ASC-CDL compliant adjustments and reference colorspace

[Elle (Elle Stone)]

Well, I’m sure more knowledgeable people will chime in. But the ACES Primer I linked to here:

ACES Primer - readable, lots of pictures, features Tarzan

Over the last few years I’ve spent the occasional hour or two, now and again, trying to better understand this thing called “ACES”. Quite awhile back I downloaded a lot of the official documentation and read through much of it - but like documentation in general it made for very dry reading. Anyway, cutting to the chase, here is a page with a link to a very readable (and very recent) overview of the ACES workflow - the “ACES Primer”: And here’s a direct link: FWIW and as an aside, on my co…

says on page 21 that the Look Transform is part of the Output Transform, and page 41 seems to lump the ASC CDL into the Look Transform.

Somewhere it almost seems like the Primer says look transforms are applied in ACES. But on page 46 ACEScc is mentioned in reference to color grading tools, and ACEScg is mentioned in reference to CGI and compositing. So as a wild guess, I’m guessing that maybe ACEScc is used for that ASC CDL stuff as a “transient” working space. But again this is just a guess.

The Primer does give a nice overview. And again I’m sure more knowledgeable people will speak up.