Before After Effects had native support for ACES, you had to use the OpenColorIO plugin and a cocktail of colour transforms on adjustment layers. Now AE has native support - BUT, I actually don’t want to use it on a project-wide basis. It really doesn’t work for hybrid motion design projects that require 2D animation and 3D animation - plus if a project has to be delivered to an in-house team it needs to be standard After Effects workflow. I’ve been trying to recreate the old way of using ‘color profile converter’ effects on an adjustment layer, but it just doesn’t look the same as it used to. What is the correct way of doing this in After Effects 2025? I am exporting an un tone mapped EXR animation from Redshift. Is it still worth grading in ACEScct through a transform from ACEScg also?
Thanks in advance, I just want a simple (correct!) way of doing things just using the standard after effects Adobe color manager colour space if that’s still possible.
Technically your hybrid workflow is possible with native AE OCIO but it’s probably more cumbersome than you’d like. AFAIK the fnord plugin still works in the current version of After Effects. Just know that at some point you may become limited in it’s use because both OCIO and ACES are moving forward and fnord plugin isn’t actively maintained. Native OCIO also comes with a set of tools that the plugin does not offer like OCIOFileTransform, OCIOCDLTransform, OCIOLookTransform. OCIOLook is necessary to be able to apply the ACES gamut compression for example.
If you don’t really need the latest ACES OCIO configs for your work I’d say keep using the plugin.
Color Profile Converter is an ICC profile based tool and does not have the feature set to support ACES workflows. If you use ACES in your image pipeline like in Redshift render and expect the same image in AE you’ll have to use an OCIO ACES config.
If you intend to use tools or operations that are not suitable for linear input like Lumetri Color, then yes, there is a high chance you break your image otherwise. Lumetri Color still has questionable controls but shouldn’t pose immediate problems when used on log data. Any multiplication/gain based operation like exposure or levels input/output white or multiplying a solid color to control the brightness and tint of an image are better suited for linear input.
Btw, I just had a look at the OCIO plugin on the website and they did update it last year. It looks like OCIOv2.3 is now supported and the ACES 1.3 v1.0 and v2.1 configs are included inside the plugin it seems which is very nice to see. (The latest added the new ARRI -and BMD camera and intermediate color spaces.)
First of all thanks for being so generous with your time and knowledge, it is much appreciated.
I guess one thing I should point out is that within my remit as a motion designer is I always deliver final picture - whether to TV or for online. As long as I can get a beautiful result from my workflow then I am fortunate not to be a position of having to make sure a technically accurate ACES workflow continues beyond me.
I note what you say:
Color Profile Converter is an ICC profile based tool and does not have the feature set to support ACES workflows.
But I have been trialling alt hybrid workflows, and if I import an un-tone-mapped or RAW image from Redshift and use the following setup, it seems to be very very close to the look and feel of the OCIO plugin:
I realise this might be controversial in a purist sense! Now there is an ACES profile in the Color Profile Converter it allows some scope to keep things native (I usually have to deliver a kit to in-house teams who don’t understand ACES).
Is there any merit at all in this hybrid workflow? The colour depth and grading is still far better than a non-ACES workflow, though obviously not as good as in a fully OCIO managed colour space.
I would discourage you to use such a workflow. What you’re essentially doing is only a conversion from linear to sRGB gamma. Any values above 1.0 will remain above 1.0 and you’ll be forced to sort of grade and tone map this data by the limited tools AE has to offer. This approach is imo far from artist friendly because one change somewhere may instantly break desired appearance again.
I don’t know what exactly your part is in your projects, but perhaps consider doing a full ACES workflow first with your CG composites and then render out with Rec.709 ODT baked in into prores for further use with the rest of the team. That way you keep consistency with Redshift and you have a consistent way of managing the data with more predictable results.
If that workflow with an in-between step is too sluggish, I think the best approach would be to educate the rest of the team a bit more around working with OCIO and ACES:). And in theory, if they don’t need to touch your parts of the comp in a project, they can just leave all those OCIO effects in place and work on top of all those comps?
If that is still just not working out there is zero benefit in using ACES at all, and it would probably be best to set your 3d package/Redshift to render in the ‘legacy’ linear srgb style without ACES because it is only an added step in your CG creation process that isn’t utilized down the line.
Apologies for the slow response, I’ve been away, but thanks and yes this makes sense. I guess for now I’ll continue with the plugin in the hope that After Effects makes it possible to use a hybrid colour space on a per-comp basis rather than project wide in future. Thanks so much!
That’s a good solution. I actually asked the developoment team to allow use of OCIO tools in Adobe managed back when it was still in beta. I just made a new post in their ideas section to bring it up again. Feel free to add your voice so we can hopefully benefit from such workflows in the future.
