Beldona Lingerie Spring collection grading with ACES

Hi.

Most of the talk here is tech talk but my topic is more creative side i would say.
Wanted to share my experience with ACES and a job i did not so long ago.

Here is the video (lingerie commercial for lady’s so male persons use caution):

https://vimeo.com/205283118

I had fashion job shot Red Epic that i needed to grade with relatively natural
tones and clean imagery out of the camera. As always due to camera adjustment or
location material tend to be tinted and not very clean. Variation in color from product to product is intentional to separate locations and themes in edit if you look at the final result.

As i work in Resolve Studio i do use ACEScc for my colorspace. In Resolve now if i go with ACES all RED “secret sauce” profiles are directly converted to ACEScc and i have relatively clean material out of the camera that makes my job much faster, precise and clean. Now if i go to camera raw tab and adjust temp and tint i’m almost there. Some adjustments with offsets and then really in the end some augmentation of product colors or adjustment on skin tones slightly and i’m done.

I have done now some food commercials and feature films also in ACES and i really like how fast and how clean imagery i get out of nice cameras like RED, Alexa or UM46 (any BM camera actually). I can share screenshots of food spots in separate thread if anyone would be interested.

So for now i would say ACES is my go to color system for TV commercials and feature films.
Specially for feature films as VFX pipeline can be so much more manageable compared to mayhem of lut’s usually and going mad managing all the luts every department uses separately.

Hope this gives nice opening to Creative section here.

Margus Voll, C.S.I.

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I’d be interested to learn more. I’m still cooking on my own ACES workflow here, bringing more apps together on common turf.

In Resolve it seems rather simple to me. Probably depends on your app but the general idea seems to be the same.

Where do you work ?

My garden of gripes is in VFX.

Still have issues with ACEScg going to sRGB for final output (Nuke 10.5v1). I’m a bit closer now by going from ACEScg to ACES and from there to sRGB through a Grade > OCIODisplay > Saturation > Write(RAW) node setup. Ideally I should be able to get the same result I see in the viewer by writing a file with the same ODT the viewer uses. Like with one transform right before the write node.

Right now it’s like shooting from the hip in the back through the chest into the eye.

My experience with CGI is still limited but i would assume keeping it as much in ACES till the end is the idea? I.e. also in finishing or back in grading stage you should have same gamut (ACES).

Is there a reason for going sRGB?

Thanks Margus for your nice comments!

Jim Houston

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You can try that and you’ll see why it doesn’t work. Standard displays are sRGB. All portable devices are sRGB and below. When you design elements for any of these, the output is sRGB. If you make a product for online audiences, the output is sRGB. Pre-rendered game elements, sRGB.

For me ACES ends with the creation phase. When it comes to product and delivery, it’s sRGB. Basically, when you do direct-to-audience, it’s always sRGB/rec709. At least for the foreseeable future.

BTW I really like the skin separation you got there. Especially in the shots with the wood-stick doors. Very crisp.

I have the same when the final delivery is TV commercials as it end in REC709.

Getting skin to look like this was not hard there at least for me.

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