ACES and the ColorChecker - Part Two

I finally finished the second part, just in time for the start of the new year.

This time I am looking at project that is already some years old. I wanted to see if I can get the same results going from Canon RAW images to a stitched HDRI with PTGui using Lightroom or other tools that I have. I compared the results on the ColorChecker.

I am already working on the next part where I repeat some of the steps but with more recent material that I shot last summer.

https://www.toodee.de/?page_id=1860

As always, comments and feedback are welcome. Thanks.

Here is my own reply :slight_smile:

The next article is finished. It is a deeper comparison of five different ways I tried to get the “best” HDRI result using different tools to process the RAW images.

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HI man great article. Now 2 years later. I’m still looking in to the best workflow to getting my RAW files to ACES properly. Really curious to know whats your current workflow.

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Thanks,

at the moment I try to use the RAW images and process them directly in PTGui Pro. Since version 12 I do not see any artefacts in clipped highlights anymore. And you can choose the output colourspace directly in the app.

Cool that’s what i was doing as well. Do you get good results ?

yes, the results improved a lot for what I can see in version 12.

Great, and do you still use the optimize now?

yes, this was recommended to me by the developer of PTGui.

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Cool so this is how we do it right now. Throw the RAW files from camera (canon 7D) straight in to PtGui. Output HDR with AcesCG colorspace. Import both plate and HDR in Nuke and we use mmColorchecker to match them to each other. We use the graded plate & hdr in our 3d software. We get pretty good results.

I’m really curious right now to know about your workflow and if you maybe have some feedback ours as well.

I think you mean by “graded” the color balanced plate and HDRI?
I never used the mmColourTarget gizmo. I usually balance over the middle grey patch on the color checker.

Yes i meant color balanced plates & hdri

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Your blog is good; you explain things very well !

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Hi @TooDee and @Roondyvfx. I am currently revisiting my HDRi processing, and wanted to here your thoughts about it.
As of right now, my HDRi Processing is based on:
for Shooting: The Definitive Weta Digital Guide to IBL - fxguide

for Processing: How to Create High Quality HDR Environments – Poly Haven Blog

My question are:

#1 Is it still better/worth it to preconvert raw files in 16 bit linear Tiff (with Rawtherapee or Darktable) or should I ingest raw files into PTGui?

#2 PTGui, as of my knowledge, is not available for Linux. What about using NukeX and the CaraVR tool for the whole process? link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn5GTLK0ewc&t=306s

Thank you for sharing this information!

The way we typically do it is by converting the brackets to HDR beforehand so that we fully control the colour and image processing, then if we don’t have a template, we stitch with a LDR version of the HDR and finally we swap them for the HDR variant.

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Hi,

#1
I find the workflow of using directly the .CR2/.CR3 files in PTGui without any pre conversion step a good choice.
It’s fast (especially on Apple Silicon) and recent tests with a pre conversion to TIF with LightRoom did not really improve the results and some times we found the results even worse.

#2
I never used PTGui on Linux, but there is a download button for it :slight_smile: - We use Windows and Mac, and especially I am amazed by the speed with 180 .CR2 files on a M1-Max MBP.
We wanted to look into the workflow ideas from @jedsmith, but in the end we stick to PTGui.

For the overall process we also use more or less the proposed workflow from Weta.