convert from log to linear. Display is used for viewing. So if you have log pixels, you choose how to display them, often by choosing a device and maybe between a few different transforms.

In general, for any Display setup there will be an equivalent Convert setup if you figure out which output space is being used. I offer both because you see both interfaces in other programs like Nuke.

Hi there. I'm installing your plugin on Mac OS X for PS CC and am getting the following error when I try to run the filter: Could not complete the OpenColorIO command because The specified file reference 'CineonLog_to_linear.spi1d' could not be located. The following attempts were made: (path goes to location of config.ocio/luts)

Is this a problem with the plugin install or other information I am missing? Thanks in advance.

Hi! I was wondering if there is an update for windows 10 Phtoshop CC 17 as it keeps crashing whenever I try to do anything. This is an amazing feature,I would love to be able to use it, thanks for all the hard work :)

I have the same clipping issue Derek has.

Using the filter to convert to ACEScg to Rec709 everything looks fine.

But exporting it as either a LUT or ICC profile produces blown out highlights...

Honestly thinking it's a Photoshop limitation.

I am using this tool to convert textures from Substance painter into ACES environment textures. What should i use as my IDT and ODTs??

I used ODT as Utility sRGB Texture

But i am unsure of my IDT.

Can you please help??

I am surprised that this is not more popular here on the forums, because there are many thousands of visual effects artists for who not having ocio in photoshop is a problem, and the workarounds are very complicated.

Like the OP mentions, OCIO is the holy grail of color management, I think you probably have never tried it if you just want to close the discussion here or move it elsewhere where I need to register a new account to continue the discussion.

For photography and graphics, it's a solution in search of a problem. Icc-based color management does everything it's required to do, and very reliably so. There's no problem to solve. It just works. The biggest advantage is that it's conceptually extremely simple. Yes, it takes some math to get there, but that's what computers are for. Functionally it couldn't be simpler.

First of all we are talking here about OCIO color management in photoshop (not video apps) for people working in the film industry, mostly the texture artists, matte painters, concept artists and environment artists in the visual effects studio. They all use photoshop for work in the movies.

OCIO is a color management system invented by Sony Imageworks, that has been adopted in *all* post-production studios. On top of everything, OCIO allows to work with ACES, which is the Academy (the association that give the oscars) official color pipeline, required for tv and film work ( _Color_Encoding_System).

So, while not explaining what ocio is exactly, this brings to the fact that post production houses need to comply with this color management system. Photoshop is widely used (it is the main software used for matte painters and concept artists) but we need heavy development or complicated workarounds to just have accurate colors witht the footage provided by the clients. And when we export our work, it's hard to maintain consisten results - which is what ocio is there for.

This is the problem with an application like Photoshop, which has such a total market dominance that it's used by everybody, for everything. Even things it weren't really designed for, or isn't very appropriate for.

The video industry relies on output devices that are calibrated to a standard. That standard is the monitor 'profile' e.g. sRGB. That works well if the output device behaves and there are sufficient incremental steps in the calibration LUTs to achieve an accurate calibration.

The graphics and print rely on profiles which can describe very accurately the behaviour of the specific device with or without calibration , be that a monitor or printer. That is needed when there are so many variations in the device e.g. ink and paper combinations in the case of printers or printing presses.

So we have different color management systems to meet those different needs. I have no objection to any options being added to make Photoshop more versatile, indeed I would use them in 3D work, but would object if it meant any graphic industry standard options being compromised.

OCIO implementation would have no effect on what is already present. Also, the ocio implementations that I have seen to this day were using ICC profiles or luts adjustment layers so it would make sense to use this system as native.

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