ACEScct is very similar to ACEScc across most of the range, except that it adds a “toe” to make it more akin to traditional “log” curves (e.g. Cineon, LogC, S-Log, etc.). The addition of a “toe” results in a more distinct “milking” or “fogging” of shadows when a lift operation is applied (and compared to the same operation applied in ACEScc). This difference in grading behavior is being provided in response to colorist requests for behavior more similar to that of traditional legacy log film scan encodings when grading using a working space from the “ACES” family of color spaces.
Specifically, for ACES values greater than 0.0078125, the ACEScct encoding function is identical to the pure-log encoding function of ACEScc. It is only below that point that the curves differ. However, note that because of the toe, ACEScct is not compatible with ACESproxy.